In the world amative experiences are regarded as very good, just as opening safety valves and letting steam escape might be regarded; but according to God it is good only to live the true life, to employ one's talents for God, i.e., to love men, their souls, and amongst them the first, the nearest -one's wife; -to help her in the understanding of truth, and not to stifle her capacity for receiving it by making her the tool of one's lust. That is to say, to utilize the steam for work to use all measures to prevent it from escaping. "But in this way the human race will cease." In the first place, however insistently people may endeavor to avoid sexual relations, the safety valves will exist while they are necessary, and there will be children. Moreover, why should we lie* When we defend sexual relations are we really anxious about the continuation of the race? We are thinking of out pleasure. And we should say so. The human race will cease? The animal man, will become extinct? What a dreadful thing! The antediluvian animals have become extinct, and so certainly the human animal will (if one considers eternals, and time and space). And let it disappear. I will mourn the disappearance of this two-legged animal as little as I do that of the ichthyosaurus &c., as long as true life, the true love of beings, capable of love, does not cease. And this not only will not cease if the human race disappears through men renouncing the pleasures of lust; -it will augment indefinitely to such a degree that the continuation of the race will no longer be necessary to the beings who experience this true love. Physical love is only necessary for this one purpose -that man shall not cease to have the possibility of developing into these higher beings.
Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/59
