Leo Tolstoy Archive
Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?
Notes
Written: 1890
Source: Original text from RevoltLib.com; Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
- ↑ A reference to the brain
- ↑ Aylmer Maud includes the footnote " See the allusion to Skóbelev's conduct at Geok-Tepe on the last page of Tales of Army Life."
- ↑ Aylmer Maud included the footnote "In the matters alluded to the Russian customs are worse than the English, partly because in Russia the smell of stale tobacco in the rooms is less offensive than in England due to a drier climate."
- ↑ But how is it that people who do not drink or smoke are often morally on an incomparably lower plane than others who drink and smoke? And why do people who drink and smoke often manifest very high qualities both mentally and morally?
The answer is, first, that we do not know the height that those who drink and smoke would have attained had they not drunk and smoked.
And secondly, from the fact that morally gifted people achieve great things in spite of the deteriorating effect of stupefying substances, we can but conclude that they would have produced yet greater things had they not stupefied themselves. It is very probable, as a friend remarked to me, that Kant's works would not have been written in such a curious and bad style had he not smoked so much.
Lastly, the lower a man's mental and moral plane the less does he feel the discord between his conscience and his life, and therefore the less does he feel a craving to stupefy himself; and on the other hand a parallel reason explains why the most sensitive natures - those which immediately and morbidly feel the discord between life and conscience - so often indulge in narcotics and perish by them. - Leo Tolstoy