Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/100

 has implanted in man, together with his sexual, animal inclination, the spiritual tendency towards purity, chastity. This feeling is alive in every unperverted youth and girl, and this is a good sublime feeling, which man should always guard and strengthen in himself even before his fall, which for a moral man takes the form of marriage, i.e., as an obligation to live always with the same wife -and after marriage, in which this striving after chastity is equally necessary. So here I have written for you these thoughts as they came to me, which your letter evoked in me, I conclude them with the most hearty advice of an old man to a youth striving after good and truth: guard your purity with all your strength, struggle with temptation, and in no case lose hear, and don't slacken the bridle. You will ask how to struggle? What to do? What not to do? No doubt you know the practical advice, but if you do not know, then read in some rational book about it: not to drink, not to eat meat, not to smoke, not to mix with light-minded comrades, and in particular with lightminded women. All this you know or may learn. My advice is, and I consider it the most important point, to grasp the meaning of one's life recognizing it in the fulfillment of God's will and not in the gratification of one's carnal tastes, to live a more spiritual and not a carnal life.

Chastity is an ideal after which one should always under all conditions, strive. The nearer you are to realizing it the more you -not to say attain a merit before God -attain a greater degree of your own well-being. Man may serve God more by being chaste than by giving himself up to carnal life.