by Leo Tolstoy
The girl, seeing that Pamphilius wished to go with his friend but hesitated to leave her alone, hastened to assure him that she did not need his help, but would sit down with the grapes and wait for customers. Pamphilius thanked her, and he and Julius went into the shop.
Julius asked the shopkeeper, whom he knew, to let him take his friend into a private room at the back of the shop, and having received permission they went there.
The two friends questioned each other about their lives. Pamphilius was still living as before in the Christian community and had not married, and he assured his friend that his life had been growing happier and happier each year, each day, and each hour.
Julius told his friend what had happened to himself, and how he had actually been on his way to join the Christians when an encounter with a stranger cleared up for him the mistakes of the Christians and showed him what he ought to do, and how he had followed that advice and had married.
‘Well, and are you happy now?’ inquired Pamphilius. ‘Have you found in marriage what the stranger promised you?’
‘Happy?’ said Julius. ‘What is happiness? If you mean the complete satisfaction of my desires, then of course I am not happy. I am at present managing my business successfully, people begin to respect me, and in both these things I find some satisfaction. Though I see many men richer and more highly regarded than myself, I foresee the possibility of equalling or even surpassing them. That side of my life is full, but marriage, I will say frankly, does not satisfy me. More than that, I feel that it is just my marriage – which should have given me happiness – that has failed. The joy I at first experienced gradually diminished and at last vanished, and instead of happiness came sorrow. My wife is beautiful, clever, well-educated, and kind. At first I was perfectly happy. But now – not having a wife you will not have experienced this – differences arise, sometimes because she desires my attentions when I am indifferent to her, and sometimes for the contrary reason. Besides this, for passion novelty is essential. A woman less fascinating than my wife attracts me more when I first know her, but afterwards becomes still less attractive than my wife: I have experienced that. No, I have not found satisfaction in marriage. Yes, my friend,’ Julius concluded, ‘the philosophers are right. Life does not afford us what the soul desires. I have now experienced that in marriage. But the fact that life does not give the happiness that the soul desires does not prove that your deception can give it,’ he added with a smile.
‘In what do you see our “deception”?’ asked Pamphilius.
‘Your deception consists in this: that to deliver man from the evils connected with life, you reject all life – repudiate life itself. To avoid disenchantment you reject enchantment. You reject marriage itself.’
‘We do not reject marriage,’ said Pamphilius.
‘Well, if you don’t reject marriage, at any rate you reject love.’
‘On the contrary, we reject everything except love. For us it is the basis of everything.’
‘I do not understand you,’ said Julius. ‘As far as I have heard from others and from yourself, and judging by the fact that you are not yet married though you are the same age as myself, I conclude that your people do not marry. Those who are already married continue to be so, but the others do not form fresh marriages. You do not concern yourself about continuing the human race. And if you were the only people the human race would long ago have died out,’ he concluded, repeating what he had often heard said.
‘That is unjust,’ replied Pamphilius. ‘It is true that we do not set ourselves the aim of continuing the human race, and do not make it our concern in the way I have often heard your philosophers speak of it. We suppose that our Father has already provided for that. Our aim is simply to live in accord with His will. If it is His will that the human race should continue, it will do so, if not it will end. That is not our affair, nor our care. Our care is to live in accord with His will. And His will is expressed both in our teaching and in our revelation, in which it is said that a husband shall cleave unto his wife and they twain shall be one flesh.
‘Marriage among us is not only not forbidden, but it is encouraged by our elders and teachers. The difference between marriage among us and marriage among you consists only in the fact that our law reveals to us that every lustful look at a woman is a sin, and so we and our women, instead of adorning ourselves to stimulate desire, try so to avoid it that the feeling of love between us as between brothers and sisters, may be stronger than the feeling of desire for a woman which you call love.’
‘But all the same you cannot suppress admiration for beauty,’ said Julius. ‘I feel sure, for instance, that the beautiful girl with whom you were bringing the grapes evokes in you the feeling of desire – in spite of the dress which hides her charms.’
