The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 11
XI.
"Thus all marry, and thus I married, and the much-praised honeymoon began. What a despicable name!" he hissed in anger. "I once took in all kinds of shows in Paris, and, being attracted by a sign, I went in to see a bearded woman and a water dog. It turned out that it was nothing but a man in a décolleté dress and in female attire, and the dog was covered with a sealskin and swam around in a tub of water. There was nothing of interest there; but as I went out the showman politely saw me out, and, turning to the crowd at the door, he pointed to me and said: 'You ask this gentleman whether it is worth seeing. Come in, come in, one franc a person!' I felt ashamed to say that I had been taken in, and the showman evidently counted on that. Thus, no doubt, it is with those who have experienced all the abomination of the honeymoon and do not wish to disenchant others. Neither did I disenchant any one, but now I see no reason for concealing the truth. I even regard it as my duty to tell the truth about it. It is awkward, shameful, abominable, wretched, and, above everything else, dull, inexpressibly dull! It was something like when I first learned to smoke, when I felt like vomiting and the spittle was abundant, and I swallowed it, and pretended to be happy. The enjoyment from smoking, even as from this, if it is to be at all, will be later: it is necessary for the husband to cultivate this vice in his wife, in order to derive pleasure from it."
"You call it a vice?" I said. "You are speaking of the most natural human quality."
"Natural?" he said. "Natural? No, I will tell you, on the contrary, that I have come to the conclusion that it is not natural. Yes, entirely unnatural. Ask a child, ask an uncorrupted girl!
"You say natural!"
"It is natural to eat. It is a pleasure and a joy to eat, and comes easy and causes no shame from the very start; but in this case it is abominable, shameful, and painful. No, it is unnatural! And I have convinced myself that uncorrupted girls always hate it."
"But how," said I, "how would the human race be continued?"
"Yes, what is to be done in order that the human race may not perish!" he said, with malicious irony, as though expecting this familiar and unscrupulous retort. "Preach continence from childbirth in order that English lords may always be able to gormandize, that is all right. Preach continence from childbirth in order to derive as much pleasure as possible, that is all right. But only mention continence from childbirth in the name of morality,—Lord, what a cry is raised! The human race might come to an end because they want to stop being swine! However, excuse me, this light annoys me,—may I shade it?" he said, pointing to the lamp. I told him that it made no difference to me, and then he rose in his seat hurriedly, just as he did everything, and drew the cloth shade over the lamp.
"Still," I said, "if you considered this to be a law, the human race would soon stop."
He did not answer at once.
"You ask me how the human race will be continued?" he said, again taking a place opposite me, spreading his legs wide, and resting his elbows low upon them. Why should it be continued?" he said.
"Why? Else we should not be here."
"Why should we?" "Why? In order to live."
"Why should we live? If there is no aim, if life is given us for life's sake, there is no reason for living. And if it is so, then Schopenhauer and Hartmann, and all the Buddhists are quite right. Well, if there is an aim in life, it is evident that life must cease when that aim is reached. That is what it comes to," he said, with agitation, apparently very proud of his idea. "That is what it comes to. You must notice that if the aim of humanity is goodness,—love, if you wish,—if the aim of humanity is that which is mentioned in the prophecies, when all people will unite together in love, and the spears will be forged into sickles, and so forth, then what is in the way of the accomplishment of this aim?—The passions. Of all the passions, the sexual, carnal love is the strongest, the most evil and stubborn; therefore, if all the passions are to be destroyed, this latter, the strongest of them all, carnal love, will also be destroyed, and the prophecy will be fulfilled, people will be united, the aim of humanity will be reached, and there will be no reason for it to exist. As long as the human race exists, the ideal is before it, and, of course, not the ideal of rabbits and swine, which is to breed as fast as possible, and not of monkeys and Parisians, to use in the most refined manner the enjoyments of sexual passion, but the ideal of goodness, which is reached through continence and purity. People have always striven for this. And see what comes of it!
"It turns out that carnal love is a safety-valve. If the present, living generation of the human race has not reached its aim, it has not reached it because it has passions, and the strongest of them is the sexual passion. As long as there is sexual passion there is a new generation, consequently there is a possibility for the next generation to reach the aim. If this one does not reach it, the next may, and so it goes on until it will be attained, and the prophecy will be fulfilled, and people will be united.
"See what would have happened otherwise! If we are to admit that God has created men in order to attain a certain aim, he would have made them mortal, but without sexual passion, or immortal. If they were mortal but without sexual passion, what would happen? They would live and die without reaching that aim, and so God would have to create new men. But if they were immortal, then let us suppose (although it would be harder for them than for new generations to correct mistakes and approach perfection),—then let us suppose that they would reach their aim after many thousand years. What would they then be for? Where are they to be put then? And so it is better as it is. But it may be that this form of expression does not please you, and you are an evolutionist. Even then it will come to the same. The highest race of animals, the human, to be able to maintain itself in its struggle with other animals, must unite compactly, like a swarm of bees, and not breed endlessly; it must, like the bees, bring up sexless individuals, that is, it again must strive for continence, and not for the incitement of lust, toward which our whole structure of life is directed." He grew silent. "The human race will cease? But is there any one who will doubt this, whatever his way of looking upon the world may be? This is as certain as death. According to all the teachings of the church there will come an end of the world, and the same is inevitable by all the teachings of science.