Why Do People Stupefy Themselves?

During the conscious period of life, a person can often notice within himself two separate beings: one blind and sensual, the other seeing and spiritual. The blind, animal being eats, drinks, rests, sleeps, reproduces, and moves like a wound-up machine; the seeing, spiritual being, connected to the animal one, does nothing itself but only evaluates the activity of the animal being—coinciding with it when it approves of this activity, and diverging from it when it does not approve.

This seeing being can be compared to the needle of a compass, which points with one end to the north and with the other to the opposite south, and is covered by a plate along its direction of pull. The needle remains hidden under the plate as long as what carries the compass moves in the direction indicated by the needle. But as soon as what carries the compass deviates from the direction indicated by the needle, the needle emerges from under the plate and becomes visible.

In exactly the same way, the seeing, spiritual being—the manifestation of which we commonly call conscience—always points with one end toward good and with the other, opposite end toward evil, and remains invisible to us as long as we do not deviate from the direction it gives, that is, from good toward evil. But as soon as we perform an act contrary to the direction of conscience, the awareness of the spiritual being appears, indicating the divergence of the animal activity from the direction indicated by conscience. And just as a sailor could not continue working with oars, engine, or sail, knowing that he is not going where he needs to go, until he either gave his movement a direction corresponding to the compass needle or concealed from himself its deviation—so too every person, having felt the split between his conscience and his animal activity, cannot continue this activity until he either brings it into agreement with conscience or conceals from himself the indications of conscience about the wrongness of his animal life.

All of human life, one might say, consists only of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activity into agreement with conscience, and (2) concealing from oneself the indications of one’s conscience in order to be able to continue living.

Some do the first, others the second. To achieve the first there is only one means: moral enlightenment—increasing the light within oneself and attending to what it illuminates. To achieve the second—concealing from oneself the indications of conscience—there are two means: external and internal. The external means consists in occupations that distract attention from the indications of conscience; the internal consists in darkening conscience itself.

Just as a person can hide an object before his eyes in two ways—externally, by diverting his gaze to other, more striking objects, and by fouling his eyes themselves—so too a person can hide from himself the indications of his conscience in two ways: externally, by diverting attention through all sorts of occupations, cares, amusements, and games; and internally, by fouling the very organ of attention. For people with a dull, limited moral sense, external distractions are often quite sufficient to prevent them from seeing conscience’s indications about the wrongness of their life. But for morally sensitive people these means are often not enough.

External means do not fully divert attention from the awareness of the discord between life and the demands of conscience; this awareness interferes with living, and so people, in order to be able to live, resort to the certain internal means of darkening conscience itself, which consists in poisoning the brain with stupefying substances.

Life is not what it should be according to the demands of conscience. To turn life in accordance with these demands—there is no strength. The diversions that might distract from the awareness of this discord are insufficient, or they have grown stale. And so, in order to be able to continue living despite conscience’s indications about the wrongness of life, people poison—temporarily halting its activity—that organ through which the indications of conscience are manifested, just as a person who deliberately fouled his eyes would hide from himself what he did not want to see.

—L. N. Tolstoy

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Translator’s Notes:

• This essay is an excerpt from Tolstoy’s longer work Why Do People Stupefy Themselves? (Dlya chego lyudi odurmanivayutsya?), written in 1890 as a preface to a book on the harm of tobacco and alcohol.
• The full essay goes on to discuss specific intoxicants—alcohol, tobacco, opium, hashish—and their role in enabling people to continue immoral lives without the torment of conscience.
• The compass metaphor is characteristically Tolstoyan: conscience is not something we create but something we either align with or deviate from; it exists as an objective fact like magnetic north.
• The distinction between “blind, animal” and “seeing, spiritual” beings within a person reflects Tolstoy’s dualistic psychology, influenced by his reading of Schopenhauer and his own religious development.
• “Moral enlightenment” (nravstvennoe prosveshchenie) is a key Tolstoyan concept: genuine moral progress comes not through willpower alone but through increased awareness and attention to the inner light.
• This passage anticipates modern discussions of “moral disengagement”—the psychological mechanisms by which people disable their moral self-regulation to engage in harmful conduct.
• Tolstoy himself struggled with alcoholism and tobacco use in his younger years, giving this essay a personal dimension.