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means of forgetting, an intoxication, just as hunting, card-playing, and
my functions at the Zemstvo served the same purpose for me. It is true
that in addition I had an intoxication literally speaking,--tobacco,
which I smoked in large quantities, and wine, upon which I did not get
drunk, but of which I took too much. Vodka before meals, and during
meals two glasses of wine, so that a perpetual mist concealed the
turmoil of existence.
"These new theories of hypnotism, of mental maladies, of hysteria are
not simple stupidities, but dangerous or evil stupidities. Charcot, I
am sure, would have said that my wife was hysterical, and of me he would
have said that I was an abnormal being, and he would have wanted to
treat me. But in us there was nothing requiring treatment. All this
mental malady was the simple result of the fact that we were living
immorally. Thanks to this immoral life, we suffered, and, to stifle
our sufferings, we tried abnormal means, which the doctors call the
'symptoms' of a mental malady,--hysteria.
"
There was no occasion in all this to apply for treatment to Charcot
or to anybody else. Neither suggestion nor bromide would have been
effective in working our cure. The needful thing was an examination of
the origin of the evil. It is as when one is sitting on a nail; if you
see the nail, you see that which is irregular in your life, and you
avoid it. Then the pain stops, without any necessity of stifling it. Our
pain arose from the irregularity of our life, and also my jealousy,
my irritability, and the necessity of keeping myself in a state of
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