Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/60

 Read all this jumble to guess what I wanted to say, and what I might have said and did not. The thoughts are not accidental, -they have grown out of my consciousness and life, and I will, if God permits, endeavor later to express them vividly and clearly.

Animals allow themselves sexual intercourse only when birth can result. Man, unenlightened, as we all are, is always doing this, and has even invented the theory that it is a necessity. And with this invented necessity he ruins woman by persuading her during pregnancy and nursing into the over-exhausting and unnatural position of being at the same time his mistress. We ourselves have ruined woman's rational nature by this demand, and then we complain of her irrationality or else seek to develop her with books and universities. Yes, in all that is animal man has yet to attain, by conscious effort, the animal plane; and this is accomplished by itself when the life of the understanding begins; otherwise, the activity of his reason is directed only to the distortion of his animal life.

The question of sexual relations between man and wife, -as to how far they are lawful, -is one of the most important questions of practical Christianity, something like the question of property, and it does not cease to occupy me. And, as is always the case, this question is solved in the Gospel, and, as usual, out life was so far from the solution which Jesus gives, that not only have we been and are unable to apply the Christian solution but we cannot even understand it. (Matt. xix, 11,12) "But he said unto them, all men cannot receive this saying, but they to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there