Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/96

 feeling, always painful as to its consequences. One may indulge in it not recognizing any religious or moral law, but the recognition of the lawfulness of falling in love is incompatible with the recognition of love as the law of life. Love is only love when it is self-denying, and does not seek its own gratification. And such love you can find in your wife and this feeling will give you true bliss; the feeling for the other person, however, if you give yourself up to it, will give you nothing except a lowering of your moral level and the suffering resulting from it.

You think that your chief feeling is the desire to save her; but in this you deceive yourself. If your chief feeling were that, if you had the general desire to save a human being, and not her in particular, you would have found occasion to apply this feeling apart from her. Your main feeling is your amorousness, which has reached in your case the highest degree of intensity. And, therefore, if you ask my advice, my advice is to break off all relations with her and to try to use all your strength on cultivating love in yourself, not for one person, but for all people, wherein lies the chief work of every man's life.

Sexual relations form one of the chief sources of people's suffering, and especially of evil, and hence from time immemorial humanity has endeavored to render these relations as harmless as possible, and has established laws, rules elaborated by the wisdom of mankind, violation of which has always been disastrous for the violators. To be guided in this complex, important, difficult matter by feeling alone means to renounce human reason and to lower oneself to the level of an animal. People usually say, "true, sublime moral