Lesson of the Kreutzer Sonata

I have received, and still continue to receive, numbers of letters from
persons who are perfect strangers to me, asking me to state in plain
and simple language my own views on the subject handled in the story
entitled "The Kreutzer Sonata." With this request I shall now endeavor
to comply.

My views on the question may be succinctly stated as follows: Without
entering into details, it will be generally admitted that I am accurate
in saying that many people condone in young men a course of conduct with
regard to the other sex which is incompatible with strict morality,
and that this dissoluteness is pardoned generally. Both parents and
the government, in consequence of this view, may be said to wink at
profligacy, and even in the last resource to encourage its practice. I
am of opinion that this is not right.

It is not possible that the health of one class should necessitate the

ruin of another, and, in consequence, it is our first duty to turn a
deaf ear to such an essential immoral doctrine, no matter how strongly
society may have established or law protected it. Moreover, it needs to
be fully recognized that men are rightly to be held responsible for
the consequences of their own acts, and that these are no longer to be
visited on the woman alone. It follows from this that it is the duty of
men who do not wish to lead a life of infamy to practice such continence
in respect to all woman as they would were the female society in which
they move made up exclusively of their own mothers and sisters.

A more rational mode of life should be adopted which would include
abstinence from all alcoholic drinks, from excess in eating and from
flesh meat, on the one hand, and recourse to physical labor on the
other. I am not speaking of gymnastics, or of any of those occupations
which may be fitly described as playing at work; I mean the genuine toil
that fatigues. No one need go far in search of proofs that this kind of
abstemious living is not merely possible, but far less hurtful to health
than excess. Hundreds of instances are known to every one. This is my
first contention.

In the second place, I think that of late years, through various reasons
which I need not enter, but among which the above-mentioned laxity
of opinion in society and the frequent idealization of the subject in
current literature and painting may be mentioned, conjugal infidelity
has become more common and is considered less reprehensible. I am of
opinion that this is not right. The origin of the evil is twofold. It is
due, in the first place, to a natural instinct, and, in the second, to
the elevation of this instinct to a place to which it does not rightly
belong. This being so, the evil can only be remedied by