Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Eight/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
Levin, on leaving the nursery and finding himself alone, began to follow out his line of thought, in which there had been something obscure.
Instead of going back to the drawing-room, where he heard the sound of voices, he remained on the terrace, and, leaning over the balustrade of the terrace, he looked at the sky. It had grown very dark, and there was not a cloud in the south where he was looking. The clouds were all in the opposite quarter. From time to time it would lighten, and the distant thunder would be heard. Levin listened to the drops of rain falling rhythmically from the lindens, and looked at the stars and then at the Milky Way. Whenever the lightning flashed, then not only the Milky Way but also the bright stars would disappear from his vision; but by the time the thunder sounded they would reappear in their places as if a careful hand had readjusted them in the firmament.
"Well, now what is it that troubles me?" Levin asked himself, already beginning to feel that a resolution of his doubts, though it had not yet become a matter of knowledge, was ready in his soul.
"Yes, there is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation, and of which I am conscious as existing in myself, and in the recognition of them I am in spite of myself, willingly or unwillingly, united with other men into one brotherhood of believers, which is called the Church.
"Yes; but are Hebrews, Confucians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, in the same relation?" he asked himself, recurring to the dilemma which had seemed so portentous to him. "Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of the greatest of blessings, of that which alone gives a meaning to life?"
He paused, but immediately recovered his train of thought.
"What am I asking myself?"
"I am questioning the relation of the various forms of human belief to Divinity. I am questioning the relation of God to the whole universe, with all its nebulae. But what am I doing? And at the moment when knowledge, sure, though inaccessible to reason, is revealed to me, shall I still persist in dragging in logic?"
"Do I not know that the stars do not move?" said he, noticing the change that had taken place in the position of the brilliant planet which he had seen rising over the birches; "but, seeing the stars change place, and not being able to imagine the revolution of the earth, then I should be right in saying that they moved. Could the astronomers have made any calculations, and gained any knowledge, if they had taken into consideration the varied and complicated motions of the earth? Have not their marvelous conclusions as to the distances, the weight, the motions, and revolutions of the celestial bodies all been based on the apparent movements of the stars around a motionless earth,—these very movements which I now witness, as millions of men for centuries have witnessed them, and which can always be verified? And just as the conclusions of the astronomers would have been inaccurate and false if they had not been based on their observations of the heavens such as they appeared relatively to a single meridian and a single horizon, so all my conclusions as to the knowledge of good and evil would be inaccurate and false if they were not founded on that comprehension of good and evil which for all men always has been and always will be one and the same, and which Christianity has revealed to me and which my soul can always verify. The relations of human belief to God must, for me, remain unfathomable; to search them out belongs not to me."
"Haven't you gone in yet?" said Kitty's voice, suddenly. She was on her way to the drawing-room by the way of the terrace. "There's nothing that troubles you, is there?" asked she, looking wistfully up into her husband's face and trying to study its expression by the starlight. By the light of a flash of lightning on the horizon, she saw that he was calm and happy, and she smiled.
"She understands me," thought he. "She knows what I am thinking. Shall I tell her, or not? Yes, I will tell her."
But just as he was about to speak, Kitty broke in.
"Kostia," said she, "do be so kind and go to the corner room and see how they have arranged for Sergyeï Ivanovitch. I don't like to. See if they put in the new washstand properly."
"Certainly, I'll go," answered Levin, rising, and kissing her.
"No; better be silent," thought he, as she went past; "this secret has no importance save for me alone, and words could not explain it. This new feeling has neither changed me nor suddenly enlightened me nor made me happy, as I imagined it would. It is just like my feeling for my son. There is no element of surprise in it. But it is faith .... no, not faith .... I know not what it is. But the feeling stole into my soul through suffering, and there it is firmly established.
"I shall continue to be vexed with Ivan the coachman, and get into useless discussions, and express my thoughts blunderingly. I shall always be blaming my wife for what annoys me, and repenting at once. I shall always feel a certain barrier between the Holy of Holies of my inmost soul, and the souls of others, even my wife's. I shall continue to pray without being able to explain to myself why. But my whole life, every moment of my life, independently of whatever may happen to me, will be, not meaningless as before, but full of the deep meaning which I shall have the power to impress upon it."
THE END