Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/463

 or entirely destroyed, and vice versa: the gratification of the physical attraction weakens and destroys the spiritual. And so the attraction between the sexes is not merely physical, productive of the propagation of children, but also the striving of the two sexes toward one another, capable of assuming the form of the most spiritual intercourse of ideas alone, of mere animal intercourse, productive of the propagation of children, and of all the various steps between the two. The question as to the degree at which the approximation of the sexes stops is decided by this, what intercourse the uniting pair consider good, necessary, and so desirable for a given time or for ever. (A remarkable illustration of the fact that the relation between the sexes is subject to the conception of what is considered good, necessary, and desirable is found in the striking custom of Little-Russian "bridegrooming," which consists in this, that the betrothed lads for years pass the nights with their brides without violating their virginity.)

A full gratification for the individual uniting pair is found in the degree which these persons consider good, necessary, and desirable, and depends on their personal view. But independently of it, naturally, objectively, one degree of intercourse must give more satisfaction to all than any other form of it. Now what intercourse gives this highest satisfaction naturally, to all, independently of the personal view of the uniting pair,—the one which approaches the spiritual, or the one which approaches the physical? The answer to this question, clear and indubitable, though contradicting everything which people in our society are in the habit of thinking about it, consists in this, that the nearer the form of intercourse is to the physical limit, the more is the desire fanned, and the less satisfaction is received; the nearer it is to the opposite extreme, to the spiritual limit, the less are new desires evoked, the fuller is the satisfaction. The nearer to the first, the more destructive of vital force, and the