Part 5 Chapter 1
"But I say,"
Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him one day after he had come back from the
country, where he had got everything ready for the young people's arrival,
"have you a certificate of having been at confession?"
"No. But what of
it?"
"You can't be married
without it."
"Aie, aie, aie!"
cried Levin. "Why, I believe it's nine years since I've taken the
sacrament! I never thought of it."
"You're a pretty
fellow!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch laughing, "and you call me a
Nihilist! But this won't do, you know. You must take the sacrament."
"When? There are four
days left now."
Stepan Arkadyevitch
arranged this also, and Levin had to go to confession. To Levin, as to any
unbeliever who respects the beliefs of others, it was exceedingly disagreeable
to be present at and take part in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his
present softened state of feeling, sensitive to everything, this inevitable act
of hypocrisy was not merely painful to Levin it seemed to him utterly
impossible. Now, in the heyday of his highest glory, his fullest flower, he
would have to be a liar or a scoffer. He felt incapable of being either. But
though he repeatedly plied Stepan Arkadyevitch with questions as to the
possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually communicating, Stepan
Arkadyevitch maintained that it was out of the question.
"Besides, what is it
to you--two days? And he's an awfully nice clever old fellow. He'll pull the
tooth out for you so gently, you won't notice it."
Standing at the first
litany, Levin attempted to revive in himself his youthful recollections of the
intense religious emotion he had passed through between the ages of sixteen and
seventeen.
But he was at once
convinced that it was utterly impossible to him. He attempted to look at it all
as an empty custom, having no sort of meaning, like the custom of paying calls.
But he felt that he could not do that either. Levin found himself, like the
majority of his contemporaries, in the vaguest position in regard to religion.
Believe he could not, and at the same time he had no firm conviction that it
was all wrong. And consequently, not being able to believe in the significance
of what he was doing nor to regard it with indifference as an empty formality,
during the whole period of preparing for the sacrament he was conscious of a
feeling of discomfort and shame at doing what he did not himself understand,
and what, as an inner voice told him, was therefore false and wrong.
During the service he
would first listen to the prayers, trying to attach some meaning to them not
discordant with his own views; then feeling that he could not understand and
must condemn them, he tried not to listen to them, but to attend to the
thoughts, observations, and memories which floated through his brain with extreme
vividness during this idle time of standing in church.
He had stood through the
litany, the evening service and the midnight service, and the next day he got
up earlier than usual, and without having tea went at eight o'clock in the
morning to the church for the morning service and the confession.
There was no one in the
church but a beggar soldier, two old women and the church officials. A young
deacon, whose long back showed in two distinct halves through his thin
undercassock, met him, and at once going to a little table at the wall readable
exhortation. During the reading, especially at the frequent and rapid
repetition of the same words, "Lord, have mercy on us!" which
resounded with an echo, Levin felt that thought was shut and sealed up, and
that it must not be touched or stirred now or confusion would be the result;
and so standing behind the deacon he went on thinking of his own affairs,
neither listening nor examining what was said. "It's wonderful what
expression there is in her hand," he thought, remembering how they had
been sitting the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk about,
as was almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand on the table
she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed herself as she watched her
action. He remembered how he had kissed it and then had examined the lines on
the pink palm. "Have mercy on us again!" thought Levin, crossing
himself, bowing, and looking at the supple spring of the deacon's back bowing
before him. "She took my hand then and examined the lines 'You've got a
splendid hand,' she said." And he looked at his own hand and the short
hand of the deacon. "Yes, now it will soon be over," he thought.
"No, it seems to be beginning again," he thought, listening to the
prayers. "No, it's just ending: there he is bowing down to the ground.
That's always at the end."
The deacon's hand in a
plush cuff accepted a three-rouble note unobtrusively, and the deacon said he
would put it down in the register, and his new boots creaking jauntily over the
flagstones of the empty church, he went to the altar. A moment later he peeped
out thence and beckoned to Levin. Thought, till then locked up, began to stir
in Levin's head, but he made haste to drive it away. "It will come right
somehow," he thought, and went towards the altar-rails. He went up the
steps, and turning to the right saw the priest. The priest, a little old man
with a scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured eyes, was standing at the
altar-rails, turning over the pages of a missal. With a slight bow to Levin he
began immediately reading prayers in the official voice. When he had finished
them he bowed down to the ground and turned, facing Levin.
"Christ is present
here unseen, receiving your confession," he said, pointing to the crucifix.
"Do you believe in all the doctrines of the Holy Apostolic Church?"
the priest went on, turning his eyes away from Levin's face and folding his
hands under his stole.
"I have doubted, I
doubt everything," said Levin in a voice that jarred on himself, and he
ceased speaking.
The priest waited a few
seconds to see if he would not say more, and closing his eyes he said quickly,
with a broad, Vladimirsky accent:
"Doubt is natural to
the weakness of mankind, but we must pray that God in His mercy will strengthen
us. What are your special sins?" he added, without the slightest interval,
as though anxious not to waste time.
"My chief sin is
doubt. I have doubts of everything, and for the most part I am in doubt."
"Doubt is natural to
the weakness of mankind," the priest repeated the same words. "What
do you doubt about principally?"
"I doubt of
everything. I sometimes even have doubts of the existence of God," Levin
could not help saying, and he was horrified at the impropriety of what he was
saying. But Levin's words did not, it seemed, make much impression on the
priest.
"What sort of doubt
can there be of the existence of God?" he said hurriedly, with a just
perceptible smile.
Levin did not speak.
"What doubt can you
have of the Creator when you behold His creation?" the priest went on in
the rapid customary jargon. "Who has decked the heavenly firmament with
its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the
Creator?" he said, looking inquiringly at Levin.
Levin felt that it would
be improper to enter upon a metaphysical discussion with the priest, and so he
said in reply merely what was a direct answer to the question.
"I don't know,"
he said.
"You don't knowl Then
how can you doubt that God created all?" the priest said, with
good-humored perplexity.
"I don't understand
it at all," said Levin, blushing, and feeling that his words were stupid,
and that they could not be anything but stupid n such a position.
