Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/514

 Why is this dreadfully hard labour thrown on woman's shoulders? A peasant, factory hand, official, and any other man may have nothing to do, but he will be lying and smoking, leaving it to a woman (and the woman submits to it), who is frequently pregnant, or sick, or with children, to broil at the stove or to bear the terrible labour of washing the linen, or of tending her sick babe at night. And all this is due to the superstition that there is such a thing as woman's work.

It is a terrible evil, and from this come numerous diseases of women, premature aging, death, dulling of the women themselves and of their children.

For the agreement of the conjugal pair it is necessary that in their views on the world and on life, if they do not coincide, the one who thinks less should submit to the one who thinks more.

Women have always recognized men's power over them. It could not have been otherwise in the non-Christian world. Man is strong, and so man exerted power. Thus it has been in the whole world (excluding the doubtful amazons and the law of maternity), and thus it is even now among nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of the human race. But in order that the freedom of the slaves and of woman may not be a misfortune, it is necessary that the emancipated should be Christians, that is, should use their lives in serving God and men, and not themselves. What, then, is to be done? This one thing is to be done: it is necessary to draw men to Christianity, to convert them to Christianity. But this can be done only by doing in life Christ's law.

I have, among other things, thought a great deal about women, about marriage, and I should like to tell about it, of course, not about the modern little idols, the univer-