Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/495

 all times that it is bad and shameful. The whole matter is in the consciousness, in the comprehension.

In the world it is considered that it is very good to enjoy love, precisely as though it should be considered good to open the safety-valves and let out the steam; but according to God's law it is good to live only a true life, to work with one's talent for God, that is, to love men and their souls, and among them first the nearest,—one's wife,—and to help her in the comprehension of the truth, and not to strangle her ability of conceiving, by making her the instrument of one's enjoyment, that is, to work with the steam and to use all efforts in order that it may not all escape through the safety-valves.

"But in this way the human race will come to an end." In the first place, no matter how strictly we may try not to have any sexual intercourse, there are the safety-valves so long as they are needed,—and there will be children. Yes, what is the use of lying? Do we, while defending sexual intercourse, care about the perpetuation of the race? We care about our enjoyment, and we ought to say so. The human race will come to an end? What will come to an end will be the animal man. What a misfortune! Antediluvian animals have been extinguished, and so the animal man will certainly be extinguished (to judge from appearances in space and time). Let it come to an end. I am as little sorry for this two-legged animal as for the ichthyosauri, and so forth; all I care for is that the true life, the love of the beings capable of love, should not be extinguished. But this will not only not come to an end if the human race shall come to an end, because men will out of love renounce the pleasures of lust, but it will be multiplied an endless number of times; this love will increase so much and the beings that experience it will become such that the continuation of the human race will not be