Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/477

 the most effective is poverty, the lack of money, the external aspect of want, a position in which it is evident that you cannot be attractive to any woman. But the chief and only means which I know is the uninterruptedness of the struggle, the consciousness of the fact that the struggle is not an accidental, temporary condition, but a constant, unchangeable condition of life.

You ask me about the Eunuchs, whether the opinion about them is just that they are bad people, and whether the Eunuchs understand correctly the Gospel, Chapter XIX. of Matthew, making themselves and others eunuchs on the basis of the twelfth verse of this chapter.

To the first question, my answer is that there are no bad men, and that all men are the children of one Father, and all are brothers and equal,—nobody is better or worse than anybody else. And judging from what I have heard about the Eunuchs, they live morally and by hard work. To the second question, as to whether they understand correctly the Gospel, making themselves and others eunuchs on its basis, I answer with full confidence that they understand the Gospel incorrectly and, in making themselves, and especially others, eunuchs, they commit acts which are in direct opposition to true Christianity. Christ preaches chastity, but chastity, like any virtue, is of value only when it is attained through an effort of the will and is supported by faith, and not when it is attained by the impossibility of sinning. It is the same as though a man, for fear of glutting himself, produced in himself a disease of the stomach, or, for fear of fighting, tied his hands, or, for fear of swearing, cut out his tongue. God has created man such as he is; he breathed the divine soul into the carnal body in order that this soul should vanquish the lusts of the body (in this does all the life of man consist), and not in order to maim his body, correcting God's work.