Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1890
Source: From RevoltLib.com; Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
Not in taste, not in pleasure, not in dissipation, not in gaiety, lies the explanation for the universal use of hashish, opium, wine, tobacco, but wholly in the necessity that men have for concealing from themselves the monitions of conscience.
I was going along the street once, and as I passed two izvoshchiks disputing, I heard one say to the other:—
"It's a certain fact, on my conscience as sure as I am sober."
What appeals to a sober man's conscience does not appeal to a drunken man's. In these words was expressed the essential fundamental reason, why men have recourse to stupefying things. Men have recourse to them either so as not to feel the pricking of conscience after committing some act contrary to conscience, or so as to bring themselves into a condition to commit some act which is contrary to conscience, but to which a man's animal nature tempts him.
A sober man has conscientious scruples about going to dissolute women, about stealing, about committing murder. A drunken man has no such scruples; and so, if a man wishes to commit an act which his conscience forbids him to do, he stupefies himself.
I remember being struck by the testimony at court of a cook who had killed a relative of mine, a lady in whose service he had been. He told how when he had sent away his mistress, the chambermaid, and the time had come for him to act, he went with his knife into her sleeping room, but felt that while he was sober he could not perpetrate the act which he had planned. . . . This was "the conscience of a sober man." He went back and drank two glasses of vodka which he had prepared in anticipation of it, and then only did he feel that he was ready, and acted.
Nine-tenths of all crimes are accomplished in that way: "drinking to keep up the courage."
Half of the women that fall, fall through the influence of wine. Almost all visits to houses of ill fame are made by men in a state of drunkenness. Men know the power of wine in drowning out the voice of conscience, and deliberately employ it with that end in view.
Moreover, men stupefy themselves in order to deaden conscience—knowing how wine acts, they, wishing to compel other men to commit some act contrary to their conscience, purposely stupefy them, organize the stupefication of men so as to deprive them of their consciences. In war they always get soldiers drunk when they are to fight hand to hand. All the French soldiers in the assault on Sevastopol were thoroughly drunk.
All of us know of men who have become drunkards in consequence of crimes tormenting their consciences. All can bear witness that men living immoral lives are more inclined than others to the use of stupefying things. Bands of thugs and robbers, prostitutes, never live without wine. All know and acknowledge that the use of stupefying things is in consequence of the reproach of conscience, that in certain immoral professions stupefying things are employed for the deadening of conscience. All know and acknowledge that the use of stupefying things deadens the conscience, that a drunken man is punished for crimes which he would never dare to think of when sober. All are agreed in regard to this: but—strangely enough—when, in consequence of the use of stupefying things, such deeds as theft, murder, violence, and the like do not make their appearance; when stupefying things are taken, not after terrible crimes, but by men of the professions which are not considered by us as criminal; and when these things are not taken all at once in great quantities, but all the time, in moderation,—then somehow it is supposed that stupefying things do not affect the conscience, deadening it.
Thus it is taken for granted that the drinking by an opulent Russian of a glass of vodka every day before each meal and a glass of wine at each meal, by a Frenchman of his absinthe, by an Englishman of his port and porter, by a German of his beer, and the smoking by a well-to-do Chinaman of his moderate portion of opium, and the smoking of tobacco, are done only for pleasure, and have no influence on the consciences of men.
It is taken for granted that if, after this ordinary stupefying of themselves, men do not commit such crimes as robbery and murder, but only certain stupid and wicked actions, then these actions are spontaneous, and are not produced by the drugging. It is taken for granted that if these men do not commit some capital crime, then they have no reason for deadening their consciences, and that the life which is led by men who are all the time stupefying themselves is a perfectly good life, and would be just the same if these men did not stupefy themselves. It is taken for granted that the constant use of stupefying things does not darken their consciences.
Notwithstanding the fact that every one knows by experience that from the use of wine and tobacco the disposition is changed, and things which without their incitation would have been shameful, cease to be shameful; that after every reproach from conscience, however slight it was then, is such a tendency toward folly that under the influence of stupefying things it is difficult to think of one's life and one's position; and that the constant and moderate use of things that stupefy produces the same physiological effect as the immediate and immoderate use of them,—to men who drink and smoke in moderation it seems that they use stupefying things, not at all for the deadening of their consciences, but merely for their taste and satisfaction.
But it requires only to think about this seriously and dispassionately, without any special pleading, to understand that in the first place, if the use of stupefying things taken in large quantities at a time deadens a man's conscience, then the constant use of these things must produce the same effect, since the stupefying things always act physiologically in the same way—always exciting and then moderating the activity of the brain, whether they be taken in large or in small quantities; and in the second place, that if stupefying things have the power of deadening the conscience, then they have it always, both when under their influence murder, robbery, or violence is perpetrated, and also when under their influence a word is spoken which would not be spoken, when thoughts and feelings would be aroused which without them would not have been aroused. And in the third place, that if the use of stupefying things is necessary for robbers, murderers, and prostitutes to stifle their consciences with, then it is just as necessary for men occupied in professions of which their consciences do not approve, even though these professions are called lawful, and are held in honor by other men. In a word, it is impossible not to understand that the use of stupefying things in large or in small quantities, periodically or constantly, in upper or lower circles, is due to one and the same cause—the need of quieting the voice of conscience so as not to see the discord between life and the demands of conscience.