... One will never succeed if one marries merely to ensure a pleasant life. It is a great mistake to place marriage, that is, union with the person one loves, as one's chief purpose in life, superseding everything else. and if one only considers, it is a self-evident mistake. Marriage as an end? Well, one marries. And what then? If there is no other purpose in life before, then, afterward, for the two together, it will be terribly difficult, almost impossible to find another. It is even certain that in the absence of a common purpose before marriage, one cannot possibly converge after it, but only diverge. Marriage brings happiness only when the purpose in life of both is one and the same. Individuals meet on the same road and say, "Let us go on together." All right. They lend each other a helping hand. But when they turn off their separate roads through mutual attraction they do not afford help. And this is because the opinion held by many, -that life is a valley of tears, and that held by the great majority, and encouraged by youth, health and wealth, -that life is a place of pleasure, and equally false. Life is a sphere of service in which one sometimes has to endure much that is oppressive, but oftener to experience very many joys. True joys can be realized only when men themselves regard their lives as a service when they have, outside themselves and their personal happiness, a definite purpose in life. Generally those who marry entirely overlook this. So many joyful events of married life and parenthood are forthcoming, that is appears as if these events constitute life itself; but this is a dangerous mistake. If the parents live and give birth to children without having a definite purpose, they only postpone the solution of the problem of the meaning of life and that retribution to which those are subject
Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/47