"Pray to God and
beseech Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts, and prayed to God to strengthen
their faith. The devil has great power, and we must resist him. Pray to God,
beseech Hint Pray to God," he repeated hurriedly.
The priest paused for some
time, as though meditating.
"You're about, I
hear, to marry the daughter of my parishioner and son in the spirit, Prince
Shtcherbatsky?" he resumed, with a smile. "An excellent young
lady."
"Yes," answered
Levin, blushing for the priest. "What does he want to ask me about this at
confession for?" he thought.
And, as though answering
his thought, the priest said to him:
"You are about to
enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless you with offspring. Well, what
sort of bringing-up can you give your babes if you do not overcome the
temptation of the devil, enticing you to infidelity?" he said, with gentle
reproachfulness. "If you love your child as a good father, you will not
desire only wealth, luxury, honor for your infant; you will be anxious for his
salvation, his spiritual enlightenment with the light of truth. Eh? What answer
will you make him when the innocent babe asks you: 'Papa! who made all that
enchants me in this world--the earth; the waters, the sun, the flowers, the
grass?' Can you say to him: 'I don't know'? You cannot but know, since the Lord
God in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us. Or your child will ask you:
'What awaits me in the life beyond the tomb?' What will you say to him when you
know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you leave him to the allurements of
the world and the devil? That's not right," he said, and he stopped,
putting his head on one side and looking at Levin with his kindly, gentle eyes.
Levin made no answer this
time, not because he did not want to enter upon a discussion with the priest,
but because, so far, no one had ever asked him such questions, and when his
babes did ask him those questions, it would be time enough to think about
answering them.
"You are entering
upon a time of life," pursued the priest, "when you must choose your
path and keep to it. Pray to God that He may in His mercy aid you and have
mercy on your" he concluded. "Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, in the
abundance and riches of His loving-kindness, forgives this child . . ."
and, finishing the prayer of absolution, the priest blessed him and dismissed
him.
On getting home that day,
Levin had a delightful sense of relief at the awkward position being over and
having been got through without his having to tell a lie. Apart from this,
there remained a vague memory that what the kind, nice old fellow had said had
not been at all so stupid as he had fancied at first, and that there was
something in it that must be cleared up.
"Of course, not
now," thought Levin, "but some day later on." Levin felt more than
ever now that there was something not clear and not clean in his soul, and
that, in regard to religion, he was in the same position which he perceived so
clearly and disliked in others, and for which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky.
Part 7 Chapter 14
From the moment when
he had waked up and understood what was going on, Levin had prepared his mind
to bear resolutely what was before him, and without considering or anticipating
anything, to avoid upsetting his wife, and on the contrary to soothe her and keep
up her courage. Without allowing himself even to think of what was to come, of
how it would end, judging from his inquiries as to the usual duration of these
ordeals, Levin had in his imagination braced himself to bear up and to keep a
tight rein on his feelings for five hours, and it had seemed to him he could do
this. But when he came back from the doctor's and saw her sufferings again, he
fell to repeating more and more frequently I "Lord, have mercy on us, and
succor us!" He sighed, and flung his head up, and began to feel afraid he
could not bear it, that he would burst into tears or run away. Such agony it
was to hirn. And only one hour had passed.
Part 8 Chapter 7
She knew what worried her
husband. It was his unbelief. Although, if she had been asked whether she
supposed that in the future life, if he did not believe, he would be damned,
she would have had to admit that he would be damned, his unbelief did not cause
her unhappiness. And she, confessing that for an unbeliever there can be no
salvation, and loving her husband's soul more than anything in the world,
thought with a smile of his unbelief, and told herself that he was absurd.
"What does he keep
reading philosophy of some sort for all this year?" she wondered. "If
it's all written in those books, he can understand them. If it's all wrong, why
does he read them? He says himself that he would like to believe. Then why is
it he doesn't believe? Surely from his thinking so much? And he thinks so much
from being solitary. He's always alone, alone. He can't talk about it all to
us. I fancy he'll be glad of these visitors, especially Katavasov. He likes
discussions with them," she thought, and passed instantly to the
consideration of where it would be more convenient to put Katavasov, to sleep
alone or to share Sergey Ivanovitch's room. And then an idea suddenly struck
her, which made her shudder and even disturb Mitya, who glanced severely at
her. "I do believe the laundress hasn't sent the washing yet, and all the
best sheets are in use. If I don't see to it, Agafea Mihalovna will give Sergey
Ivanovitch the wrong sheets," and at the very idea of this the blood
rushed to Kitty's face.
"Yes, I will arrange
it," she decided, and going back to her former thoughts, she remembered
that some spiritual question of importance had been interrupted, and she began
to recall what. "Yes, Kostya, an unbeliever," she thought again with
a smile.
"Well, an unbeliever
them Better let him always be one than like Madame Stahl, or what I tried to be
in those days abroad. No, he won't ever sham anything."
And a recent instance of
his goodness rose vividly to her mind. A fortnight ago a penitent letter had
come from Stepan Arkadyevitch to Dolly. He besought her to save his honor, to
sell her estate to pay his debts. Dolly was in despair, she detested her
husband, despised him, pitied him, resolved on a separation, resolved to
refuse, but ended by agreeing to sell part of her property. After that, with an
irrepressible smile of tenderness, Kitty recalled her husband's shamefaced
embarrassment, his repeated awkward efforts to approach the subject, and how at
last, having thought of the one means of helping Dolly without wounding her
pride, he had suggested to Kitty--what had not occurred to her before--that she
should give up her share of the property.
"He an unbeliever
indeed! With-his heart, his dread of offending any one, even a childl
Everything for others, nothing for himself. Sergey Ivanovitch simply considers
it as Kostya's duty to be his steward. And it's the same with his sister. Now
Dolly and her children are under his guardianship; all these peasants who come
to him every day, as though he were bound to be at their service."
"Yes, only be like
your father, only like him," she said, handing Mitya over to the nurse,
and putting her lips to his cheek.
