我为何而活

《文明的碎片》第二季主要以西方先哲的人生思考作为选取片段，以期与先哲进行思想碰撞，从而引发自己的反思。本节内容选取了罗素的经典散文“What I Have Lived For”作为开篇，罗素此篇用典雅流畅朴素的语言概括了人生意义的来源。希望通过本节内容的学习，大家可以体会哲学的思辨，了解人生的意义所在，并学会如何用清晰的语言表达抽象的思维。

What I Have Lived For

By Bertrand Russell

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.

▍生词好句

govern: vt. 统治；支配

long for sth.: 渴望得到某物

hither and thither: 到处；处处

wayward: adj. 不可预测的；不规则的

course: n. 路线

anguish: n. 痛苦；苦恼

verge: n. 边缘

ecstasy: n. 陶醉；狂喜

consciousness: n. 意识；知觉（本节可理解为“灵魂”）

mystic: adj. 神秘的；神秘主义的

miniature: n. 缩影；缩图