Thanks for linking Tolstoy's article. Although I accept the gist of what he's claiming I have a few caveats:
His warnings against smoking tobacco seem overblown. Plenty of industrious, virtuous individuals enjoyed a pipe: Spinoza, Freud, Einstein, . . . "In the same manner the seeing, spiritual being, whose manifestation we commonly call conscience, always points with one end towards right and with the other towards wrong, and we do not notice it while we follow the course it shows: the course from wrong to right. But one need only do something contrary to the indication of conscience to become aware of this spiritual being, which then shows how the animal activity has diverged from the direction indicated by conscience." I'd like to believe this but is it as self-evident as Tolstoy claims? When Crassus defeated Spartacus he crucified 6,000 prisoners along the Appian Way from Rome to Capua. Crassus was hailed as a hero by the grateful citizens of Rome. I doubt they lost much sleep owing to pangs of conscience. "For people of dull, limited moral feeling, the external diversions [games, for example] are often quite sufficient to enable them not to perceive the indications conscience gives of the wrongness of their lives. But for morally sensitive people those means are often insufficient [so they use drink/drugs]." That's interesting. Recent studies have shown that it is indeed the *more intelligent* people who are more likely to use drugs (because more sensitive? more alienated?) than the stupid people, as is often assumed. One researcher who took a long-term look at chronic drug users to see what traumas, psychological weaknesses and life misadventures had led them to their fate finally concluded that in his (her?) view drug users were simple more selfish and egocentric than the majority who didn't use drugs. That matches my own sense of people I've known who did/didn't use drugs. It doesn't conflict with Tolstoy's observations.