Part 8 Chapter 8
Ever since, by his beloved
brother's deathbed, Levin had first glanced into the questions of life and
death in the light of these new convictions, as he called them, which had
during the period from his twentieth to his thirty-fourth year imperceptibly replaced
his childish and youthful beliefs--he had been stricken with horror, not so
much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how,
and what it was. The physical organization, its decay, the indestructibility of
matter, the law of the conservation of energy, evolution, were the words which
usurped the place of his old belief. These words and the ideas associated with
them were very well for intellectual purposes. But for life they yielded
nothing, and Levin felt suddenly like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak
for a muslin garment, and going for the first time into the frost is
immediately convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature that he is as
good as naked, and that he must infallibly perish miserably.
From that moment, though
he did not distinctly face it, and still went on living as before, Levin had
never lost this sense of terror at his lack of knowledge.
He vaguely felt, too, that
what he called his new convictions were not merely lack of knowledge, but that
they were part of a whole order of ideas, in which no knowledge of what he
needed was possible.
At first, marriage, with
the new joys and duties bound up with it, had completely crowded out these
thoughts. But of late, while he was staying in Moscow after his wife's
confinement, with nothing to do, the question that clamored for solution had
more and more often, more and more insistently, haunted Levin's mind.
The question was summed up
for him thus: "If I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems
of my life, what answers do I accept?" And in the whole arsenal of his
convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was utterly
unable to find anything at all like an answer.
He was in the position of
a man seeking food in toy-shops and toolshops.
Instinctively,
unconsciously, with every book, with every conversation, with every man he met,
he was on the lookout for light on these questions and their solution.
What puzzled and
distracted him above everything was that the majority of men of his age and
circle had, like him, exchanged their old beliefs for the same new convictions,
and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and were perfectly satisfied and serene.
So that, apart from the principal question, Levin was tortured by other questions
too. Were these people sincere? he asked himself, or were they playing a party
or was it that they understood the answers science gave to these problems in
some different, clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied both
these men's opinions and the books which treated of these scientific
explanations.
One fact he had found out
since these questions had engrossed his mind, was that he had been quite wrong
in supposing from the recollections of the circle of his young days at college,
that religion had outlived its day, and that it was now practically
non-existent. AU the people nearest to him who were good in their lives were
believers. The old prince, and Lvov, whom he liked so much, and Sergey
Ivanovitch, and all the women believed, and his wife believed as simply as he
had believed in his earliest childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the
Russian people, all the working-people for whose life he felt the deepest
respect, believed.
Another fact of which he
became convinced, after reading many scientific books, was that the men who
shared his views had no other construction to put on them, and that they gave
no explanation of the questions which he felt he could not live without
answering, but simply id nored their existence and attempted to explain other
questions of no possible interest to him, such as the evolution of organisms,
the materialistic theory of consciousness, and so forth.
Moreover, during his
wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him.
He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying' and at the moment he prayed, he
believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind
at that moment fit into the rest of his life.
He could not admit that at
that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he
began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that
he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to him, and
to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those
moments. He was miserably divided against himself, and strained all his
spiritual forces to the utmost to escape from this condition.
Part 8 Chapter 9
These doubts fretted and
harassed him, growing weaker or stronger
from time to time, but
never leaving him. He read and thought, and the more he read and the more he
thought, the further he felt from the aim he was pursuing.
Of late in Moscow and in
the country, since he had become convinced that he would find no solution in
the materialists, he had read and reread thoroughly Plato, Spinoza, Kant,
Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, the philosophers who gave a
non-materialistic explanation of life.
Their ideas seemed to him
fruitful when he was reading or was himself seeking arguments to refute other
theories, especially those of the materialists; but as soon as he began to read
or sought fat himself a solution of problems, the same thing always happened.
As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as SPIRIT,
WILL, FREEDOM, ESSENCE, purposely letting himself go into the snare of words
the philosophers set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he had
only to forget the artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from life itself
to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed
definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at once like a
house of cards, and it became clear that the edifice had been built up out of
those transposed words, apart from anything in life more important than reason.
At one time, reading
Schopenhauer, he put in place of his will the word love, and for a couple of
days this new philosophy charmed him, till he removed a little away from it.
But then, when he turned from life itself to glance at it again, it fell away
too, and proved to be the same muslin garment with no warmth in it.
His brother Sergey
Ivanovitch advised him to read the theological works of Homiakov. Levin read
the second volume of Homiakov's works, and in spite of the elegant,
epigrammatic, argumentative style which at first repelled him, he was impressed
by the doctrine of the church he found in them. He was struck at first by the
idea that the apprehension of divine truths had not been vouchsafed to man, but
to a corporation of men bound together by love--to the church. What delighted
him was the thought how much easier it was to believe in a still existing
living church, embracing all the beliefs of men, and having God at its head,
and therefore holy and infallible, and from it to accept the faith in God, in
the creation, the fall, the redemption, than to begin with God, a mysterious,
far-away God, the creation, etc. But afterwards, on reading a Catholic writer's
history of the church, and then a Greek orthodox writer's history of the church,
and seeing that the two churches, in their very conception infallible, each
deny the authority of the other, Homiakov's doctrine of the church lost all its
charm for him, and this edifice crumbled into dust like the philosophers'
edifices.
All that spring he was not
himself, and went through fearful moments of horror.
"Without knowing what
I am and why I am here, life's impossible; and that I can't know, and so I
can't live," Levin said to himself.
"In infinite time, in
infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that
bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me."
It was an agonizing error,
but it was the sole logical result of ages of human thought in that direction.
This was the ultimate
belief on which all the systems elaborated by human thought in almost all their
ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and of all other
explanations Levin had unconsciously, not knowing when or how, chosen it, as
any way the clearest, and made it his own.
But it was not merely a
falsehood, it was the cruel jeer of some wicked power, some evil, hateful
power, to whom one could not submit.
He must escape from this
power. And the means of escape every man had in his own hands. He had but to
cut short this dependence on evil. And there was one means--death.
And Levin, a happy father
and husband, in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid
the cord that he might not be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out
with his gun for fear of shooting himself.
