Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/10

 And I believe that this is wrong.

The deductions which may be drawn is that human children should cease to be educated like the young of animals; that in the education of human children other results should be aimed at than a handsome pampered body.

This in the fourth place.

Fifthly, in our society, where the falling in love of young men and women (having, after all, sexual attraction as its basis) is considered the highest poetical aim of human aspiration -(witness all the art and poetry of our society) -young people devote the best part of their lives -the men to searching for, finding, and taking possession of the best objects of affection for free union or marriage; the women and girls to alluring and enticing men into free connections or marriage.

In this way the best powers of men are wasted on labor which is not only unproductive but injurious. Thus also originates a great part of the senseless luxury of our lives; from this proceed the idleness of the men and the shamelessness of the women, who, following fashions admittedly borrowed from depraved women, do not hesitate to display the parts of their bodies which excite sensuality.

And I believe that this is wrong.

It is wrong, because the attainment of union with the object of one's love -whether with or without marriage, however idealized it may be in poetry and romance -is an aim as unworthy of man as that of procuring for oneself dainty and abundant fare, which to many people appears the supreme good.

The deduction that may be drawn from this is that men should cease to regard sexual love as something especially elevated, and