第3页 第一章 百合花 宁萱的信

   《三种激情》是选自《伯特兰·罗素自传》  

   伯特兰·罗素(Bertrand Russell,1872-1970)是英国声誉卓著，影响深远的哲学家、数学家、逻辑学家和散文家。他生于威尔士的特莱雷克，就读于剑桥三一学院，在其漫长的一生中完成了40余部著作，涉及哲学、数学、伦理、社会、教育、历史、宗教及政治等许多领域。他早年的成就主要在数学和逻辑学，中年关注伦理道德、教育、政治，激励和启发富有进取精神的人。在1921年曾来中国，在北京大学作过讲座。他在1950年荣获诺贝尔文学奖。在政治上，他反对侵略战争，主张和平，晚年参加反战示威。主要著作有《数学原理》、《哲学大纲》、《教育与美好生活》、《罗素自传》三卷本。                                 

                                       Three Passions
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. 

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy –ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what- at last- I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men.I have wished to know why the stars shine. I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flu. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.