Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/474

 even interferes with that love. But this exclusive love, the one which you experience toward her, is a fact and just as indubitable, and one cannot help but count with it as with the presence of the body and the properties of character, which it is impossible to destroy. Having recognized the existence of the fact, we must act in such a way as to take what is best from it and reject what is bad. What is good is the consciousness of the lovableness of what is loved, and what is loved is loved not egotistically, but for the purpose of aiding one another to serve God's work. That is joy. But in order that this may be joy, you must sterilize it well from the exaggeration of amorousness (and you are guilty of this), from the consequent and exclusive exaction, jealousy, and every kind of abomination, which is covered up with good names. My practical advice is,—do not rummage in your sentiments, do not communicate everything to one another (this is not concealment, but reserve), and write about yourself, about common matters. That you love her exclusively, and she you, she knows, and you know, and so you know all the motives of your acts and words. There is a limit to the interchange of sentiments, which must not be crossed, but you have crossed it. This limit is such that beyond it every transmission of sentiments becomes not a joy, but a burden.

Make use of that joy of love which God has sent you, without forgetting that this is love, that is, a desire for the good for another, and not for oneself. And as soon as this will be love indeed, that is a desire for the good for her, there will be destroyed in it everything which in this sentiment is painful for you and for her.

Love cannot be harmful, so long as it is love, and not the wolf of egotism in the sheepskin of love. One needs but ask oneself: "Am I prepared for his, or her, good never to see him, or her, and to break my relations with him, or her?" If not, it is the wolf, and he has to be