Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/475

 beaten and killed. I know your religious and loving soul, and so am convinced that you will conquer the wolf, if it is he.

Yes, it is impossible to love all alike. And it is a great happiness to love even one more especially, but it must be to love him, or her, and not oneself, one's own enjoyment which is experienced in a communion with him, or her.

I have often thought of falling in love, and have never been able to find a place and meaning for it. But this place and meaning is very clear and definite: it consists in making easier the struggle of passion with chastity. Falling in love must in young people, who are unable to abstain in complete chastity, precede marriage and free young people in their most critical years, from sixteen years until twenty and more, from an agonizing struggle. That is the place of falling in love. But when it invades the lives of men after marriage it is out of place and detestable.

There is a dispute as to whether falling in love is good. For me the solution is clear.

If a man already lives a human, spiritual life, falling in love, love, marriage, will be a fall for him; he will have to give part of his powers to his wife, his family, or even the object of his enamourment. But if he is on the animal stage, eating, working, serving, writing, playing, this falling in love will be for him an uplifting, as it is for animals, for insects.

I do not think that you need any friendship with women, especially any spiritual communion with them. Communion with them is only then good and joyful when in your consciousness you in no way distinguish them from other men.