Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/568

544 wholesome, sufficient, perhaps abundant, luxurious food, pure, warm air to breathe, winter and summer clothing, various recreations, and, most important of all, we have leisure by day and undisturbed repose at night. And here, by our side, live the working-people, who have neither wholesome food, nor healthful lodgings, nor sufficient clothing, nor recreations, and who, above all, are deprived not only of leisure, but even of rest: old men, children, women, worn out by labor, by sleepless nights, by disease, who spend their whole lives providing for us those articles of comfort and luxury which they do not possess, and which are for us not necessities, but superfluities. Therefore, a moral man, I do not say a Christian, but simply a man professing humane views or merely justice, cannot but wish to change his life and cease to use articles of luxury produced under such conditions.

If a man really pities those that manufacture tobacco, then the first thing he will naturally do will be to cease smoking, because by continuing to smoke and buy tobacco he encourages the preparation of tobacco by which men's health is destroyed. And so with every other article of luxury. If a man can still continue to eat bread even under the present conditions of labor and hard work by which it is produced, this is owing to his inability to deny himself what is indispensable. But with regard to things which are not only unnecessary, but even superfluous, there can be no other conclusion than this, that if I pity men engaged in the manufacture of certain articles, then I shall in no wise accustom myself to require such articles.

But in these days men argue otherwise. They invent the most various and intricate arguments, but never say what naturally occurs to every plain man. According to them it is not at all necessary to abstain from luxuries. One can sympathize with the condition of the working-men, deliver speeches and write books in their behalf, and at the same time continue to profit by the labor that one deems ruinous to them.

According to one argument it appears that I may