Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/371

 from my story? Not in the least! I am telling you how I killed my wife. In the court they asked me how and with what I killed my wife. The fools thought that I killed her with a knife on the 5th of October. I did not kill her then, but much earlier. Just as they now continue to kill them, all of them, all—"

"With what?"

"This is the remarkable thing: nobody wants to know that which is so clear and evident; that which doctors ought to know and preach, but about which they keep silent. The thing is dreadfully simple. Men and women are created like animals, and after sexual love begins pregnancy, then lactation,—that is, conditions under which carnal love is injurious both to the woman and to her child. There are an equal number of men and women. What follows from this? It seems to be clear, and it does not take much wisdom to draw from it the same conclusion that animals draw, namely, continence. But no. Science has gone so far as to discover certain leucocytes that race about in the blood, and all kinds of useless foolishness, but it has not been able to grasp this matter. At least, one does not hear science speaking of it.

"Thus there are but two ways out for woman: one is to make a monster of herself and destroy once and for all, or every time when the necessity arises, the possibility of being a woman, that is, a mother, in order that man may quietly and constantly enjoy himself; the other way out,—it is not even a way out, but merely a simple, coarse, direct violation of the laws of Nature, which is committed in all so-called decent families, and which is, that woman, in opposition to her nature, must at the same time be pregnant, and nurse a child, and be a mistress,—that is, that she must be that to which not one animal would descend. Strength does not hold out. Therefore, we have hysterics and nerves, and, among the lower masses,