Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/470

 as the direction of his path, but am obliged to point out to him some other landmark on the same path: such a landmark is honest marriage for those who do not see the ideal of chastity. But this can be pointed out by me or you; Christ never pointed out anything else, nor could he have pointed out anything but chastity.

To struggle,—even that is life, and that alone is life. There is no rest whatever. The ideal is always ahead, and I am never calm so long as I do not move toward it, even if I do not reach it.

Take the ideal of celibacy. The gratification of the physical sensation, which for a time calms passion, does not satisfy me, just as the feeding of all the hungry around me does not satisfy me in an economic sense. What will satisfy you is nothing but the clear contemplation of the ideal in all its height, a similarly clear contemplation of your weakness in all its remoteness from the ideal, and the striving after an approach to the ideal. This only will satisfy you, and not your placing yourself in such a position that you, by half-closing your eyes, are able to avoid seeing the difference of your position from the demand of the ideal.

The struggle with the sexual passion is a most difficult struggle, and there is no position and no age, except first childhood and the most advanced old age, when a man is free from this struggle, and so we must not be vexed by this struggle, but must hope that it is possible to come to a state in which it will not exist, and not for a moment weaken, but remember and use all those means which weaken the foe: avoid what excites the body and the soul, and try to be busy. That is one thing. Another thing is if you see that you will be vanquished by the struggle,—get married, that is, choose a woman who agrees to enter into wedlock, and say to yourself that if