But Levin did not shoot
himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living.
Part 8 Chapter 10
When Levin thought what he
was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and
was reduced to despair, but he left off questioning himself about it. It seemed
as though he knew both what he was and for what he was living, for he acted and
lived resolutely and without hesitation. Indeed, in these latter days he was
far more decided and unhesitating in life than he had ever been.
When he went back to the
country at the beginning of June, he went back also to his usual pursuits. The
management of the estate, his relations with the peasants and the neighbors,
the care of his household, the management of his sister's and brother's property,
of which he had the direction, his relations with his wife and kindred, the
care of his child, and the new bee-keeping hobby he had taken up that spring,
filled all his time.
These things occupied him
now, not because he justified them to himself by any sort of general
principles, as he had done in former days; on the contrary, disappointed by the
failure of his former efforts for the general welfare, and too much occupied
with his own thought and the mass of business with which he was burdened from
all sides, he had completely given up thinking of the general good, and he
busied himself with all this work simply because it seemed to him that he must
do what he was doing--that he could not do otherwise. In former days--almost
from childhood, and increasingly up to full manhood--when he had tried to do
anything that would be good for all, for humanity, for Russia, for the whole
village, he had noticed that the idea of it had been pleasant, but the work
itself had always been incoherent, that then he had never had a full conviction
of its absolute necessity, and that the work that had begun by seeming so
great, had grown less and less, till it vanished into nothing. But now, since
his marriage, when he had begun to confine himself more and more to living for himself,
though he experienced no delight at all at the thought of the work he was
doing, he felt a complete conviction of its necessity, saw that it succeeded
far better than in old days, and that it kept on growing more and more.
Now, involuntarily it seemed,
he cut more and more deeply into the soil like a plough, so that he could not
be drawn out without turning aside the furrow.
To live the same family
life as his father and forefathers--that is, in the same condition of
culture--and to bring up his children in the same, was incontestably necessary.
It was as necessary as dining when one was hungry. And to do this, just as it
was necessary to cook dinner, it was necessary to keep the mechanism of
agriculture at Pokrovskoe going so as to yield an income. Just as incontestably
as it was necessary to repay a debt was it necessary to keep the property in
such a condition that his son, when he received it as a heritage, would say
"thank you" to his father as Levin had said "thank you" to
his grandfather for all he built and planted. And to do this it was necessary
to look after the land himself, not to let it, and to breed cattle, manure the
fields, and plant timber.
It was impossible not to
look after the affairs of Sergey Ivanovitch, of his sister, of the peasants who
came to him for advice and were accustomed to do so--as impossible as to fling
down a child one is carrying in one's arms. It was necessary to look after the
comfort of his sister-in-law and her children, and of his wife and baby, and it
was impossible not to spend with them at least a short time each day.
And all this, together
with shooting and his new bee-keeping, filled up the whole of Levin's life,
which had no meaning at all for him, when he began to think.
But besides knowing
thoroughly what he had to do, Levin knew in just the same way how he had to do
it all, and what was more important than the rest.
He knew he must hire
laborers as cheaply as possible; but to hire men under bond, paying them in
advance at less than the current rate of wages, was what he must not do, even
though it was very profitable. Selling straw to the peasants in times of
scarcity of provender was what he might do, even though he felt sorry for them;
but the tavern and the pothouse must be put down, though they were a source of
income. Felling timber must be punished as severely as possible, but he could
not exact forfeits for cattle being driven onto his fields; and though it
annoyed the keeper and made the peasants not afraid to graze their cattle on
his land, he could not keep their cattle as a punishment.
To Pyotr, who was paying a
money-lender 10 per cent a month, he must lend a sum of money to set him free.
But he could not let off peasants who did not pay their rent, nor let them fall
into arrears. It was impossible to overlook the bailiff's not having mown the
meadows and letting the hay spoil; and it was equally impossible to mow those
acres where a young copse had been planted. It was impossible to excuse a
laborer who had gone home in the busy season because his father was dying,
however sorry he might feel for him, and he must subtract from his pay those
costly months of idleness. But it was impossible not to allow monthly rations
to the old servants who were of no use for anything.
Levin knew that when he
got home he must first of all go to his wife, who was unwell, and that the
peasants who had been waiting for three hours to see him could wait a little
longer. He knew too that, regardless of all the pleasure he felt in taking a
swarm, he must forego that pleasure, and leave the old man to see to the bees
alone, while he talked to the peasants who had come after him to the bee-house.
Whether he were acting
rightly or wrongly he did not know, and far from trying to prove that he was,
nowadays he avoided all thought or talk about it.
Reasoning had brought him
to doubt, and prevented him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought
not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the
presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible
courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did
not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.
So he lived, not knowing
and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and what he was living for, and
harassed at this lack of knowledge to such a point that he was afraid of
suicide, and yet firmly laying down his own individual definite path in life.
Part 8 Chapter 11
"Why is it all
being done?" he thought. "Why am I standing here, making them work? What
are they all so busy for, trying to show their zeal before me? What is that old
Matrona, my old friend, toiling for? (I doctored her, when the beam fell on her
in the fire)" he thought, looking at a thin old woman who was raking up
the grain, moving painfully with her bare, sun-blackened feet over the uneven,
rough floor. "Then she recovered, but to-day or to-morrow or in ten years
she won't; they'll bury her, and nothing will be left either of her or of that
smart girl in the red jacket, who with that skilful, soft action shakes the
ears out of their husks. They'll bury her and this piebald horse, and very soon
too," he thought, gazing at the heavily moving, panting horse that kept
walking up the wheel that turned under him. "And they will bury her and Fyodor
the thrasher with his curly beard full of chaff and his shirt torn on his white
shoulders--they will bury him. He's untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and
shouting to the women, and quickly setting straight the strap on the moving
wheel. And what's more, it's not them alone--me they'll bury too, and nothing
will be left. What for?"
He thought this, and at
the same time looked at his watch to reckon how much they thrashed in an hour.
He wanted to know this so as to judge by it the task to set for the day.
