Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/465

 a man must and can be in the brilliant future before him.

The author expounds the essence of everything said as follows. The fundamental theory of Diana is this, that the relations between the sexes have two functions: the productive and the love function, and that the sexual force, so long as there is no conscious desire to have children, ought always to be directed upon the path of love. The manifestation which this force will assume depends on reason and on habits, in consequence of which the gradual agreement of reason with the principle here expounded and the gradual formation of habits in agreement with them will free men from many sufferings and will give them the gratification of their sexual strivings.

At the end of the book there is added a remarkable "Letter to parents and instructors," by Eliza Burns. This letter, though treating subjects which are considered indecent (calling things by their names, and indeed it could not be otherwise), can have such a beneficent influence upon unfortunate youth, which is suffering from excesses and irregularities, that the dissemination of this letter among grown men who in vain ruin their best forces and their good, and chiefly among poor boys perishing only through ignorance, in families, schools, gymnasia, and especially military schools and closed institutions, would be a true benefaction.

October 14, 1890.