Anna Karenina

nd Levin remembered a scene he had lately witnessed 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
everyone 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
stumbling block 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.