Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/471

 you cannot help falling, you will fall with none other than this woman, and with her bring up your children, if there shall be any, and with her, supporting her, arrive at chastity, the sooner, the better. I know no other means. But above all, to be able successfully to make use of either means, strengthen your connection with God, think as frequently as you can that you came from Him and return to Him, and that the meaning and aim of this whole life consists in nothing but doing His will. The more you will remember Him, the more will He aid you.

Another thing: Do not get discouraged if you fall; do not imagine that you are lost, and that you have no reason for watching yourself after that, but must dissipate. On the contrary, if you have fallen, struggle on with greater energy.

Accesses of sexual passion beget a tangle of ideas, or rather, an absence of ideas. The whole world will grow dark; the relation to the world is lost. Accidentalness, darkness, impotence.

Poor man, you have suffered very much from this terrible passion, especially when it is unbridled, that is, when it has already come into play. I know how it veils everything and for a time destroys everything heart and reason lived by. But there is one salvation from it,—and that is, to know that it is a dream, a suggestion, which will pass, and I shall return to real life, to the spot at which it seized me. It is possible to know this even in moments of its power. May God help you.

Do not forget that you have never been and never will be completely chaste, but that you are at a certain stage of an approach to chastity, and so you must never get discouraged in this approach: in moments of temptation,