Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/472

 in moments of fall even, do not stop recognizing what you are striving after, and say to yourself: "I am falling, but I hate the fall, and I know that if not now, at least later, the victory will be, not on its side, but on mine."

A man must set himself the problem, not of chastity, but of the approach to chastity. Strictly speaking, a living man cannot be chaste. A living man can only strive after chastity, for the very reason that he is not chaste, but subject to passion. If a man were not subject to passion, there would not exist for him any chastity, nor the concept of it. The mistake consists in setting to ourselves the problem of chastity (of the external condition of chastity), and not that of striving after chastity, of the internal acknowledgment at all times and in all conditions of life of the superiority of chastity to debauchery, of the superiority of greater purity to lesser.

This mistake is very important. For a man who has set to himself as the problem the external condition of chastity, the departure from this external condition, the fall, destroys everything and interrupts activity and life; for a man who has set to himself as the problem the striving after chastity, there is no fall, no interruption of activity; and temptations, and the fall, may fail to interrupt the striving after chastity, and frequently even intensify it.

When people do not know any other good than personal enjoyment for themselves alone, love, amorousness, presents itself as an elevation; but having experienced the sentiment of love for God and for our neighbour, having become Christians even in the weakest degree, so long as this sentiment is sincere, it is impossible to do otherwise than look on amorousness from above as on a sentiment from which it is desirable to be freed. Why