Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/36

 But this exclusive love, the one you feel towards her, is a fact, and a positive fact, with which one cannot help reckoning any more than with the presence of a body and the personal characteristics which we cannot abolish. But while recognizing the existence of this fact, one must act so as to accept all that is good in it and throw aside all that is bad. The good is the consciousness of the lovableness of the object of our affection; one loves not egoistically but for the purpose of helping each other to serve God's Cause. This is a joy. But it is first necessary to "sterilize" it well from the exaggeration resulting from the condition of "being in love" (and this is your falling), -from the exclusive exaction this produces, from jealousy, and from all abominations clothed in fine names. My practical advice is, don't dwell on your feelings, don't communicate them all to each other (this is not concealment but reserve), but write about your life, your common work. As to your loving her exclusively and she you, she knows it and you know it, and therefore you know all the motives of your actions and words. There is a limit to the expression of one's feelings which one should not overstep -and you have overstepped it. And beyond this limit every communication of feeling becomes not a joy but a burden. Profit by the joy of love, which God has given you, without forgetting that it is love; that is, the desire of well-being, not of yourself, but of another. And as soon as it is indeed love, that is, the desire for her well-being, then all that was painful in this feeling, both to you and to her, will disappear. Love cannot be harmful. So long as it is love, and not the wolf of egoism in the sheep's coat of love. One need only ask oneself: Am I ready, for his or her welfare, never again to see him or her, to cease relations with her or him? If not, it is the wolf, which should be