Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/67

 an amusement, an infatuation, which we are not bound to rectify by the permanent union called marriage. Whereas, if we realized that a fall is a sin which should and must he redeemed by an inviolate marriage, and by all the activity involved in educating the children born of marriage—then the fall would by no means be a reason for taking to vice.

It is as if a husbandman learning to sow corn did not reckon as sown any field in which the sowing was unsuccessful, but went on sowing a second and a third field, and took into account only the one that succeeded. Evidently such a man would waste much land and much seed, and would not learn to sow properly.

Only acknowledge chastity as the ideal, and regard every fall (of whomsoever with whomsoever) as the one irrevocable life-long marriage, and it will be clear that the guidance given by Jesus is sufficient, and, more than that, is the only possible guidance.

'Man is weak, and his task must accord with his strength,' is what people say. But that is as if one said: 'My hand is weak, and I cannot draw a line that shall be quite straight (the shortest between two points), so, to help matters, I will take as my model a crooked or broken line.' In reality, the weaker my hand, the more I need a perfect model.

Having once recognised the Christian teaching of the ideal, we cannot act as if we were ignorant of it, and replace it by external rules. The Christian teaching of the ideal has been set before us just because it can guide us in our present stage of progress. Humanity has already outgrown the stage of religious, external ordinances, and people believe in them no more.

Christ's teaching of the ideal is the one teaching that can guide mankind. We must not and cannot replace the ideal of Jesus by external regulations; but we must firmly keep that ideal before us in all its purity, and, above all, we must believe in it.

To the sailor while he kept near the coast one could say: 'Steer by that cliff, that cape, or that tower'; but a time has come when the sailor has left the land