‘I do not yet know,’ said Pamphilius, blushing. ‘I have not thought about her beauty. You are the first to speak to me of it. To me she is as a sister. But to continue what I was saying about the difference between our marriages and yours, that difference arises from the fact that among you lust, under the name of beauty and love, and the worship of the goddess Venus, is evoked and developed in people. With us on the contrary lust is considered, not as an evil – for God did not create evil – but as a good which begets evil when it is out of place: a temptation as we call it. And we try by all means to avoid it. And that is why I am not yet married, though very possibly I may marry to-morrow.’
‘But what will decide that?’
‘The will of God.’
‘How will you know it?’
‘If you never seek its indications you will never discern it, but if you constantly seek them they become clear, as divinations from sacrifices and birds are for you. And as you have your wise men who interpret for you the will of the gods by their wisdom and from the entrails of their sacrificed animals and by the flight of birds, so we too have our wise men who explain to us the will of the Father according to Christ’s revelation and the promptings of their hearts and the thoughts of others, and chiefly by their love of men.’
‘But all this is very indefinite,’ retorted Julius. ‘Who will indicate to you, for instance, when and whom to marry? When I was about to marry I had the choice of three girls. Those three were chosen from among others because they were beautiful and rich, and my father was agreeable to my marrying any one of them. Of the three I chose Eulampia because she was the most beautiful, and more attractive to me than the others. That is easily understood. But what will guide you in your choice?’
‘To answer you,’ said Pamphilius, ‘I must first tell you that as by our teaching all men are equal in our Father’s eyes, therefore they are also equal in our eyes both in their station and in their spiritual and bodily qualities, and consequently our choice (to use a word we consider meaningless) cannot in any way be limited. Anyone in the whole world may be the husband or wife of a Christian.’
‘That makes it still more impossible to decide,’ said Julius.
‘I will tell you what our Elder said to me about the difference between the marriage of a Christian and a pagan. A pagan, such as yourself, chooses the wife who in his opinion will give him the greatest amount of personal enjoyment. In such circumstances the eye wanders and it is difficult to decide, especially as the enjoyment is to be in the future. But a Christian has no such choice to make, or rather, when choosing, his personal enjoyment occupies not the first but a secondary place. For a Christian the question is how not to infringe the will of God by his marriage.’
‘But in what way can there be an infringement of God’s will by marriage?’
‘I might have forgotten the Iliad which we used to read and study together, but you who live among sages and poets cannot have forgotten it. What is the whole Iliad? It is a story of the infringement of God’s will in relation to marriage. Menelaus and Paris and Helen; Achilles and Agamemnon and Chryseis – it is all a description of the terrible ills that flowed and still flow from such infringements.’
&n
bsp; ‘But in what does the infringement consist?’
‘In this: that a man loves a woman for the enjoyment he can get by connexion with her and not because she is a human being like himself. He marries her solely for his own enjoyment. Christian marriage is possible only when a man loves his fellow men, and when the object of his carnal love is first of all an object of this brotherly love. As a house can only be built rationally and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when something has been prepared on which to paint it, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and permanent when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another. Only on that foundation can a reasonable Christian family life be established.’
‘But still,’ said Julius, ‘I do not see why such a Christian marriage, as you call it, excludes the kind of love for a woman that Paris experienced.…’
‘I do not say that Christian marriage does not admit of any exclusive feeling for one woman: on the contrary, only then is it reasonable and holy. But an exclusive love for one woman can arise only when the previously existent love for all men is not infringed.
‘The exclusive love for one woman which the poets sing, considering it as good in itself without being based on the general love of man, has no right to be called love. It is animal lust and very often changes into hatred. The best examples of how such so-called love (eros) becomes bestial when it is not based on brotherly love for all men, are cases of the violation of the very woman the man is supposed to love, but who causes her to suffer and ruins her. In such violence there is evidently no brotherly love, for the man torments the one he loves. In un-Christian marriage there is often a concealed violence – as when a man who marries a girl who does not love him, or who loves another, compels her to suffer, and has no compassion for her, using her merely to satisfy his “love”.’
‘Granted that that is so,’ said Julius, ‘but if the maiden loves him there is no injustice and I don’t see the difference between Christian and pagan marriage.’
