Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/45

 What are the deductions from this? Only two: either we should admit and desire plagues and wars -or strive towards chastity. Only this struggle towards chastity will counterbalance the increase. Statistics of wars and plagues compared with those of celibacy would be interesting. They are sure to be in inverse proportions. The fewer destructive agencies, the more cases of celibacy. One counterbalances the other. Another deduction which involuntarily presents itself but which I am not yet able to formulate clearly is that mental anxiety, calculations about the reduction of human life, are not right. Love only is right; but love does not exist alone but always in connection with purity. Let us imagine a man who is anxious on the one hand to increase the population and on the other to diminish it. Both desires simultaneously would be ridiculous. It would be necessary to take away the life of one being and to produce another at the same time, in such a case! One thing is rational: "Be perfect, as your Father." And this perfection is in purity and then in love. Deduction: First, purity, then, preservation of the race.

With regard to N--'s letter in which he writes that sexual union is a sacred act, continuing the race, I have been thinking that as man, together with animals, is subordinate to the law of the struggle for existence, so also is he subordinate, like animals, to the law of reproduction. But man, as man, finds in himself another law, contrary to struggle, -the law of love; and one also contrary to reproduction the law of chastity.