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 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. 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 it 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.