Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/68

 One should not kill them, not cease to breed them, but one should use all one's powers to make men out of savages. Only this one thing is good. And this work is accomplished not by words alone, but by the example of life.

If they have fallen they should know there is no other redemption from this sin than (1) to free themselves together from the snare of lust, and (2) to educate children, the servants of God.

My dear M. and N., I am very happy about your marriage. May God give you happiness, peace and love; you require nothing more... But, pardon me, dear friends, I cannot refrain from saying: be careful, both of you: careful above all in your mutual relations that habits of irritation and alienation do not steal in. It is not easy to become one soul and body. One must strive. But the recompense is also great. As for the means, I know of one principally: not for one moment to allow one's conjugal love to make one forget, or to dissipate, the love and respect due to each other as human beings. The relations as of man and wife must exist -but beyond all, the careful bearing one observes towards a stranger, towards "a neighbor," must remain -this being the essential relation, the pivot.

Do not strengthen your attachment to each other, but with all your power strengthen carefulness, sensitiveness in your mutual relations, to avoid collisions. This is a dreadful habit. Between no one so much as between man and wife, are there such intimate, manysided relations, and precisely because of this we always forget to