Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/4

 however, another class of readers, -and it is those we have in view when publishing these booklets, -who seriously and sincerely approach the problem under consideration, not with the desire to maintain at all costs their previous personal views, but solely to investigate it impartially, and, should the Truth demand it, to alter or modify their original attitude. Such readers, penetrating into the very essence of the thoughts expressed, will not be disturbed by any verbal inaccuracies or purely external contradictions of expression, -which are inevitable owing to the very character of such compilations, composed or fragmentary and isolated thoughts in most cases not originally intended for publication at all. And such readers only, who endeavor to grasp the author's meaning, not in its worst but in its best and most useful significance, can obtain from their reading true satisfaction and real profit.

Thus, for example, in the present book one meets with passages in which marriage is positively recommended, -side by side with others expressing an altogether negative attitude. And nevertheless in these two different views on marriage there is no contradiction if one takes into consideration the author's recognition of the different degrees of development of human consciousness. Already in the Afterword to the Kreutzer Sonata, with which this book begins, the correlation of these two views is sufficiently clearly indicated for the discriminating reader. Some years after this article had been written, Leo Tolstoy having been asked in my presence how he reconciled the two assertions, answered to the following effect: "Both are true: all depends by the irresistible longing for married life, then instead of living dissolutely or becoming addicted to unnatural vices, he had certainly better marry, in order, conjointly with his partner, to fulfill his family and social duties. But if he or she is capable of entire consecrations to the service of God and men, forgetting personal