Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/379

 cases—there are plenty of them—where they have killed either the child in the mother's womb, averring that the mother could not bring forth the child, although later the mother has borne children without difficulty, or have killed the mothers, under the pretext of some operation. Nobody counts these murders, just as they did not count the murders of the Inquisition, because they were supposed to be for the good of humanity. It is impossible to count all the crimes which are committed by them. But all these crimes are nothing in comparison with that moral materialistic decadence which they introduce into the world, especially through the women.

"I shall leave out of account the fact that, if one were to follow their instructions, people would have to tend, on account of ever present infections in everything and everywhere, not to union but to disunion; according to their injunctions, people ought to sit in solitude, without letting an atomizer with carbolic acid out of their mouths (however, they have discovered that even this is of no avail). But this is nothing. The chief poison lies in the corruption of men, especially of women.

"Nowadays one must not say: 'You are not living well, you must live better.' One can't say that to himself, nor to any one else. And if you are living badly, the cause of it is the abnormality of the nerve functions, or something of the kind. And you have to go to them, and they will prescribe thirty-five kopeks' worth of medicine from the apothecary's, and you have to take it!

"You will grow worse, then take more medicine, and go again to the doctor. It is very clever!

"But that is another matter. I only wish to say that she had not the slightest difficulty in nursing her children, and that this pregnancy and nursing alone saved me from the torments of jealousy. If it had not been for this, it would all have happened before. The children