Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/525

 and have the boldness to quote philosophy in confirmation of their savagery.

No kind of human crimes against the moral law do people conceal from one another with such caution as those which are called sexual lust; and there is no crime against the moral law which is so common to all men, embracing them in the most varied and most terrible forms; there is no crime against the moral law upon which men look with such disagreement,—some regarding a certain act as a terrible sin, and others looking upon the same act as upon a customary convenience or pleasure; there is no crime in respect to which so many Pharisaical utterances have been made; there is no crime the relation to which so correctly indicates man's level; and there is no crime more pernicious for separate individuals and for the progress of all humanity.

These thoughts are very simple and very clear for him who thinks in order to know the truth. These thoughts appear strange, paradoxical, and even incorrect to him who reasons, not in order to find the truth, but in order to consider true his life with all its vices and aberrations.

There is never any end to this matter. I even now think of the same (of the sexual question), and it still appears to me that there is much left to be explained and added. And this is comprehensible because the matter is of such enormous importance and novelty, and the strength, to speak without any false modesty, is so weak and so little in keeping with the importance of the subject.

For this reason I think that all must work who are sincerely interested in the matter,—all must work out this subject according to their strength. If each man will sincerely say from his personal point of view what