Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/482

 There is a calculation by Herschel from which it follows that if humanity doubled every fifty years, as it now does, then, if we count seven thousand years from the first pair, there would have been by this time so many people that, if they were placed upon each other over the whole earth, this pyramid would not only reach up to the sun, but would pass the distance twenty-seven times. What deduction do we make from this?

There are only two deductions: either to admit and wish for plagues and wars, or to strive after sexual purity. Only the striving after purity can establish the balance.

The statistics of plagues and wars and celibacy would be interesting. No doubt they are in inverse proportion, that is, the less destructive conditions there are, the more there are celibates: one balances the other.

Another deduction, which involuntarily presents itself and which I am still unable to formulate in a clear manner, is this, that mental cares and calculations about shortening human life are irregular. What is regular is only love; and love is never alone, but is connected with purity. Imagine a man who begets other men and at the same time considers cutting their lives short; both acts taken together are senseless. What would be the right thing to do under such conditions would be to beget one and at least to kill one. One thing is rational: Be ye as perfect as your Father is perfect. But this perfection is in purity and then in love.

All young men of your age, who live under the conditions under which you are living, are in a very dangerous state. The danger consists in this, that at an age when habits are formed which will remain for all time, like creases in the paper, you live without any, without any moral and religious restraint, seeing nothing but those unpleasantnesses of the teaching, which are imposed upon you and from which you try to free yourself