Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/36

 simply in man's need to hide from himself the demands of conscience.

I was going along the street one day, and passing some cabmen who were talking, I heard one of them say: 'Of course, when one's sober, one's ashamed to do it!'

When one's sober one is ashamed of what seems all right when one is drunk. In these words we have the essential underlying cause, prompting men to resort to stupefiers. People resort to them, either to escape feeling ashamed after having done something contrary to their consciences, or to bring themselves, beforehand, into a state in which they can commit actions contrary to conscience, but to which their animal nature prompts them.

A man when sober is ashamed to go after a prostitute, ashamed to steal, ashamed to kill. Of none of these things is a drunken man ashamed, and therefore if a man wishes to do something his conscience condemns—he stupefies himself.

I remember being struck by the evidence of a man cook who was tried for murdering a relation of mine, an old lady in whose service he lived. He related that when he had sent away his paramour, the servant-girl, and the time had come to act, he wished to go into the bedroom with a knife, but felt that while sober he could not commit the deed he had planned … 'when one's sober one's ashamed.' He turned back, drank two tumblers of vodka he had prepared beforehand, and only then felt himself ready, and committed the crime.

Nine-tenths of the crimes are committed in that way: 'Drink to keep up your courage.'

Half the women who fall do so under the influence of wine. Nearly all visits to disorderly houses are paid by men who are intoxicated. People know this capacity of wine to stifle the voice of conscience, and intentionally use it for that purpose.

Not only do people stupefy themselves to stifle their own consciences, but (knowing how wine acts) when