Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/66

50 'What should those do who have not been equal to the struggle and have fallen?'

They must look on their fall, not as on a legitimate enjoyment (as is now done when it is sanctioned by a wedding service), nor as a casual pleasure which may be repeated with someone else, nor as a calamity, when the fall has been with an inferior and without ritual; but they must look on this first fall as the only one, and regard it as the entrance to an actual indissoluble marriage.

This marriage, by the results that follow from it—the birth of children—restricts the married couple to a new and more limited field of service of God and man. Before marriage they could serve God and man directly and in most varied ways; but marriage limits their sphere of activity, and demands from them the rearing and education of children, who may be future servants of God and man.

'What must a married man and woman do, who, by rearing and educating children, are fulfilling the limited service of God and man which corresponds to their position?'

Again the same thing. Together strive to free themselves from temptation, purify themselves, and cease from sin, by substituting for physical love, which hinders both public and private service of God and man, the pure relationship of brother and sister.

And, therefore, it is not true that we cannot guide ourselves by the ideal of Jesus, because it is so high, so perfect, and so inaccessible. If we cannot guide ourselves by it, that is only because we lie to ourselves and deceive ourselves. For if we say we require a rule more accessible than Christ's ideal, or, falling short of Christ's ideal, we shall become dissolute—what we say really amounts to this: not that Christ's ideal is too high for us, but that we do not believe in it and do not wish to appraise our conduct by it.

To say that when once we have fallen we shall have begun a loose life, is really to say that we decide in advance that a fall with an inferior is not a sin, but is