Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/575

Rh limit to the augmentation of this pleasure, no limit beyond which it may not grow. The satisfaction of a need has limits, but pleasure has none. For the satisfaction of our needs, it is necessary and sufficient to eat bread, porridge, or rice; for the augmentation of pleasure there is no end to the flavorings and seasonings.

Bread is a necessary and sufficient food. (This is proved by the millions of men who are strong, active, healthy, and hard-working, on rye-bread alone.) But it is pleasanter to eat bread with some flavoring. It is well to soak the bread in water boiled with meat. Still better to put into this water some vegetable, or better yet, several vegetables. It is well to eat meat. And meat is better not stewed, but only roasted. And better still with butter, and underdone, and then only certain parts of the meat. And add to this vegetables and mustard. And drink wine with it, red wine for preference. One does not need any more, but one can eat some fish, if it is well flavored with sauces, and swallowed down with white wine. It would seem as if one could get through nothing more, either rich or savory, but a sweet dish can still be eaten, in summer ices, in winter compote, preserves, and the like. And thus we have a dinner, a modest dinner. The pleasure of such a dinner can be greatly increased. And it is augmented, and there is no limit to this increase: stimulating snacks, "zakouskas" before dinner, and entremets and desserts, and various combinations of savory things, and flowers and decorations and music during dinner.

And, strange to say, men who daily overeat themselves at such dinners,—in comparison with which the feast of Belshazzar, which evoked the prophetic warning, was nothing,—are naïvely persuaded that they may at the same time lead a moral life.

is an indispensable condition of a good life; but in fasting, as in temperance in general, the question arises with what shall we begin, how to fast,—how