Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/143

Rh present time in all nations, and now for twenty years with especial violence in Russia.

"As long as you did not know you were without sin," said Christ. But now we know what we are doing and whom we are serving when we use wine and offer it to others, and consequently, if we, who know the sin of using wine, go on drinking or offering it to others, then we have no justification.

And let not men say that it is impossible to avoid drinking and offering wine on special occasions—on holidays and at weddings and similar occasions; that all do this, that our fathers and grandfathers did this, and therefore it is impossible for us alone to stand out against all the rest.

This is false; our fathers and grandfathers did away with those evil and harmful practices, the ill effects of which became manifest to them; in the same way also we are bound to do away with the evil which has become manifest in our day. And the fact that wine has become a frightful evil in our day is beyond all question.

How, then, if I know that the use of intoxicating drinks is an evil, destroying hundreds of thousands of men, can I offer this evil to my friends who come to my house for a festival, a christening, or a wedding?

Not always was everything as it is now, but everything has changed from worse to better; and the change has come about, not of itself, but by people fulfilling what has been demanded of them by reason and conscience. And now our reason and our conscience in the most actual manner demand of us that we cease drinking wine and offering it to others.

As a general thing men consider worthy of censure and scorn such drunkards as go to taverns and drinking-rooms, and get so full that they lose their reason, and become so addicted to wine that they cannot control themselves, and drink up all they have. The very men who buy wine for home use drink every day and in moderation, and offer wine to their guests in circumstances when it is used—and such men are considered good and honorable and not as doing any harm. And