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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 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.

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