Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/441



received many letters from strangers asking me to explain in simple and clear words what I think of the subject of the story which I wrote under the title of the "Kreutzer Sonata." I shall try to do so, that is, in a few words to express, so far as possible, the essence of what I had intended to convey by my story, and of the conclusions at which one may arrive from it.

I wanted to say, in the first place, that in our society there has formed itself a firm conviction, common to all classes and supported by the false science, that sexual intercourse is necessary for health, and that, since marriage is not always possible, sexual intercourse outside of matrimony, which does not put men under any other obligations than that of monetary payment, is quite natural and worthy of emulation. This conviction has become so general and deep-rooted that parents, by the advice of doctors, arrange debauchery for their children; governments, whose only meaning consists in the care for the moral well-being of its citizens, establish debauchery, that is, regulate a whole class of women, who are to perish bodily and morally, in order to satisfy the imaginary needs of men, while unmarried men abandon themselves to this debauchery with the calmest conscience.

And so I wanted to say that this is not good, because it is not right that for the sake of the health of one class of people it should be necessary to ruin the bodies and souls of another class, just as it is not right that for the