Why Do People Stupefy Themselves? (N.H. Dole Translation) — Notes

By Leo Tolstoy (1890)

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Untitled Anarchism Why Do People Stupefy Themselves? (N.H. Dole Translation) Notes

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(1828 - 1910)

Father of Christian Anarchism

: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "It is necessary that men should understand things as they are, should call them by their right names, and should know that an army is an instrument for killing, and that the enrollment and management of an army -- the very things which Kings, Emperors, and Presidents occupy themselves with so self-confidently -- is a preparation for murder." (From: "'Thou Shalt Not Kill'," by Leo Tolstoy, August 8,....)
• "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "If, in former times, Governments were necessary to defend their people from other people's attacks, now, on the contrary, Governments artificially disturb the peace that exists between the nations, and provoke enmity among them." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)


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Notes

 

  1. Amanita muscaria. In certain parts of Russia, these mushrooms are eaten dry and swallowed without mastication, thus producing an extended intoxication. Made into a decoction with willow runners or whortleberry, it becomes a social intoxicant, the effects of which are wild exhilaration and often an increase of strength, so that a man under its influence has been known to run miles bearing heavy burdens. It is so powerful that children have been poisoned by the milk of women who had shortly before been under its influence. Its alkaloid is allied to that of hashish or Indian hemp.—Ed.
  2. The hero of Dostayevsky's most famous novel, "Crime and Punishment."—Ed.
  3. But why are men that do not drink or smoke often found on an intellectual and moral plane incomparably lower than men that drink and smoke? And why is it that men that drink and smoke often display the very highest intellectual and moral qualities?
    The answer to this is: first, we do not know the height to which smokers and drinkers might attain if they did not smoke and drink. From the fact that men of strong moral fiber, though they submit to the degrading influences of stupefying things, nevertheless produce great works, we may merely conclude that they would produce still greater ones if they did not stupefy themselves. It is very evident, as an acquaintance of mine said to me, that the works of Kant would not have been written in such a strange and execrable style if he had not smoked so much.
    In the second place, we must not forget that the lower a man stands intellectually and morally, the less he is sensible of the discord between conscience and life, and therefore the less he feels the necessity of self-stupefaction; and therefore it so often happens that the most sensitive natures—those that arc painfully conscious of the discord between life and conscience—fall under the influence of narcotics, and are destroyed by them.—Author's Note.

From : Wikisource.org

(1828 - 1910)

Father of Christian Anarchism

: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "You are surprised that soldiers are taught that it is right to kill people in certain cases and in war, while in the books admitted to be holy by those who so teach, there is nothing like such a permission..." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
• "...the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence." (From: "A Letter to a Hindu: The Subjection of India- Its....)

(2000 - 1935)

Nathan Haskell Dole (August 31, 1852 – May 9, 1935) was an American editor, translator, and author. He attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Harvard University in 1874. He was a writer and journalist in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. He translated many works of Leo Tolstoy, and books of other Russians; novels of the Spaniard Armando Palacio Valdés (1886–90); a variety of works from the French and Italian. Nathan Haskell Dole was born August 31, 1852, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was the second son of his father Reverend Nathan Dole (1811–1855) and mother Caroline (Fletcher) Dole. Dole grew up in the Fletcher homestead, a strict Puritan home, in Norridgewock, Maine, where his grandmother lived and where his mother moved with her two boys after his father died of tuberculosis. Sophie May wrote her Prudy Books in Norridgewock, which probably showed the sort of life Nathan and his older brother Charles Fletcher Dole (1845... (From: Wikipedia.org.)

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1890
Notes — Publication.

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July 11, 2021; 5:07:22 PM (UTC)
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