Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/54

 And in order that they may not behave so, it is necessary that this view of sex-love should be altered. Men and women must be trained, both by their parents and by public opinion, to look on falling in love and the accompanying sexual desire—whether before or after marriage—not as the poetic and elevated state it is now considered to be, but as an animal state degrading to a human being. And the breach of the promise of fidelity given at marriage should be dealt with by public opinion at least as severely as a breach of pecuniary obligation, or a business fraud, and should on no account be eulogized, as is now done in novels, poems, songs, operas, etc.

That is my second point.

Thirdly (in consequence, again, of the false opinion held in our society about physical love), child-bearing is not properly regarded, and, instead of being the aim and the justification of marriage, it has become an impediment to the pleasurable continuance of amorous relations, and consequently, both among married and unmarried people (instructed by exponents of medical science), the employment of means to prevent the birth of children has spread; and a practice has become common which did not exist formerly, and does not now exist in patriarchal peasant families—the continuation of conjugal relations during the months of pregnancy and while the woman is still nursing.

And I think such conduct as that is wrong.

To use means to prevent child-birth is wrong; first, because it frees the parents from the anxiety and care for the children which are the redeeming feature in sexual love, and, secondly, because it is an action very near to that which is most shocking to man's conscience, namely, murder. And incontinence at the time of pregnancy and nursing is wrong, because it wastes the physical, and, above all, the spiritual, strength of the woman.

The deduction which follows from this is, that such things should be avoided. And, in order to avoid them, it should be understood that continence, which