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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.
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.
Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.
This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what – at last – I have found.
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens.
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.
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.
This has been my life, I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
I have wished to understand the hearts of men.But always pity brought me back to earth.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
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.
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
