conviction that in these theories lay the elements essential to the
transformation and rejuvenation of human nature, going far towards
the levelling of social inequalities. But to inoculate the landed
proprietors of Russia as a class with those theories was a task which
even his genius could not hope to accomplish.

He recognised the necessity of proceeding from the particular to the
general, and that the perfecting of human institutions was impossible
without a corresponding perfection in the individual. To this end
therefore the remainder of his life was dedicated. He had always held in
aversion what he termed external epidemic influences: he now endeavoured
to free himself not only from all current conventions, but from every
association which he had formerly cherished. Self-analysis and general
observation had taught him that men are sensual beings, and that
sensualism must die for want of food if it were not for sex instincts,
if it were not for Art, and especially for Music. This view of life he
forcibly expressed in the "Kreutzer Sonata," in which Woman and Music,
the two magnets of his youth, were impeached as powers of evil. Already,
in "War and Peace" and in "Anna Karenina," his descriptions of female
charms resembled catalogues of weapons against which a man must arm
himself or perish. The beautiful Princess Helena, with her gleaming
shoulders, her faultless white bosom, and her eternal smile is evidently
an object of aversion to her creator; even as the Countess Betsy, with
her petty coquetries and devices for attracting attention at the Opera
and elsewhere, is a target for his contempt. "Woman is a stumbling-block
in a man's career," remarks a philosophical husband in "Anna Karenina."
"It is difficult to love a woman and do any good work, and the only way
to escape being reduced to inaction is to marry."

Even in his correspondence with the Countess A. A. Tolstoy this