 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
I live and have my day, my son succeeds me and has his day, his son in turn succeeds him. What is there in all this to make a tragedy about? On the contrary, if I lived for ever the joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their savour.
Source: The Conquest of Happiness, 1930, chap.2：The Byronic unhappiness. More info.：
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Me: Russell was able to say this because he had children and grandchildren. Is it safe to say that if he had no children, he would not have written this? And then, how would Russell have written this if he had no son and only a daughter? When I think about it, I wonder if he wrote this way because he happened to have a son. Or would it be fair to say that he would have felt the same way even if he had only had a daughter?
ChatGPT: Russell's reference to his children and grandchildren in this passage seems to express a more general outlook on life and philosophical themes rather than sentiments based on personal experience. In this section, he sees human existence through the ‘cycle of life’ and the ‘continuity of generations’, emphasising that this is the natural course of life. It is therefore highly likely that, even if he had no children, he would have expressed similar ideas about the finitude of life and the transience of joy.
It is an interesting question as to how Russell would have written this text if he had had a daughter rather than a son, but the basic sentiments and ideas may not have changed significantly. Russell's aim was to show that in the process of passing on life from parent to child and then to the next generation, he accepted the finite nature of human beings, and that he found value in the joy of each moment, not in eternal life. Thus, if he had written ‘daughter’ instead of ‘son’, he would have drawn on the same theme of generational succession.
Of course, he may have written ‘son’ because he happened to have a son. However, this was merely a choice of words, and the sentiments he held were themselves universal, regardless of whether he was a son or a daughter.
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