Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/135

Rh that they cannot see the beam that is in their eye. These men, who give themselves up to what cannot be called anything else than ugly drunkenness, even in the midst of their ugliness, rejoice in themselves and complain of the unenlightened people.

Every mother suffers—I don't say at the sight of her drunken son, but at the mere thought of such a possibility; every master gets rid of a drunken workman; every unspoiled man is ashamed of himself for having been drunk. All are aware that drunkenness is bad. But here cultured, enlightened men are getting drunk, and they are fully persuaded that in this there is nothing shameful or bad, but that it is very nice, and they laughingly relate the entertaining episodes of their past drunkenness.

It has gone so far that we have the most disgusting orgy, in which old and young get intoxicated together—an orgy annually repeated in the name of enlightenment and culture, and no one is offended, and no one is disturbed; and while they are intoxicated and afterwards, there is great enthusiasm over their elevated feelings and ideas, and they boldly criticize and apprize the morality of other men, and especially of the coarse and unenlightened people.

The muzhik, to a man, will feel that he was to blame if he was drunk, and will ask pardon of every one for his drunkenness. In spite of his temporary fall, he has a lively sense of what is right and wrong. In our society this is beginning to be lost.

Very good, then, you are accustomed to do this and cannot refrain; all right, continue to do so if you cannot restrain yourselves: but understand this only, that on the twenty-fourth or the twenty-seventh or the twenty-ninth of January or February or any other month, this is a vile and shameful thing; and knowing this, give yourselves up to your vicious tendencies, little by little, but do not do so as you are doing it at the present time, triumphantly, confusing and vitiating the young and your so-called youthful confraternity. Do not confuse the young by the teaching that there is any