The Devil

The ancient conception of a bitter strife between the flesh and the spirit and of woman as the devil's chief agent in achieving man's spiritual destruction, is alien to the modern outlook, and to-day it is often not understood how and why men ever held such beliefs; but both in The Kreutzer Sonata and in this story Tolstoy makes us realize how easily and naturally men of a certain temperament may come to those convictions. Without adopting that view one is enabled to realize what others have felt, and to perceive how probable is a reaction from the unrestraint of to-day; as happened after the libertinage of the Restoration period.