Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/53

 with untroubled consciences, yield themselves to debauchery.

I intended to say that this is wrong; for it cannot be right that some people should be destroyed body and soul for the health of others, any more than it can be right that some people for their health's sake should drink the blood of others.

The natural conclusion I would draw is that we must not yield to this error and deception. And to withstand it we must refuse to accept immoral doctrines, no matter what false sciences are quoted in their support. And we must, moreover, understand that sexual intercourse in which people either abandon the children who come as a result of their actions, or throw the whole burden of them on to the woman, or prevent the possibility of their birth, is a violation of the plainest claims of morality, and is shameful. And unmarried people who do not wish to act shamefully should refrain from such conduct.

That they may be able to refrain, they must lead a natural life: not drink intoxicants, nor overeat, nor eat flesh-meat, nor shirk labour (not gymnastics or play, but real fatiguing labour). Furthermore, they must not tolerate, even in thought, the possibility of intercourse with strange women, any more than with their own mothers, sisters, near relatives, or the wives of their friends.

That self-restraint is not only possible, but less dangerous or harmful to one's health than incontinence, is a fact of which any man may find hundreds of proofs around him.

That is the first thing I wanted to say.

Next—as a result of the fact that people regard amatory intercourse as both a necessary condition of health and a pleasure, and, more than that, as a poetic and elevating blessing—conjugal infidelity has, in all classes of our society, become extremely common. (Among the peasants conjugal infidelity is specially due to army service.)

And this I consider wrong. And the conclusion to be drawn is—that people should not behave so.