Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/476

 What you need most of all, it seems to me, is work, work which would absorb all your energies.

I took a liking to a pamphlet sent me lately by Mrs. Stockham on "The Creative Life," as she calls it. She says that when in man there appears, in addition to his usual functions, the sexual need, he ought to know that it is a creative need, which only in its lowest manifestation is expressed in sexual passion; it is a creative ability, and it depends on the will and endeavour, stubborn endeavour to transfer it to another, a physical, or, best of all, a spiritual activity.

I believe that it is indeed the power which takes part in the work of God and the establishment of the kingdom of God upon earth; with the sexual act it is only the transmission to others, to the children, of the possibility of taking part in the work of God; with continency and the direct activity of the service of God, it is the highest manifestation of life. The transition is difficult, but it is possible and is accomplished by hundreds and by thousands of men in our very sight.

If you overcome it, it is well; if you do not overcome it, get married,—it will not be so good, but it will not be bad.

It is bad, as Paul says, to burn, bad to carry around this poison, imbibing it with the whole blood. But do not believe yourself in this, that there is something good and softening in cultivating the acquaintance of women. All this is a deception of lust. In the friendship with women, as in that with men, there is much which is joyful, but there is nothing of any particular joy in the friendship with women; but what there is, is a deception of sensuality, of very concealed sensuality, but none the less of sensuality.

You ask what means there is for struggling with passion. Among the minor means, such as work, fasting,