‘I do not know the details of your marriage,’ replied Pamphilius, ‘but I know that every marriage based on nothing but personal happiness cannot but result in discord, just as among animals, or men differing little from animals, the simple act of taking food cannot occur without quarrelling and strife. Each wants a nice morsel, and as there are not enough choice morsels for all, discord results. Even if it is not expressed openly it is still there secretly. The weak man desires a dainty morsel but knows that the strong man will not give it to him, and though he knows it is impossible to take it away directly from the strong man, he watches him with secret and envious malice and avails himself of the first opportunity to take it from him by guile. The same is true of pagan marriage, but there it is twice as bad because the object of desire is a human being, so that the enmity arises between husband and wife.’
‘But how can married couples possibly love no one but each other? There will always be some man or woman who loves the one or the other, and then, in your opinion, marriage is impossible. So I see the justice of what is said of you – that you deny marriage. That is why you are not married and probably will not marry. It is not possible for a man to marry a woman without ever having aroused the feeling of love in some other woman, or for a girl to reach maturity without having aroused any man’s feeling for herself. What ought Helen to have done?’
‘Our Elder Cyril speaks thus about it: In the pagan world men, without thinking of loving their brethren – without cultivating that sentiment – think only of arousing in themselves passionate love for a woman, and they foster that passion in themselves. And so in their world Helen, and every woman like her, arouses the love of many men. Rivals fight one another and strive to surpass one another, as animals do to possess a female. And to a greater or lesser extent their marriage is an act of violence. In our community we not only do not think about the personal enjoyment a woman’s beauty may afford, but we avoid all temptations which lead to this – which in the pagan world is regarded as a merit and an object of worship. We, on the contrary, think of those obligations of respect and love of our neighbour which we feel for all men, for the greatest beauty and the greatest deformity. We cultivate them with all our might, and so the feeling of brotherly love supplants the seduction of beauty, vanquishes it, and eliminates the discords arising from sexual intercourse. A Christian marries only when he knows that his union with the woman will not cause pain to anyone.’
‘But is that possible?’ rejoined Julius. ‘Can men control their passions?’
‘It is impossible if they are allowed free play, but we can prevent their awakening and being aroused. Take, for example, the relations of a father and his daughter, a mother and her son, or of brothers and sisters. However beautiful she may be, the mother is for her son an object of pure love and not of personal enjoyment. And it is the same with a daughter and her father, and a sister and her brother. Feelings of desire are not awakened. They would awaken only if the father learnt that she whom he considered to be his daughter was not his daughter, and similarly in the relation of a mother and son, and a brother and sister. But even then the sensation would be very feeble and easily suppressed, and it would be in the man’s power to restrain it. The feeling of desire would be feeble because at its base would lie the sentiment of maternal, paternal, or fraternal love. Why do you not wish to believe that such a feeling towards all women – as mothers, sisters, and daughters – may be cultivated and confirmed in men, and that the feeling of conjugal love could grow up on the basis of that feeling? As the brother will only allow a feeling of love for her as a woman to arise in himself after he has learnt that she is not his sister, so also a Christian will only allow that feeling to arise in his soul when he feels that his love will cause pain to no one.’
‘But suppose two men love the same girl?’
‘Then one will sacrifice his happiness for that of the other.’
‘But how if she loves one of them?’
‘Then the one whom she loves less will sacrifice his feeling for her happiness.’
‘And if she loves both of them and they both sacrifice themselves, she will not marry at all?’
‘No, in that case the elders will look into the matter and advise so that there may be the greatest good for all with the greatest amount of love.’
‘But you know that is not done! It is not done because it would be contrary to human nature.’
‘Contrary to human nature? What human nature? A man is a human being besides being an animal, and while it is true that such a relation to a woman is not consonant with man’s animal nature, it is consonant with his rational nature. When man uses his reason to serve his animal nature he becomes worse than an animal, and descends to violence and incest and to things no animal would do. But when he uses his reason to restrain his animal nature, then that animal nature serves his reason, and only then does he attain a happiness that satisfies him.’
