Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/469

 The Christian teaching does not determine the forms of life, but only in all relations of man indicates the ideal, the direction; the same is true in the sexual question. But the people who are not of a Christian spirit want the determination of forms. For them was invented the church marriage, which has nothing Christian about it. But in the sexual relations, as in those others of violence, of anger, we must not and should not leave out of sight the ideal, or distort it. But it is this that the churchmen have done with marriage.

Through the misunderstanding of the Christian spirit people are generally divided into Christians and non-Christians. The coarsest division consists in regarding only him who has been baptized as a Christian; equally incorrect is the division of men, though it is less coarse, who on the basis of Christ's teaching live a pure domestic life, who are not murderers, etc., and to call them Christians in contradistinction to those who live differently. In Christianity there is no line of demarcation between a Christian and a non-Christian. There is the light, the ideal Christ; and there is darkness, the animal, and—a motion, in the name of Christ, toward Christ along this path.

Even so the ideal in relation to the sexes is full, complete chastity. A man who serves God can wish as little to get married as to get drunk; but there are various stages on the path to chastity. There is one thing that can be said for those who want an answer to the question, "Shall I get married, or not?" It is this: If you do not see the ideal of chastity and do not feel the necessity of abandoning yourself to it, then walk toward chastity, without knowing it yourself, by the unchaste path of marriage. Just as I, being tall of stature and seeing before me a bell-tower, cannot point it out to an undersized man who is walking by my side and does not see it,