Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/91

 Forgive me -it is shameful and abominable to speak seriously about it. One should rather speak and think about the extent of the perversion or stultification of the moral faculty which has brought men to this; and not argue with them, but treat them. Why, really, an illiterate, drunken Russian peasant, a victim of the grossest superstitions, who would be horrified at the idea of such an act, and who always regards sexual intercourse as a sin, stands immeasurably higher than those people who can write so admirably and have the audacity to drag in philosophy to support their savagery.

There is no class of human crimes against the moral law which men conceal from each other so assiduously as the crimes called forth by sexual lust; -there is no crime against the moral law which is so common to all, taking possession of men in such varied and dreadful forms; -there is no crime against the moral law of which people have such contradictory views, some regarding certain acts as heinous sins, others regarding the same acts as the most ordinary conveniences or pleasures; -there is no crime in connection with which so much hypocrisy has been manifested; -there is no crime the relation to which demonstrates so clearly the moral plane of man; there is no crime so ruinous both to individuals and to the progress of all mankind...

These thoughts are very simple and clear for him who thinks for the purpose of ascertaining the truth. Strange, paradoxical, even unjust they appear only to him who argues not for the purpose of ascertaining the truth, but to be able to regard his own life, with all its vices and errors, as right.