"It'll soon be one,
and they're only beginning the third sheaf," thought Levin. He went up to
the man that was feeding the machine, and shouting over the roar of the machine
he told him to put it in more slowly. "You put in too much at a time, Fyodor.
Do you see--it gets choked, that's why it isn't getting on. Do it evenly."
Fyodor, black with the
dust that clung to his moist face, shouted something in response, but still
went on doing it as Levin did not want him to.
Levin, going up to the
machine, moved Fyodor aside, and began feeding the corn in himself. Working on
till the peasants' dinner-hour, which was not long in coming, he went out of
the barn with Fyodor and fell into talk with him, stopping beside a neat yellow
sheaf of rye laid on the thrashing-floor for seed.
Fyodor came from a village
at some distance from the one in which Levin had once allotted land to his
cooperative association. Now it had been let to a former house-porter.
Levin talked to Fyodor
about this land and asked whether Platon, a well-to-do peasant of good
character belonging to the same village, would not take the land for the coming
year.
"It's a high rent; it
wouldn't pay Platon, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," answered the peasant,
picking the ears off his sweat-drenched shirt.
"But how does
Kirillov make it pay?"
"Mituh!" (so the
peasant called the house-porter, in a tone of contempt), "you may be sure
he'll make it pay, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! He'll get his share, however he has
to squeeze to get ill He's no mercy on a Christian. But Uncle Fokanitch"
(so he called the old peasant Platon), "do you suppose he'd flay the skin
off a many Where there's debt, he'll let any one off. And he'll not wring the
last penny out. He's a man too."
"But why will he let
any one off?"
"Oh, well, of course,
folks are different. One man lives for his own wants and nothing else, like
Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly, but Fokanitch is a righteous man.
He lives for his soul. He does not forget God."
"How thinks of God?
How does he live for his soul?" Levin almost shouted.
"Why, to be sure, in
truth, in God's way. Folks are different. Take you now, you wouldn't wrong a
man...."
"Yes, yes,
good-bye!" said Levin, breathless with excitement, and turning round he
took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. At the peasant's words
that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in God's way, undefined but
significant ideas seemed to burst out as though they had been locked up, and
all striving towards one goal, they thronged whirling through his head,
blinding him with their light.
Part 8 Chapter 12
Levin strode along the
highroad, absorbed not so much in his thoughts (he could not yet disentangle
them) as in his spiritual condition, unlike anything he had experienced before.
The words uttered by the
peasant had acted on his soul like an electric shock, suddenly transforming and
combining into a single whole the whole swarm of disjointed, impotent, separate
thoughts that incessantly occupied his mind. These thoughts had unconsciously
been in his mind even when he was talking about the land.
He was aware of something
new in his soul, and joyfully tested this new thing, not yet knowing what it
was.
"Not living for his
own wants, but for God? For what God? And could one say anything more senseless
than what he said? He said that one must not live for one's own wants, that is,
that one must not live for what we understand, what we are attracted by, what
we desire, but must live for something incomprehensible, for God, whom no one
can understand nor even define. What of it? Didn't I understand those senseless
words of Fyodor's? And understanding them, did I doubt of their truth? Did I
think them stupid, obscure, inexact? No, I understood him, and exactly as he
understands the words. I understood them more fully and clearly than I
understand anything in life, and never in my life have I doubted nor can I
doubt about it. And not only I, but every one, the whole world understands
nothing fully but this, and about this only they have no doubt and are always
agreed.
"And I looked out for
miracles, complained that I did not see a miracle which would convince me. A
material miracle would have persuaded me. And here is a miracle, the sole
miracle possible, continually existing, surrounding me on all sides, and I
never noticed it!
"Fyodor says that
Kirillov lives for his belly. That's comprehensible and rational. All of us as
rational beings can't do anything else but live for our belly. And all of a
sudden the same Fyodor says that one mustn't live for one's belly, but must
live for truth, for God, and at a hint I understand him! And I and millions of
men, men who lived ages ago and men living now-- peasants, the poor in spirit
and the learned, who have thought and written about it, in their obscure words
saying the same thing--we are all agreed about this one thing: what we must
live for and what is good. I and all men have only one firm, incontestable,
clear knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be explained by the reason--it is
outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects.
"If goodness has
causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness
either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.
"And yet I know it,
and we all know it.
"What could be a
greater miracle than that?
"Can I have found the
solution of it all? can my sufferings be over?" thought Levin, striding
along the dusty road, not noticing the heat nor his weariness, and experiencing
a sense of relief from prolonged suffering. This feeling was so delicious that
it seemed to him incredible. He was breathless with emotion and incapable of
going farther; he turned off the road into the forest and lay down in the shade
of an aspen on the uncut grass. He took his hat off his hot head and lay
propped on his elbow in the lush, feathery, woodland grass.
"Yes, I must make it
clear to myself and understand," he thought, looking intently at the
untrampled grass before him, and following the movements of a green beetle,
advancing along a blade of couch-grass and lifting up in its progress a leaf of
goat-weed. "What have I discovered?" he asked himself, bending aside
the leaf of goat-weed out of the beetle's way and twisting another blade of
grass above for the beetle to cross over onto it. "What is it makes me
glad? What have I discovered?
"I have discovered
nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the
past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from
falsity, I have found the Master.
"Of old I used to say
that in my body, that in the body of this grass and of this beetle (there, she
didn't care for the grass, she's opened her wings and flown away), there was
going on a transformation of matter in accordance with physical, chemical, and
physiological laws. And in all of us, as well as in the aspens and the clouds
and the misty patches, there was a process of evolution. Evolution from what?
into what?--Eternal evolution and struggle.... As though there could be any
sort of tendency and struggle in the eternal! And I was astonished that in
spite of the utmost effort of thought along that road I could not discover the
meaning of life, the meaning of my impulses and yearnings. Now I say that I
know the meaning of my life: 'To live for God, for my soul.' And this meaning,
in spite of its clearness, is mysterious and marvelous. Such, indeed, is the
meaning of everything existing. Yes, pride," he said to hirnself, turning
over on his stomach and beginning to tie a noose of blades of grass, trying not
to break them.
