Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Eight/Chapter 8

by Leo Tolstoy

CHAPTER VIII

Ever since that moment when, as he sat beside his dying brother. Levin had examined the problem of life and death in the light of the new convictions, as he called them, which from the age of twenty to thirty-four years had taken the place of his childhood's beliefs, he was terrified not only at death, but at life; because it seemed to him that he had not the slightest knowledge of its origin, its purpose, its reason, its nature. Our organism and its destruction, the indestructibility of matter, the laws of the conservation and development of forces, were words which were substituted for the terms of his early faith. These words, and the scientific theories connected with them, were doubtless interesting from an intellectual point of view, but they stood for nothing in the face of real life.

And Levin suddenly felt in the position of a man who in cold weather had exchanged his warm shuba for a muslin garment, and who for the first time should indubitably, not with his reason, but with his whole being, become persuaded that he was absolutely naked, and inevitably destined to perish miserably.

From that time, without in the least changing his outward life, and though he did not like to confess it, even to himself, Levin never ceased to feel a terror of his ignorance.

Moreover, he vaguely felt that what he called his convictions not only came from his ignorance, but were idle for helping him to a clearer knowledge of what he needed.

At first his marriage, with its new joys and its new duties, completely blotted out these thoughts; but they came back to him, with increasing persistence demanding an answer, after his wife's confinement, when he lived in Moscow without any serious occupation.

The question presented itself to him in this way:—

"If I do not accept the explanations offered me by Christianity on the problem of my existence, then what answer shall I find?"

And he scrutinized the whole arsertal of his scientific convictions, and found no answer whatever to his questions, and nothing like an answer.

He was in the position of a man who seeks to find food in a toy-store or a gun-shop.

Involuntarily and unconsciously he sought now in every book, in every conversation, and in every person whom he met, some sympathy with these questions and their solution.

More than by anything else, he was surprised and puzzled by the fact that the men of his class, who for the most part had, like himself, substituted science for religion, seemed to experience not the least moral suffering, but to live entirely satisfied and content. Thus in addition to the main question there were others which tormented him: Were these men sincere? Were they not hypocrites. Or did they understand more clearly than he did the answer science gave to these troublesome questions? And he took to studying these men, and books which might contain the solutions which he so desired.

One thing which he had discovered, however, since these questions had begun to occupy him, was that he had made a gross error in taking up with the idea of his early university friends, that religion had outlived its day, and no longer existed. The best people whom he knew were believers,—the old prince, Lvof, of whom he was so fond, Sergyeï Ivanovitch, and all women had faith; and his wife believed just as he had believed when he was a child, and nine-tenths of the Russian people—all people whose lives inspired the greatest respect—were believers.

Another strange thing was that, as he read many books, he became convinced that the men whose opinions he shared did not attach to them any importance; and that without explaining anything they simply ignored these questions, without an answer to which life seemed to him impossible, and took up others which were to him utterly uninteresting,—such, for example, as the development of the organism, the mechanical explanation of the soul, and others.

Moreover, at the time of his wife's illness, he had what to him seemed a most extraordinary experience: he, the unbeliever, had prayed, and prayed with sincere faith. But as soon as the danger was over, he felt that he could not give that temporary disposition any abiding-place in his life.

He could not avow that the truth appeared to him then, but that he was mistaken now; because, as he began calmly to analyze his feelings, they eluded him. He could not avow that he had been deceived then, because he had experienced a temporary spiritual condition; and if he pretended that he had succumbed to a moment of weakness, he would sully a sacred moment. He was in a state of internal conflict, and he strove with all the strength of his nature to free himself from it.