Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/6

 Afterword to "The Kreutzer Sonata."

I HAVE received and continue to receive letters from strangers, asking me to explain in simple and clear language my ideas on the subject treated by me in the story entitled The Kreutzer Sonata. This I will now endeavor to do, this is, to express as shortly as possible the substance of what I wished to convey in that story, and those deductions which may, in my opinion, be drawn from it.

In the first place I wished to say that there is a settled conviction, which has taken root in all classes of our society, and is supposed by false science, that sexual intercourse is indispensable to health, and that, as the marriage state is not always practicable, sexual intercourse outside of marriage, imposing on the man no obligation beyond a money payment, is perfectly natural, and therefore deserving of encouragement.

This conviction has become so general and confirmed that parents encourage vice among their children by the advice of medical men; governments -whose only meaning consists in care for the moral well-being of the citizens -organize vice, i.e., regulate an entire class of women who are doomed to bodily and spiritual ruin for the satisfaction of the imaginary necessities of men; and unmarried men addict themselves to vice with perfectly quiet consciences.

And I wished to say that this is wrong, because it cannot be necessary that for the sake of the health of some the souls and