"And not merely pride
of intellect, but dulness of intellect. And most of all, the deceitfulness;
yes, the deceitfulness of intellect. The cheating knavishness of intellect,
that's it," he said to himself.
And he briefly went
through, mentally, the whole course of his ideas during the last two years, the
beginning of which was the clear confronting of death at the sight of his dear
brother hopelessly ill.
Then, for the first time,
grasping that for every man, and himself too, there was nothing in store but
suffering, death, and forgetfulness, he had made up his mind that life was
impossible like that, and that he must either interpret life so that it would
not present itself to him as the evil jest of some devil, or shoot himself.
But he had not done either,
but had gone on living, thinking, and feeling, and had even at that very time
married, and had had many joys and had been happy, when he was not thinking of
the meaning of his life.
What did this mean? It
meant that he had been living rightly, but thinking wrongly.
He had lived (without being
aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's
milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but
studiously ignoring them.
Now it was clear to him
that he could only live by virtue of the beliefs in which he had been brought
up.
"What should I have
been, and how should I have spent my life, if I had not had these beliefs, if I
had not known that I must live for God and not for my own desires? I should
have robbed and lied and killed. Nothing of what makes the chief happiness of
my life would have existed for me." And with the utmost stretch of
imagination he could not conceive the brutal creature he would have been
himself, if he had not known what he was living for.
"I looked for an
answer to my question. And thought could not give an answer to my question--it
is incommensurable with my question. The answer has been given me by life
itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge
I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given,
because I could not have got it from anywhere.
"Where could I have
got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor
and not oppress him? I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly,
for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not
reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires
us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction
of reason. But loving one's neighbor reason could never discover, because it's
irrational."
Part 8 Chapter 13
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And Levin remembered a scene he had
latelywitnessed between Dolly and her children. The children, left to
themselves, had begun cooking raspberries over the candles and squirting milk
into each other's mouths with a syringe. Their mother, catching them at these
pranks, began reminding them in Levin's presence of the trouble their
mischief gave to the grown-up people, and that this trouble was all for their
sake, and that if they smashed the cups they would have nothing to drink
their tea out of, and that if they wasted the milk, they would have nothing
to eat, and die of hunger.
And Levin had been struck by the
passive, weary incredulity with which the children heard what their mother
said to them. They were simply annoyed that their amusing play had been
interrupted, and did not believe a word of what their mother was saying. They
could not believe it indeed, for they could not take in the immensity of all
they habitually enjoyed, and so could not conceive that what they were
destroying was the very thing they lived by.
"That all comes of itself,"
they thought, "and there's nothing interesting or important about it
because it has always been so, and always will be so. And it's all always the
same. We've no need to think about that, it's all ready. But we want to
invent something of our own, and new. So we thought of putting raspberries in
a cup, and cooking them over a candle, and squirting milk straight into each
other's mouths. That's fun, and something new, and not a bit worse than
drinking out of cups."
"Isn't it just the same that we
do, that I did, searching by the aid of reason for the significance of the
forces of nature and the meaning of the life of man?" he thought.
"And don't all the theories of
philosophy do the same, trying by the path of thought, which is strange and
not natural to man, to bring him to a knowledge of what he has known long
ago, and knows so certainly that he could not live at all without it? Isn't
it distinctly to be seen in the development of each philosopher's theory,
that he knows what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as
positively as the peasant Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly than he, and is
simply trying by a dubious intellectual path to come back to what every one
knows?
"Now then, leave the children to
themselves to get things alone and make their crockery, get the milk from the
cows, and so on. Would they be naughty then? Why, they'd die of hunger! Well,
then, leave us with our passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one
God, of the Creator, or without any idea of what is right, without any idea
of moral evil.
"Just try and build up anything
without those ideas!
"We only try to destroy them,
because we're spiritually provided for. Exactly like the children!
"Whence have I that joyful
knowledge, shared with the peasant, that alone gives peace to my soul? Whence
did I get it?
"Brought up with an idea of God,
a Christian, my whole life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity
has given me, full of them, and living on those blessings, like the children
I did not understand them, and destroy, that is try to destroy, what I live
by. And as soon as an important moment of life comes, like the children when
they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than the children when
their mother scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my
childish efforts at wanton madness are reckoned against me.
"Yes, what I know, I know not by
reason, but it has been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my
heart, by faith in the chief thing taught by the church.
"The church! the church!"
Levin repeated to himself. He turned over on the other side, and leaning on
his elbow, fell to gazing into the distance at a herd of cattle crossing over
to the river.
"But can I believe in all the
church teaches?" he thought, trying himself, and thinking of everything
that could destroy his present peace of mind. Intentionally he recalled all
those doctrines of the church which had always seemed most strange and had
always been a stumblingblock to him.
"The Creation? But how did I
explain existence? By existence? By nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I
explain evil? ...The atonement? . . .
"But I know nothing, nothing,
and I can know nothing but what has been told to me and all men."
And it seemed to him that there was
not a single article of faith of the church which could destroy the chief
thing--faith in God, in goodness, as the one goal of man's destiny. Under
every article of faith of the church could be put the faith in the service of
truth instead of one's desires. And each doctrine did not simply leave that
faith unshaken, each doctrine seemed essential to complete that great
miracle, continually manifest upon earth, that made it possible for each man
and millions of different sorts of men, wise men and imbeciles, old men and
children--all men, peasants, Lvov, Kitty, beggars and kings to understand
perfectly the same one thing, and to build up thereby that life of the soul
which alone is worth living, and which alone is precious to us.
Lying on his back, he gazed up now
into the high, cloudless sky. "Do I not know that that is infinite
space, and that it is not a round arch? But, however I screw up my eyes and
strain my sight, I cannot see it not round and not bounded, and in spite of
my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a solid
blue dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it."
Levin ceased thinking, and only, as
it were, listened to mysterious voices that seemed talking joyfully and
earnestly within him.
