Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/485

 without having any aim in life, they will only defer the question of the aim of life and that punishment to which men are subjected who live without knowing for what,―they will only defer it, but not avoid it, because they will have to educate and guide their children, and there is nothing to guide by. Then the parents lose their human properties and the happiness which is connected with them, and become racial beasts. And so I say: people who are preparing themselves to get married, for the very reason that life seems full to them, must more than ever think and make clear to themselves in the name of what each of them is living. But, in order to make this clear to yourself, you must think and consider the conditions under which you live, and your past, and estimate the value of everything in life,―what you consider important, what not important, what you believe in; that is, what you consider as an eternal, indubitable truth, and what you will be guided by in life. And you must not only find that out and make it clear to yourself, but also experience it in fact and introduce it into your life, because, so long as you do not do what you believe in, you do not know yourself whether you believe or not. I know your faith, and it is this faith, or its sides, which find their expression in deeds, that you must more than ever, even now, make clear to yourself, by putting them into execution. The faith consists in believing that the good is in loving men and being loved by them. To obtain it I know three activities which I practise all the time, which one cannot practise enough, and which you need now more especially. The first thing is, in order to be able to love men and be loved by them, a man must accustom himself to demand as little as possible of them, because if I demand much, I have many privations; and if I have many privations, I am inclined to reproach, and not to love,―there is much labour.

The second,―in order to love men not in words, but