Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/90

 bicycle is advancing very smoothly and rapidly, not requiring the effort generally needed; and that there must be a reason for this. And as soon as a morally careful man remarks this, knowing that the propulsion will increase, and bring him to marriage, or exclusive affection, -he will pull himself up if he does not wish to be carried down the hill.

I have looked through the book which advocates the prevention of conception 10. One cannot write about this and refute it any more than one could with regard to a man who might argue that it is pleasant and harmless to have marital relations with a corpse. To a man who does not feel that sexual intercourse is an act degrading both to oneself and one's partner, and therefore a disgusting act -which even elephants 11 are conscious of -by which man pays an involuntary tribute to his animalism, and an act redeemed only when it fulfills the purpose of generation for which this repulsive, humiliating, but at times irrepressible demand was implanted in his nature, to this man, who although capable of arguing yet stands on the plane of an animal, it is impossible to explain or to prove he is wrong. I leave out of the question the fraudulence of the Malthusian theory which places objective considerations (and fallacious ones at the best), at the basis of an ethical matter which is always subjective. Neither do I mention that between murder, artificial abortion, and this act of frustrating conception, there is no qualitative distinction. 10

In this letter, dated July 11, 1901, the author alludes to a popular English pamphlet advocating methods of preventing, increase of family which I sent him to obtain a more explicit opinion on the subject than the incidental references in the foregoing pages. -V.T. 11 Naturalists have remarked that elephants are distinguished by extreme abstinence in their sexual relations, and that in captivity it is most difficult to breed from them while they feel they are under observation. -Trans.