Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/506

 love, is always experienced by us as a certain alleviation and pacification. It is the moment of the transmission of one's work to another. "If I have not done what I could and should have done, here are my children to take my place,—they will do it."

The real point is that they should do it and that they should be educated to be, not a hindrance to God's works, but His labourers, so that, if I was unable to serve the ideal which was standing before me, I may be able to do everything in my power so that my children may serve Him. This gives the whole programme and the whole character of the education, and supplies a religious significance to education; and it is this which chemically unites into one the best, self-sacrificing tendencies of youth and the care of the family.

I welcome newly arrived Iván. Whence does he come? What is he for? Whither is he going? And who is he? It is well for those to whom the protoplasm forms a sufficient answer to these questions; but those whom this answer does not satisfy must inevitably believe that there is a deep significance in Iván's appearance and life, and that we shall understand this significance in proportion as we shall do everything we must in relation to him,—to Iván.

Men of a family must either abandon their wives and children,—and this cannot be done,—or they must live in a settled state. This wandering must be painful for the wives who for the most part (I hope they will forgive me this), if at best they lead a Christian life, lead it not for God, but for their husbands. For them, the poor women, this is difficult. And so, it seems to me, they should be taken care of and pitied. Barely has some balance established itself between husband and wife, and they manage to get on their legs, when there comes the