Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/376

 this manner, and she will always remain a lower being. Either, with the aid of scoundrel doctors, she will prevent conception, that is, she will be a complete prostitute, who has descended, not to the lowest animal, but to the level of a thing, or she will be what she is in the majority of cases, diseased in mind, hysterical, unhappy, without any possibility for spiritual growth.

"The gymnasia and the colleges cannot change this. This can be changed only by a changed view held by men in regard to women, and by women in regard to themselves. This will come about only when women will regard as their highest state the condition of virginity, and not, as now, look upon this highest condition of man as a shame and disgrace. As long as this does not exist, the ideal of every girl, whatever her education may be, will be to attract to herself as many men, as many males as possible, in order to have a chance to select.

"But the fact that one knows a lot of mathematics and that another can play on the harp, will not change it. A woman is happy and obtains everything she may wish for, if she fascinates a man. And thus a woman's chief problem becomes the ability to fascinate. Thus it has been, and thus it will be. Thus it is in the life of a girl of our society, and thus it remains after marriage. In the maiden state she needs it for selection, in her matrimonial state—in order to rule over her husband.

"There is but one thing which cuts it short, or at least for a time suppresses it, and that is children, provided the woman is not a monster and herself nurses them. But here the doctors come in.

"My wife, who wanted herself to suckle and did suckle the last four children, was not in good health when the first baby was born. These doctors, who cynically undressed and felt her all over, for which I had to thank them and pay them money,—these charming doctors found that she must not herself nurse, and she was, dur-