Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/478

 If people are drawn to sexual intercourse, this is done for the purpose that the perfection which one generation has not reached may be attained by the next. Wonderful in this respect is God's wisdom: man is ordained to perfect himself,—"Be ye as perfect as your Father who is in heaven is perfect." A true sign of perfection is found in chastity, true chastity,—not only in deeds, but also in the soul, that is, in a full liberation from sexual passion. If men reached perfection and became chaste, the human race would come to an end, and there would be no reason why it should exist upon earth, for men would be like angels, who do not marry and are not given in marriage, as the Gospel says. But so long as men have not reached perfection they procreate a posterity, and this posterity is being perfected and approaches what God has commanded it to attain, and comes nearer and nearer to perfection. But if men acted as do the Eunuchs, the human race would come to an end, and would never attain perfection,—it would not be doing God's will.

This is one reason why I consider the action of the Eunuchs wrong; another is this, that the Gospel teaching gives the good to men, and Christ says, "My yoke is good, and my burden is light," and forbids any violence against people; and so the infliction of wounds and sufferings, even though not upon others (which is an obvious sin), but upon oneself, is a violation of the Christian law.

The third reason is this, that the Eunuchs obviously give a wrong interpretation to verse 12 of the nineteenth chapter of Matthew. The whole discourse from the beginning of the nineteenth chapter is about marriage, and Christ not only does not prohibit marriage, but even prohibits divorce, that is, the change of a wife. When his disciples (verse 10) told him that in this way it was very hard to contain oneself, that is, to get along with one wife only, he told them that, although not all persons