My Three Passions
by Bertrand Russell
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An extract from Bertrand Russell's autobiography, in which he names the three simple but overwhelmingly strong passions that have governed his life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, 'like great winds', have blown him over a deep ocean of anguish to the verge of despair. He sought love for three reasons, because it brings ecstasy, because it relieves the terrible loneliness of a 'shivering consciousness', and because in the union of love he glimpsed 'the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined'. He sought knowledge to understand human hearts, to know why the stars shine, and to grasp the Pythagorean power of number. Love and knowledge led upward towards heaven, but pity always brought him back to earth, echoes of pain from famine-stricken children, tortured victims and helpless old people. He longs to relieve this suffering but cannot, and so suffers too. Yet he concludes that this has been a life worth living, one he would 'gladly live again'.
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In this short, moving autobiographical piece, Russell reflects on the three great passions, love, knowledge and pity, that have shaped his entire life, driving him like powerful winds over an ocean of anguish yet making his life deeply worth living.
The three governing passions
Russell declares that three passions, 'simple but overwhelmingly strong', have governed his life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and 'unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind'. Like great winds these passions have blown him 'hither and thither' over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
The longing for love
He sought love for three reasons: because it brings ecstasy so great he would sacrifice the rest of life for a few hours of it; because it relieves the terrible loneliness in which one 'shivering consciousness' looks over the rim of the world into a 'cold unfathomable lifeless abyss'; and because in the union of love he saw, 'in a mystic miniature', the 'prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined'.
The search for knowledge
With equal passion he sought knowledge, to understand the hearts of men, to know 'why the stars shine', and to grasp 'the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway over the flux'. Of this, he modestly admits, he achieved 'a little, but not much'.
Pity brings him back to earth
Love and knowledge led upward towards the heavens, but 'always pity brought me back to earth'. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in his heart, children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people, and 'the whole world of loneliness, poverty and pain'. He longs to relieve this evil but cannot, and so he too suffers. Yet he concludes that his life has been worth living, and he would 'gladly live it again'.