Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/487

 to be understood in the opposite sense from what they are generally understood, that is, one should marry, not from sensual love, but from calculation, not as to where and by what to live (all men live), but as to how probable it is that the future wife would aid, and not hinder me in my living a human life.

Above all, think twenty, a hundred times about marriage. To unite one's life with that of another person in a sexual union is for a moral, sensitive man the most significant act, most pregnant with consequences, which a man can perform. One must always marry just as one dies, that is, only when it is not possible to do otherwise.

Next to death in importance, and next to death in time, there is nothing more important and irretrievable than marriage. And just as death is good only when it is inevitable, and every intentional death is bad, so is also marriage. Marriage is no evil only when it is invincible.

The matter of marriage is in itself not so simple as it seems. Enamourment is a deviation to one side, but cold calculation is a still worse deviation on the other side. If, as you say, one should turn to the first girl, that is, one should not choose for his happiness, then it is necessary to abandon oneself to accident, to fate, which guides the external phenomena, subordinating one's choice to the choice of oneself. Sentiment will confuse a man, but reason will confuse one even more, while this is the greatest thing in life. In my opinion, it is necessary, as in everything in life, and more than in anything else, not to set to onselfoneself [sic] the problem of getting married, but to propound the one, eternal problem of how to live well and suffer and wait, and then the time will come and circumstances will make it impossible not to get married. In this way you will be more certain not to err and not to sin.