Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/7

 bodies of others must be ruined, any more than it can be necessary that for the health of some the blood of others must be drunk.

The deduction which seems to me natural to make from this, that one should not give way to this error and deception. And in order not to give way, one should first refuse to believe immoral teachings, however they may be supported by pseudo sciences; and, secondly, understand that the entering into such sexual intercourse, in which men free themselves from its possible consequences children- and cast the whole burden of these consequences on the women, who take means to artificially prevent birth -that such sexual intercourse is a transgression of the plainest demands of morality, is dastardly; and that therefore unmarried men who do not wish to live as dastards must abstain from this.

If men would practice continence, they must lead a natural life, neither drinking wine nor over-eating, not eating meat, nor shirking labor (not gymnastics, but real exhausting labor), and must never admit to themselves the possibility of intercourse with strange women and more than a man does in relation with his mother, sisters, near relatives, or the wives of friends. Every man will find around him hundreds of instances to prove that continence is not only possible, but less dangerous and hurtful to health than incontinence.

This in the first place.

Secondly, in consequence of the view existing in our fashionable society that sexual intercourse is not only a necessary condition of health and a pleasure, but also a poetical and elevated blessing of life, conjugal infidelity has now become a most ordinary phenomenon in all ranks of society (among the peasantry chiefly owing to the military service).