Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Eight/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
These thoughts tormented him with varying intensity, but he could not free himself from them. He read and meditated; but the more he read and meditated, the end desired seemed to grow more and more remote.
During the latter part of his stay in Moscow, and after he reached the country, he became convinced of the uselessness of seeking in materialism an answer to his doubts; and he read over the philosophers whose explanations of life were opposed to materialism,—Plato and Spinoza, and Kant and Schelling, and Hegel and Schopenhauer.
These thoughts seemed to him fruitful while he was reading, or was contrasting their doctrines with those of others, especially with those of a materialistic tendency; but just as soon as he attempted, independently, to apply these guides to some doubtful point, he fell back into the same perplexities as before. The terms "mind," "will", "freedom," "essence," had a certain meaning to his intellect as long as he followed the clew established by the deductions of these philosophers, and allowed himself to be caught in the snare of their subtle distinctions; but when practical life asserted its point of view, this artistic structure fell, like a house built of cards; and it became evident that the edifice was built only of beautiful words, having no more connection than logic with the serious side of life.
Once, as he was reading Schopenhauer, he substituted the term "love" for that which this philosopher calls "will," and this new philosophy consoled him for a few days while he clung to it. But it also proved unsatisfactory when he regarded it from the standpoint of practical life; then it seemed to be the thin muslin without warmth as a dress.
Sergyeï Ivanovitch advised him to read Khomyakof's[1] theological writings: and though he was at first repelled by the excessive affectation of the author's style, and his strong polemic tendency, he was struck by their teachings regarding the Church; he was struck also by the development of the following thought:—
"Man when alone cannot attain the knowledge of theological truths. The true light is kept for a communion of souls who are filled with the same love; that is, for the Church."
He was delighted with the thought: How much easier it is to accept the Church, which united with it all believing people and was endowed with holiness and infallibility, since it had God for its head,—to accept its teachings as to Creation, the Fall, and Redemption, and through it to reach God,—than to begin with God, a far-off, mysterious God, the Creation, and the rest of it.
But, as he read, after Khomyakof, a history of the Church by a Catholic writer, and the history of the Church by an Orthodox writer, and perceived that the Orthodox Greek Church and the Roman Catholic Church, both of them in their very essence infallible, were antagonistic, he saw that he had been deluded by Khomyakof's church-teachings; and this edifice also fell into dust, like the constructions of philosophy.
During this whole spring he was not himself, and passed hours of misery.
"I cannot live without knowing what I am, and why I exist. Since I cannot reach this knowledge, life is impossible," said Levin to himself.
"In the infinitude of time, in the infinitude of matter, in the infinitude of space, an organic cell is formed, exists for a moment, and bursts. That cell is—I."
This was a cruel lie; but it was the sole, the supreme, result of the labor of the human mind for centuries.
It was the final creed on which were founded the latest researches of the scientific spirit; it was the dominant conviction; and Levin, without knowing exactly why, simply because this theory seemed to him the clearest, was involuntarily held by it.
But this conclusion was not merely a lie, it was the cruel jest of some evil spirit,—cruel, inimical, to which it was impossible to submit.
To get away from it was a duty; deliverance from it was in the power of every one, and the one means of deliverance was—death.
And Levin, the happy father of a family, a man in perfect health, was sometimes so tempted to commit suicide, that he hid ropes from sight, lest he should hang himself, and feared to go out with his gun, lest he should shoot himself.
But Levin did not hang himself, or shoot himself, but lived and struggled on.
- ↑ Alekseï Stepanovitch Khomyakof was born in 1804; after serving in the Guard and taking active part in the Turkish campaign, he retired to private life. He wrote several romantic tragedies in verse, also a number of poems of Panslavonic tendencies; he is chiefly remembered as a theological writer, and some of his works have been translated into French and even English. In 1858 he was president of the Moscow Society of the Friends of Russian Literature. He died in 1860.—Ed.