"Can this be faith?" he
thought, afraid to believe in his happiness. "My God, I thank
Thee!" he said, gulping down his sobs, and with both hands brushing away
the tears that filled his eyes.
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Part 8 Chapter 14
Levin looked before him and
saw a herd of cattle, then he caught sight of his trap with Raven in the
shafts, and the coachman, who, driving up to the herd, said something to the
herdsman. Then he heard the rattle of the wheels and the snort of the sleek
horse close by him. But he was so buried in his thoughts that he did not even
wonder why the coachman had come for him.
He only thought of that
when the coachman had driven quite up to him and shouted to him. "The
mistress sent me. Your brother has come, and some gentleman with him."
Levin got into the trap and
took the reins. As though just roused out of sleep, for a long while Levin
could not collect his faculties. He stared at the sleek horse flecked with
lather between his haunches and on his neck, where the harness rubbed, stared
at Ivan the coachman sitting beside him, and remembered that he was expecting
his brother, thought that his wife was most likely uneasy at his long absence,
and tried to guess who was the visitor who had come with his brother. And his
brother and his wife and the unknown guest seemed to him now quite different
from before. He fancied that now his relations with all men would be different.
"With my brother there
will be none of that aloofness there always used to be between us, there will
be no disputes; with Kitty there shall never be quarrels; with the visitor,
whoever he may be, I will be friendly and nice; with the servants, with Ivan,
it will all be different."
Pulling the stiff rein and
holding in the good horse that snorted with impatience and seemed begging to be
let go, Levin looked round at Ivan sitting beside him, not knowing what to do
with his unoccupied hand, continually pressing down his shirt as it puffed out,
and he tried to find something to start a conversation about with him. He would
have said that Ivan had pulled the saddle-girth up too high, but that was like
blame, and he longed for friendly, warm talk. Nothing else occurred to him.
"Your honor must keep
to the right and mind that stump," said the coachman, pulling the rein
Levin held.
"Please don't touch
and don't teach me!" said Levin, angered by this interference. Now, as
always, interference made him angry, and he felt sorrowfully at once how
mistaken had been his supposition that his spiritual condition could
immediately change him in contact with reality.
. . .
Pulling the stiff rein and
holding in the good horse that snorted with impatience and seemed begging to be
let go, Levin looked round at Ivan sitting beside him, not knowing what to do
with his unoccupied hand, continually pressing down his shirt as it puffed out,
and he tried to find something to start a conversation about with him. He would
have said that Ivan had pulled the saddle-girth up too high, but that was like
blame, and he longed for friendly, warm talk. Nothing else occurred to him.
"Your honor must keep
to the right and mind that stump," said the coachman, pulling the rein
Levin held.
"Please don't touch
and don't teach me!" said Levin, angered by this interference. Now, as
always, interference made him angry, and he felt sorrowfully at once how
mistaken had been his supposition that his spiritual condition could
immediately change him in contact with reality.
. . .
His ears were filled with
the incessant hum in various notes now the busy hum of the working bee flying
quickly off, then the blaring of the lazy drone, and the excited buzz of the
bees on guard protecting their property from the enemy and preparing to sting.
On the farther side of the fence the old bee-keeper was shaving a hoop for a
tub, and he did not see Levin. Levin stood still in the midst of the beehives
and did not call him.
He was glad of a chance to
be alone to recover from the influence of ordinary actual life, which had
already depressed his happy mood. He thought that he had already had time to
lose his temper with Ivan, to show coolness to his brother, and to talk
flippantly with Katavasov.
"Can it have been
only a momentary mood, and will it pass and leave no trace?" he thought.
But the same instant, going back to his mood, he felt with delight that
something new and important had happened to him. Real life had only for a time
overcast the spiritual peace he had found, but it was still untouched within
him.
Just as the bees, whirling
round him, now menacing him and distracting his attention, prevented him from
enjoying complete physical peace, forced him to restrain his movements to avoid
them, so had the petty cares that had swarmed abouthim from the moment he got
into the trap restricted his spiritual freedom; but that lasted only so long as
he was among them. Just as his bodily strength was still unaffected, in spite
of the bees, so too was the spiritual strength that he had just become aware
of.
Chapter 8 Part 17
Katerina
Alexandrovna?" Levin asked of Agafea Mihalovna, who met them with
kerchiefs and rugs in the hall.
"We thought she was
with you," she said.
"And Mitya?"
"In the copse, he
must be, and the nurse with him."
Levin snatched up the rugs
and ran towards the copse.
In that brief interval of
time the storm-clouds had moved on, covering the sun so completely that it was
dark as an eclipse. Stubbornly, as though insisting on its rights, the wind
stopped Levin, and tearing the leaves and flowers off the lime-trees and
stripping the white birch branches into strange unseemly nakedness, it twisted
everything on one side--acacias, flowers, burdocks, long grass, and tall
tree-tops. The peasant girls working in the garden ran shrieking into shelter
in the servants' quarters. The streaming rain had already flung its white veil
over all the distant forest and half the fields close by, and was rapidly
swooping down upon the copse. The wet of the rain spurting up in tiny drops
could be smelt in the air.
Holding his head bent down
before him, and struggling with the wind that strove to tear the wraps away
from him, Levin was moving up to the copse and had just caught sight of
something white behind the oak-tree, when there was a sudden flash, the whole
earth seemed on fire, and the vault- of heaven seemed crashing overhead.
Opening his blinded eyes, Levin gazed through the thick veil of rain that
separated him now from the copse, and to his horror the first thing he saw was
the green crest of the familiar oak-tree in the middle of the copse uncannily
changing its position. "Can it have been struck?" Levin hardly had
time to think when, moving more and more rapidly, the oak-tree vanished behind
the other trees, and he heard the crash of the great tree falling upon the
others.
The flash of lightning,
the crash of thunder, and the instantaneous chill that ran through him were all
merged for Levin in one sense of terror.
"My God! my God! not
on them!" he said.
And though he thought at
once how senseless was his prayer that they should not have been killed by the
oak which had fallen now, he repeated it, knowing that he could do nothing
better than utter this senseless prayer.
Running up to the place
where they usually went, he did not find them there.
