Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/517

 the work which he is doing, when it is in his hands. Take this love for the object of his work away from him, and the work is impossible.

So long as I am making a boot I love it more than anything, just as a mother loves her child; if they spoil it for me, I shall be in despair; but I love it so long as I am working at it. When I am done with it, there is left an attachment, a feeble and illegitimate predilection; even so it is with the mother.

Man is called to serve men by means of varied labours, and he loves these labours so long as he is at work over them; woman is called to serve men through her children while she is making them, that is, rearing and bringing them up.

In this do I see a complete equality of man and woman,—in their common destiny to serve God and men, in spite of the difference of the form of this service. This equality is manifested in this also, that one is as important as the other, that one is as unthinkable as the other, that one conditions the other, and that in order to attain their destiny, the knowledge of the truth is indispensable to both, and that without this knowledge the activity both of the man and the woman becomes, not useful, but harmful, to humanity.

Man is called to fulfil his varied work, but his work is only then useful, and his work (to plough the field or make cannon), and his mental activity (to make men's life easier or to count out money), and his religious activity (to bring men closer together or sing a mass) are only then fruitful, when they are done in the name of the highest truth accessible to man.

The same is true of woman's destiny: her bringing forth, nursing, and rearing of children will be useful to humanity when she will bring up children, not simply for her pleasure, but as future servants of humanity, when the education of these children will be accom-