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 way ward
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.
W