“好好生活，保留着对真诚、有趣、善良的欣赏和追求。万勿因我而沮丧、消沉、愤世嫉俗，答应我。”

对现在的我这种比较清静寡淡的人来说，这篇过于正能量、过于鸡了一些，但如果不拿它过于自鸡的话，其实倒也还好。这篇文章和 “Youth” 一样，也是出自《生而为赢》这本小册子，是里面的第六篇。本文是 Bertrand Russell 先生的自传的序。这篇的句式要好一些，我写文章基本就是这种风格了，不用复合句我确实不敢写作文。。。

我是从专业的角度对 Bertrand Russell 先生比较有好感，做数学的应该都知道这个人，虽然他不是那种特别特别纯正的数学家，集合论方面儿的罗素悖论应该听过吧。

下面是他的简介：

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, although he also confessed that his sceptical nature had led him to feel that he had “never been any of these things, in any profound sense.” Russell was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom.

正文开始。

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What I have lived for

      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 great 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. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. 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 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 this 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.

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译文（译文也是生而为赢版的。译者不详，应该是 by 胡作玄 老师）：

我为何而生

      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的难以抑制的怜悯。这些激情像狂风，把我恣情吹向四方，掠过苦痛的大海，迫使我濒临绝望的边缘。

      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中，我感觉心灵的战栗，仿如站在世界的边缘而面前是冰冷，无底的死亡深渊。我寻求爱，因为在我所目睹的结合中，我仿佛看到了圣贤与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，但至少是我用尽一生所领悟到的。

      我用同样的激情去寻求知识。我希望能理解人类的心灵，希望能够知道群星闪烁的缘由。我试图领悟毕达哥拉斯所景仰的“数即万物”思想。我已经悟出了其中的一点点道理，尽管并不是很多。

      爱和知识，用它们的力量把人引向天堂。但是同情却总把人拽回到尘世中来。痛苦的呼喊声回荡在我的内心。饥饿的孩子、受压迫的难民、被儿女们当做负担的无助的老人，还有这这个充满了孤独、贫穷和痛苦的世界，都是对人类所憧憬的美好生活的无情嘲弄。我渴望能够减少邪恶，但是我无能为力，我也难逃其折磨。

      这就是我的一生。我已经找到它的价值。而且如果有机会，我愿意再活一次。