V
‘BUT tell me about yourself,’ said Julius. ‘I see you with that lovely girl, it seems that you live near her and help her. Is it possible that you do not wish to become her husband?’
‘I do not think about it,’ said Pamphilius. ‘She is the daughter of a Christian widow. I serve them as others do. You ask whether I love her so that I wish to unite my life with hers? That question is hard for me to answer, but I will do so frankly. That thought has occurred to me but I dare not as yet entertain it, for there is another young man who loves her. That young man is a Christian and loves us both, and so I cannot do anything that would cause him pain. I live without thinking of it. I seek only one thing: to fulfil the law of love of man. That is the one thing needful. I shall marry when I see that it is necessary.’
‘But it cannot be a matter of indifference to her mother to get a good industrious son-in-law. She will want you and not someone else.’
‘No, it is a matter of indifference to her, because she knows that we are all ready to serve her, as we would anyo
ne else, and that I should serve her neither more nor less whether I became her son-in-law or not. If it comes about that I marry her daughter, I shall accept it gladly, as I should do her marriage with someone else.’
‘That is impossible!’ exclaimed Julius. ‘What is so terrible about you is that you deceive yourselves and so deceive others. What that stranger told me about you was correct. When I listen to you I involuntarily yield to the beauty of the life you describe, but when I reflect I see that it is all a deception leading to savagery, to a coarseness of life resembling that of the animals.’
‘In what do you see this savagery?’
‘In this, that supporting yourselves by labour, you can have neither leisure nor opportunity to occupy yourselves with the sciences and arts. Here you are in ragged garments, with coarsened hands and feet; and your companion, who could be a goddess of beauty, resembles a slave. You have neither songs to Apollo, nor temples, nor poetry, nor games – none of the things the gods have given for the adornment of man’s life. To work, to work like slaves or like oxen, merely to feed coarsely – is not this a voluntary and impious renunciation of man’s will and of human nature?’
‘Again “human nature”!’ said Pamphilius. ‘But in what does this nature consist? In tormenting slaves to work beyond their strength, in killing one’s brother-men and enslaving them, and making women into instruments of pleasure? All this is needed for that beauty of life which you consider natural for human beings. Is that man’s nature? Or is it to live in love and concord with all men, feeling oneself a member of one universal brotherhood?
‘You are much mistaken, too, if you think that we do not recognize the arts and sciences. We value highly all the capacities with which human nature is endowed, but we regard all man’s inherent capacities as means for the attainment of one and the same end, to which we consecrate our lives, namely the fulfilment of God’s will. We do not regard art and science as an amusement, of use only to while away the time of idle people. We demand of science and art, as of all human occupations, that in them should be realized that activity of love of God and of our neighbours which should be the aim of all Christian activities. We regard as true science only such knowledge as helps us to live a better life, and we esteem as art only what purifies our thoughts, elevates our souls, and strengthens the powers we need for a life of labour and love. Such knowledge we do not fail to develop in ourselves and in our children as far as we can, and to such art we willingly devote our leisure time. We read and study the works bequeathed to us by the wisdom of those who lived before us. We sing songs and paint pictures, and our poems and pictures brace our spirit and console us in moments of grief. That is why we cannot approve of the applications you make of the arts and sciences. Your learned men employ their mental capacities to devise new means of injuring men. They perfect methods of warfare, that is of murder. They contrive new methods of gain, by getting rich at the expense of others. Your art serves for the erection and adornment of temples in honour of gods in whom the more educated among you have long ceased to believe, but whom you encourage others to believe in, in order by such deception the better to keep them in your power. You erect statues in honour of the most powerful and cruel of your tyrants, whom none respect but all fear. In your theatres performances are given extolling guilty love. Music serves for the delectation of your rich, who glut themselves with food and drink at their luxurious feasts. Painting is employed in houses of debauchery to depict scenes such as no sober man, or man not stupefied by animal passion, could look at without blushing. No, not for such ends have those higher capacities which distinguish him from the animals been given to man. They must not be employed for bodily gratification. Devoting our whole lives to the fulfilment of God’s will, we employ our highest faculties especially in that service.’
