Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/521

 men. Above all else, that conception, so universal in the world, that it is shameful not to marry and to remain an old maid, is just as contrary to truth as all worldly opinions in regard to questions of life. Celibate life, filled with good works, celibate, because the works which fill this life are all above marriage (and such works are all works of love for your neighbour, of giving a cup of water to drink), are an infinite number of times higher than all domestic life. (Matt. xix. 11.) All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. Thus all men of all nations and of all ages have always looked with the greatest repectrespect [sic] and emotion upon the men and women who remained celibate, not from compulsion, but for the sake of God. But in our society they are the most ridiculous of people. Indeed, they are just like those who are poor for the sake of God, and those who did not know how to make money.

But to every girl, and to you, I give the advice to set before you as an ideal the service of God, that is, the keeping and increasing in yourself of the divine spark, and so—celibacy, if marriage hinders this ministration; but if it should happen that, submitting to your selfish feeling for one man, you should get married, do not rejoice and become proud, as generally happens, of your position as wife and mother, but, without losing sight of the chief aim of life, the service of God, see to it with all your strength that your exclusive and egoistical attachment for the family does not interfere with your serving God.

I have always thought that one of the surest signs of the seriousness of relations to moral questions is strictness to oneself in the sexual question

The offence into which N has fallen is has fallen is very intelligible and peculiar to precisely such honest and truthful natures as I imagine him to be. The relations were established, and he wanted not to conceal anything, but openly