Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/452

 morality is based, but, if we accept this teaching, we cannot fail to acknowledge that it points out the ideal of complete chastity.

The Gospel says clearly and without any possibility of misinterpretation, in the first place, that a married man must not be divorced from his wife, in order to take another, and that he must live with the one with whom he has come together (Matt. v. 31-32; xix. 8); in the second place, that for man in general, both married and unmarried man, it is sinful to look upon woman as an object of enjoyment (Matt. v. 28-29), and, in the third place, that for an unmarried man it is better not to marry at all, that is, to be absolutely chaste (Matt. xix. 10-12).

Many, very many people will regard these thoughts as strange and even contradictory. They really are contradictory, but not among themselves. These thoughts are contradictory to our whole life, and involuntarily the doubt arises who is right: these thoughts, or the lives of millions of people and my own? I experienced the same feeling in the highest degree, as I arrived at the convictions which I am expounding here: I had not in the least expected that the progress of my thoughts would bring me to what it has. I was terrified at my deductions and wished not to believe them, but it was impossible not to believe. However much these deductions contradict the whole structure of our life, however much they contradict that which I thought and expressed before, I was compelled to acknowledge them.

"All these are general reflections, which may be just. But they refer to the teaching of Christ and are obligatory for those who profess it; but life is life, and it is impossible, by pointing out Christ's unattainable ideal, to leave people in one of the most burning and common questions, which produces most misery, with nothing but this ideal and without any guidance whatsoever.