Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/148

124 Thus also will probably reply the devotees of opium, hashish, morphine, agaricum.

"Why! to cure low spirits, for gayety's sake, all do it."

But it is just as good as a cure for low spirits or for gayety's sake, because all do it, to twirl one's fingers, to whistle, to sing songs, to play on the dudka, and do other things; in other words, to do anything whatever, for which it is not necessary to squander ancestral wealth or expend great physical powers, to do what does not bring manifest woe on yourself and on others. But for the production of tobacco, wine, hashish, opium, often among settlements needing land, millions and millions of better lands are occupied with crops of rye, potatoes, hemp, poppies, grapevines, and tobacco, and millions of workmen—in England one-eighth of the whole population—are engaged their whole lives long in the production of these stupefying objects.

Moreover, the use of these things is manifestly injurious, producing terrible evils, known and confessed by every one, causing the destruction of more human beings than have perished in all wars and contagious diseases together.

And men know this; so that it cannot be that this is done to keep men's spirits up, for gayety's sake, simply because all do this.

There must be something else in it. All the time and everywhere you meet with men who love their children, are ready to make all kinds of sacrifices for their well-being, and yet squander on vodka, wine, beer, or spend on opium or hashish, or even on tobacco, enough to feed their suffering and starving children, or, at least, keep them from deprivation. Evidently if a man placed under the necessity of choosing between subjecting his family which he loves to suffering and privation, and refraining from stupefying things, nevertheless chooses the first, he is stimulated to this by something more serious than that every one does it and it is pleasant. Evidently it is not done to raise spirits, or for gayety's sake, but there is some more important reason.