Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/51



... The question of marriage is in itself not so simple as it seems. Falling in love is a deviation in one direction, but cold calculation is a yet worse deviation in another. If, as you say, one should take the first girl, i.e., one should not choose for one's own happiness, then one would have to surrender to that chance fate which governs external phenomena, and to subordinate one's choice to being chosen by another. We cannot act in discriminately while in complicated and sinful circumstances instead of disentangling them, we occasion suffering to others. But though feeling can entangle one, theorizing may lead one into a yet greater confusion in this most important question. As in everything else in life, one should not place before oneself a particular object (marriage), but the continual object of a right life; and bear, and wait; and then the time will come and circumstances will so combine that it will be impossible not to marry. In this way it is more certain; one will not commit a mistake, nor a sin.

The conventional opinion about marriage is well known: "If people marry without sufficient means the consequences will be children, destitution and mutual boredom in a year or two... in ten years, quarrels, fault-finding, hell." In all this conventional opinion is quite right, and prophesies correctly, unless those who have married have some other unique aim unknown to their judges. And this aim not a mental one, not accepted intellectually, but representing the light of life, the attainment of which one desires intensely, above everything else. If there is this purpose, it is well, and public opinion will be wrong. But if there is not, the chances are ninety-nine to one that nothing will ensue from such a marriage but unhappiness.