Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/136

112 other civic morality than that founded on self-control, or any other civic immorality than that not founded on self-control.

Every one knows and you know that, before all other civic virtues, continence from vices is necessary; that all intemperance is bad; especially intemperance in the use of wine is the most dangerous, because it kills body and soul. All men know this, and, therefore, before speaking of any elevated feelings and objects, it is requisite for us to free ourselves from the low and savage vice of drunkenness, and not in drunken wise to talk about lofty feelings. So do not deceive yourselves and other men, especially do not deceive the young. The young understand that, by participating in a savage custom upheld by you, they are doing what they ought not to do, and are destroying something very precious and irredeemable.

And you know this—you know that there is nothing better or more important than the purity of soul and body which is destroyed by drunkenness; you know that all your rhetoric with your everlasting alma mater does not touch you when you are half-intoxicated, and that you have nothing to offer the young in place of that innocence and purity which they have destroyed by taking part in your orgies.

Therefore, do not prevent them and do not confuse them, but know that, as it was with Noah, as it is with every muzhik, so exactly will it be with every one, shameful, not only to drink so as to shout, to stagger, to leap up on tables and commit all sorts of follies, but shameful also even without any necessity on the occasion of the festival of enlightenment, to eat rich food and obfuscate yourselves with alcohol. Do not lead the young astray, do not by your example pervert them and the servants about you.

Here there are hundreds and hundreds of people serving you, handing you wines and rich foods, taking you home—here are all these people, and live people, before whom, as before all of us, stand the most serious questions of life: is it right, is it wrong? Whose