Lesson of the Kreutzer Sonata - Page 2

effecting a
change in the views now in vogue about "falling in love" and all that
this term implies, by educating men and women at home through family
influence and example, and abroad by means of healthy public opinion, to
practice that abstinence which morality and Christianity alike enjoin.
This is my second contention.

In the third place I am of opinion that another consequence of the false
light in which "falling in love," and what it leads to, are viewed
in our society, is that the birth of children has lost its pristine
significance, and that modern marriages are conceived less and less from
the point of view of the family. I am of opinion that this is not right.
This is my third contention.

In the fourth place, I am of opinion that the children (who in our
society are considered an obstacle to enjoyment--an unlucky accident, as
it were) are educated not with a view to the problem which they will be
one day called on to face and to solve, but solely with an eye to
the pleasure which they may be made to yield to their parents. The
consequence is, that the children of human beings are brought up for
all the world like the young of animals, the chief care of their parents
being not to train them to such work as is worthy of men and women, but
to increase their weight, or add a cubit to their stature, to make them
spruce, sleek, well-fed, and comely. They rig them out in all manner of
fantastic costumes, wash them, over-feed them, and refuse to make them
work. If the children of the lower orders differ in this last respect
from those of the well-to-do classes, the difference is merely formal;
they work from sheer necessity, and not because their parents recognize
work as a duty. And in over-fed children, as in over-fed animals,
sensuality is engendered unnaturally early.

Fashionable dress to-day, the course of reading, plays, music, dances,
luscious food, all the elements of our modern life, in a word, from the
pictures on the little boxes of sweetmeats up to the novel, the tale,
and the poem, contribute to fan this sensuality into a strong, consuming
flame, with the result that sexual vices and diseases have come to be
the normal conditions of the period of tender youth, and often continue
into the riper age of full-blown manhood. And I am of opinion that this
is not right.

It is high time it ceased. The children of human beings should not be
brought up as if they were animals; and we should set up as the object
and strive to maintain as the result of our labors something better and
nobler than a well-dressed body. This is my fourth contention.

In the fifth place, I am of opinion that, owing to the exaggerated and
erroneous significance attributed by our