Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/464

 nearer to the second, the spiritual, the more calm, joyous, and strong is the mutual condition.

The union of man and woman into one flesh, in the form of inseparable monogamy, the author considers an indispensable condition of the highest human development. Marriage, therefore, forming a natural and desirable condition for all men who have reached maturity, is, according to the author, not necessarily a physical union, but may also be spiritual. According to conditions and temperaments, but chiefly, according to what the uniting pair consider necessary, good, and desirable, marriage will for some time approach spiritual intercourse, and for others physical intercourse; but the more the intercourse will approach the spiritual, the fuller will its satisfaction be.

Since the author recognizes that the same sexual tendencies may lead to spiritual intercourse,—to love,―and to physical intercourse,—to productiveness and childbirth,—and since one activity passes into the other in dependence on consciousness, he naturally not only does not recognize the impossibility of continence, but even considers it natural and a necessary condition of a rational sexual hygiene, both in marriage and outside it.

The whole article is enhanced by a rich selection of examples and illustrations of what it tells about, and by physiological data as to the processes of the sexual relations, their effects upon the organism, and the possibility of consciously directing them upon this path or that,—to love or to productiveness. In confirmation of his idea the author quotes the words of Herbert Spencer: "If a certain law," says Spencer, "contributes to the good of the human race, human nature will of necessity submit to it, so that the submission to it will become a pleasure to man." And so we must not, says the author, depend too much on established habits and conditions which now surround us, but must rather look upon what