They were at the other end
of the copse under an old lime-tree; they were calling him. Two figures in dark
dresses (they had been light summer dresses when they started out) were
standing bending over something. It was Kitty with the nurse. The rain was
already ceasing, and it was beginning to get light when Levin reached them. The
nurse was not wet on the lower part of her dress, but Kitty was drenched
through, and her soaked clothes clung to her. Though the rain was over, they
still stood in the same position in which they had been standing when the storm
broke. Both stood bending over a perambulator with a green umbrella.
"Alive? Unhurt? Thank
God!" he said, splashing with his soaked boots through the standing water
and running up to them.
Kitty's rosy wet face was
turned towards him, and she smiled timidly under her shapeless sopped hat.
"Aren't you ashamed
of yourself? I can't think how you can be so reckless!" he said angrily to
his wife.
"It wasn't my fault,
really. We were just meaning to go, when he made such a to-do that we had to
change him. We were just . . ." Kitty began defending herself.
Mitya was unharmed, dry,
and still fast asleep.
"Well, thank God! I
don't know what I'm saying!"
They gathered up the
baby's wet belongings; the nurse picked up the baby and carried it. Levin
walked beside his wife, and, penitent for having been angry, he squeezed her
hand when the nurse was not looking.
Chapter 8 Part 18
During the whole of
that day, in the extremely different conversations in which he took part, only
as it were with the top layer of his mind, in spite of the disappointment of
not finding the change he expected in himself, Levin had been all the while
joyfully conscious of the fulness of his heart.
. . .
Although he had been much
interested by Sergey Ivanovitch's views of the new epoch in history that would
be created by the emancipation of forty millions of men of Slavonic race acting
with Russia, a conception quite new to him, and although he was disturbed by
uneasy wonder at being sent for by Kitty, as soon as he came out of the
drawing-room and was alone, his mind reverted at once to the thoughts of the
morning. And all the theories of the significance of the Slav element in the
history of the world seemed to him so trivial compared with what was passing in
his own soul, that he instantly forgot it all and dropped back into the same
frame of mind that he been in that morning.
He did not, as he had done
at other times, recall the whole train of thought--that he did not need. He
fell back at once into the feeling which had guided him, which was connected
with those thoughts, and he found that feeling in his soul even stronger and
more definite than before. He did not, as he had had to do with previous
attempts to find comforting arguments, need to revive a whole chain of thought
to find the feeling. Now, on the contrary, the feeling of joy and peace was
keener than ever, and thought could not keep pace with feeling.
He walked across the
terrace and looked at two stars that had come out in the darkening sky, and
suddenly he remembered. "Yes, looking at the sky, I thought that the dome
that I see is not a deception, and then I thought something, I shirked facing
something," he mused. "But whatever it was, there can be no
disproving it! I have but to think, and all will come clear!"
Justas he was going into
the nurseryhe remembered what it was he had shirked facing. It was that if the
chief proof of the Divinity was His revelation of what is right, how is it this
revelation is confined to the Christian church alone? What relation to this
revelation have the beliefs of the Buddhists, Mohammedans, who preached and did
good too!
It seemed to him that he
had an answer to this question; but he had not time to formulate it to himself
before he went into the nursery.
Part 8 Chapter 19
"Well, what is it
perplexes me?" Levin said to himself, feeling beforehand that the solution
of his difficulties was ready in his soul, though he did not know it yet.
"Yes, the one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the Divinity is
the law of right and wrong, which has come into the world by revelation, and
which I feel in myself, and in the recognition of which--I don't make myself,
but whether I will or not--I am made one with other men in one body of
believers, which is called the church. Well, but the Jews, the Mohammedans, the
Confucians, the Buddhists--what of them?" he put to himself the question
he had feared to face. "Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived
of that highest blessing without which life has no meaning?" He pondered a
moment, but immediately corrected himself. "But what am I
questioning?" he said to himself. "I am questioning the relation to
Divinity of all the different religions of all mankind. I am questioning the
universal manifestation of God to all the world with all those misty blurs.
What am I about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge
beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying
to express that knowledge in reason and words.
"Don't I know that
the stars don't move?" he asked himself, gazing at the bright planet which
had shifted its position up to the topmost twig of the birch-tree. "But
looking at the movements of the stars, I can't picture to myself the rotation
of the earth, and I'm right in saying that the stars move.
"And could the
astronomers have understood and calculated anything, if they had taken into
account all the complicated and varied motions of the earth? All the marvelous
conclusions they have reached about the distances, weights, movements, and
deflections of the heavenly bodies are only founded on the apparent motions of
the heavenly bodies about a stationary earth, on that very motion I see before
me now, which has been so for millions of men during long ages, and was and
will be always alike, and can always be trusted. And just as the conclusions of
the astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not founded on
observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a single meridian and a single
horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if not founded on that
conception of right, which has been and will be always alike for all men, which
has been revealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be trusted in my
soul. The question of other religions and their relations to Divinity I have no
right to decide, and no possibility of deciding."
"Oh, you haven't gone
in then?" he heard Kitty's voice all at once, as she came by the same way
to the drawing-room.
"What is it? you're
not worried about anything?" she said, looking intently at his face in the
starlight.
But she could not have
seen his face if a flash of lightning had not hidden the stars and revealed it.
In that flash she saw his face distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she
smiled at him.
"She
understands," he thought; "she knows what I'm thinking about. Shall I
tell her or not? Yes, I'll tell her." But at the moment he was about to
speak, she began speaking.
"Kostya! do something
for me," she said; "go into the corner room and see if they've made
it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. I can't very well. See if they've put the
new wash-stand in it."
"Very well, I'll go
directly," said Levin, standing up and kissing her.
"No, I'd better not
speak of it," he thought, when she had gone in before him. "It is a
secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words.
"This new feeling has
not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had
dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this
either. Faith--or not faith--I don't know what it is--but this feeling has come
just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.
"I shall go on in the
same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry
discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same
wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I
shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it;
I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall
still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that
can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before,
but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into
it."
