早读024—我为何而生

What I have Lived for 我为何而生（节选） 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. 我的一生被三种简单却又无比强烈的激情所控制：对爱的渴望，对知识的探索和对人类苦难难以抑制的同情。这些激情像狂风，把我的恣情吹向四方，掠过苦难的大海，迫使我濒临绝望的边缘。 I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy---ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for 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. 我寻求爱，首先因为它使我心为之着迷，这种难以名状的美妙迷醉使我愿意用所有的余生去换取哪怕几个小时这样的幸福。我寻求爱，还因为它能缓解我心理上的孤独，在这种可怕的孤独中，我觉得心灵的战栗，仿如站在世界的边缘而前是冰冷，无底的死亡深渊。我寻求爱，因为在我所目睹的爱的结合中，我仿佛看到了圣贤和诗人们所向往的天堂之景。这就是我所寻找的，虽然对人的一生而言似乎有些遥不可及，但至少是用尽一生所领悟到的。