Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/152

128 sleeping room, but felt that while he was sober he could not perpetrate the act which he had planned. This was "the conscience of a sober man." He went back and drank two glasses of vodka which he had prepared in anticipation of it, and then only did he feel that he was ready, and acted.

Nine-tenths of all crimes are accomplished in that way: "drinking to keep up the courage."

Half of the women that fall, fall through the influence of wine. Almost all visits to houses of ill fame are made by men in a state of drunkenness. Men know the power of wine in drowning out the voice of conscience, and deliberately employ it with that end in view.

Moreover, men stupefy themselves in order to deaden conscience—knowing how wine acts, they, wishing to compel other men to commit some act contrary to their conscience, purposely stupefy them, organize the stupefication of men so as to deprive them of their consciences. In war they always get soldiers drunk when they are to fight hand to hand. All the French soldiers in the assault on Sevastopol were thoroughly drunk.

All of us know of men who have become drunkards in consequence of crimes tormenting their consciences. All can bear witness that men living immoral lives are more inclined than others to the use of stupefying things. Bands of thugs and robbers, prostitutes, never live without wine. All know and acknowledge that the use of stupefying things is in consequence of the reproach of conscience, that in certain immoral professions stupefying things are employed for the deadening of conscience. All know and acknowledge that the use of stupefying things deadens the conscience, that a drunken man is punished for crimes which he would never dare to think of when sober. All are agreed in regard to this: but—strangely enough—when, in consequence of the use of stupefying things, such deeds as theft, murder, violence, and the like do not make their appearance; when stupefying things are taken, not after terrible crimes, but by men of the professions which