Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/8

 And I think that this is wrong; and the conclusion which follows from this is that these evils should be avoided.

And in order to avoid them it is necessary that the view of sexual love should be changed, that men and women should be educated, both by their parents and by public opinion, to look upon falling in love and the sexual affection connected with it, both before and after marriage, not as a poetical, elevated condition, as at present but as an animal condition degrading to man. And that a violation of the marriage promise of fidelity should be censured by public opinion at least as severely as violations of monetary obligations and commercial frauds, and not extolled as it is now in novels, verses, songs, operas, etc.

This in the second place.

Thirdly, in consequence again of this false significance attributed to sexual love, the production of children has lost its meaning in our society. Instead of being the aim and justification of conjugal relations, it has become an impediment to the pleasurable extension of amative intercourse. And thus, by the advice of professors of the healing art, the employment of means for depriving the woman of the power of bearing children has become more and more general both within and outside marriage; and what was formerly, and in patriarchal peasant families still is, unknown -the continuance of conjugal relations during pregnancy and nursing -has become an accepted custom.

And I believe that this is wrong.

It is wrong to employ means to prevent childbirth: firstly, because it liberates people from those cares and anxieties about their children which constitute the redeeming feature of sexual love; and, secondly, because it is closely akin to an act most revolting to