Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/29



This is where extremes meet. To attribute all attraction between the sexes to sexual feeling seems very materialistic, but it is on the contrary the most spiritual attitude: extracting from the spiritual sphere everything not pertaining to it, in order to be able to appreciate it to the highest extent.

Passion, the source of the greatest calamities, we not only do not deprecate, constrain -we excite it by every means in our power. And then we complain that we suffer!

Lasciviousness in man or woman is a state of unrest, of curiosity, of desire for novelty (like drunkenness), proceeding from intercourse for the pleasure it gives, not with one but with many. A lascivious person can refrain, but a drunkard is a drunkard, and lasciviousness is lasciviousness; and at the first slackening of the restraint he will fall.

In our struggle against temptation we are weakened by occupying ourselves beforehand with the idea of victory. We set ourselves a task greater than our powers, a task to fulfill or not to fulfill which is not in our power. We, like the monks, say to ourselves beforehand, "I promise to be chaste," implying by this, external chastity. And this is impossible; first, because we cannot represent to ourselves the condition in which we may be placed, and in which we may not withstand the temptation. And secondly, it is wrong because it does not help to the attainment of the aim -approach towards the greatest possible chastity, -but on the contrary.