Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/101

 The pamphlet is excellent and written in an unusually warm and hearty way; the subject of the pamphlet, as you see, is of immerse importance, on which quite a lot has been written, but which until today remains unexplained to the large majority. As the French proverb says: "There are no people more hopelessly deaf than those who won't hear." And there is still unfortunately a very large number of such people deaf to the question of sexual abstinence amongst the doctors of the old school (the young doctors for the most part share the view of the pamphlet) who preach debauchery in the name of science.

The author's preface is remarkable. In it he says that his pamphlet was exposed to the attacks of doctors who did not acknowledge his competency in this question; also that the person who sent me the pamphlet could not, in spite of many attempts, place it in any magazine; whereas the thoughts so beautifully expressed in this pamphlet may be of great benefit to young men, who often suffer terribly from want of knowledge as to how to act in this matter, and who often go down in the struggle between the animal desire, stimulated by bad example, and the voice of conscience, which always protests against the subordination of the spiritual desire for purity to the gratification of the lower animal need.

I consider chastity as the greatest good, usually unappreciated by men, and I advise him to retain it with all his strength forever or till marriage, and that as a means for its retention I regard abstaining from everything that intoxicates -tobacco, wine, etc. -shunning the