Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/365

 tained, and the prophecy will be fulfilled, and people will be united.

"See what would have happened otherwise! If we are to admit that God has created men in order to attain a certain aim, he would have made them mortal, but without sexual passion, or immortal. If they were mortal but without sexual passion, what would happen? They would live and die without reaching that aim, and so God would have to create new men. But if they were immortal, then let us suppose (although it would be harder for them than for new generations to correct mistakes and approach perfection),—then let us suppose that they would reach their aim after many thousand years. What would they then be for? Where are they to be put then? And so it is better as it is. But it may be that this form of expression does not please you, and you are an evolutionist. Even then it will come to the same. The highest race of animals, the human, to be able to maintain itself in its struggle with other animals, must unite compactly, like a swarm of bees, and not breed endlessly; it must, like the bees, bring up sexless individuals, that is, it again must strive for continence, and not for the incitement of lust, toward which our whole structure of life is directed." He grew silent. "The human race will cease? But is there any one who will doubt this, whatever his way of looking upon the world may be? This is as certain as death. According to all the teachings of the church there will come an end of the world, and the same is inevitable by all the teachings of science.