direct those who are being taught to murder; and others, again, yield—against their will, against their conscience, against their reason—to these preparations for murder. Could sober people do these things? Only drunkards who never reach a state of sobriety could do them, and could live on in the horrible state of discord between life and conscience in which, not only in this, but in all other respects, the people of our society are now living.
Never before, I suppose, have people lived with the demands of their conscience so evidently in contradiction to their actions.
Humanity to-day has, as it were, stuck fast. It is as though some external cause hindered it from occupying a position naturally in accord with its perceptions. And the cause—if not the only one, then certainly the greatest—is this physical condition of stupefaction, to which, by wine and tobacco, the great majority of people in our society reduce themselves.
Emancipation from this terrible evil will be an epoch in the life of humanity; and that epoch seems to be at hand. The evil is recognised. An alteration has already taken place in our perception concerning the use of stupefying substances. People have understood the terrible harm of these things, and are beginning to point them out, and this almost unnoticed alteration in perception will inevitably bring about the emancipation of men from the use of stupefying things—will enable them to open their eyes to the demands of their consciences, and they will begin to order their lives in accord with their perceptions.
And this seems to be already beginning. But, as always, it is beginning among the upper classes only after all the lower classes have already been infected.
[June 10, o.s., 1890.]
The above essay was written by Leo Tolstoy as a preface to a book on Drunkenness written by my brother-in-law, Dr. P. S. Alexéyef.—A. M.
