Anna Karenina

ergey Ivanovitch, being practiced in argument, did not reply, but at
once turned the conversation to another aspect of the subject.

“Oh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical
computation, of course it’s very difficult to arrive at it. And voting
has not been introduced among us and cannot be introduced, for it does
not express the will of the people; but there are other ways of
reaching that. It is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won’t
speak of those deep currents which are astir in the still ocean of the
people, and which are evident to every unprejudiced man; let us look at
society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse sections of the
educated public, hostile before, are merged in one. Every division is
at an end, all the public organs say the same thing over and over
again, all feel the mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is
carrying them in one direction.”

“Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,” said the prince.
“That’s true. But so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak
before a storm. One can hear nothing for them.”

“Frogs or no frogs, I’m not the editor of a paper and I don’t want to
defend them; but I am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual
world,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, addressing his brother. Levin would
have answered, but the old prince interrupted him.

“Well, about that unanimity, that’s another thing, one may say,” said
the prince. “There’s my son-in-law, Stepan Arkadyevitch, you know him.
He’s got a place now on the committee of a commission and something or
other, I don’t remember. Only there’s nothing to do in it—why, Dolly,
it’s no secret!—and a salary of eight thousand. You try asking him
whether his post is of use, he’ll prove to you that it’s most
necessary. And he’s a truthful man too, but there’s no refusing to
believe in the utility of eight thousand roubles.”

“Yes, he asked me to give a message to Darya Alexandrovna about the
post,” said Sergey Ivanovitch reluctantly, feeling the prince’s remark
to be ill-timed.

“So it is with the unanimity of the press. That’s been explained to me:
as soon as there’s war their incomes are doubled. How can they help
believing in the destinies of the people and the Slavonic races ... and
all that?”

“I don’t care for many of the papers, but that’s unjust,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch.

“I would only make one condition,” pursued the old prince. “Alphonse
Karr said a capital thing before the war with Prussia: ‘You consider
war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be
enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of
every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!’”

“A nice lot the editors would make!” said Katavasov, with a loud roar,
as he pictured the editors he knew in this picked legion.

“But they’d run,” said Dolly, “they’d only be in the way.”

“Oh, if they ran away, then we’d have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips
behind them,” said the prince.

“But that’s a joke, and a poor one too, if you’ll excuse my saying so,
prince,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.

“I don’t see that it was a joke, that....” Levin was beginning, but
Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.

“Every member of society is called upon to do his own special work,”
said he. “And men of thought are doing their work when they express
public opinion. And the single-hearted and full expression of public
opinion is the service of the press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at
the same time. Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but now we
have heard the voice of the Russian people, which is ready to rise as
one man and ready to sacrifice itself for its oppressed brethren; that
is a great step and a proof of strength.”

“But it’s not only making a sacrifice, but killing Turks,” said Levin
timidly. “The people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices
for their soul, but not for murder,” he added, instinctively connecting
the conversation with the ideas that had been absorbing his mind.

“For their soul? That’s a most puzzling expression for a natural
science man, do you understand? What sort of thing is the soul?” said
Katavasov, smiling.

“Oh, you know!”

“No, by God, I haven’t the faintest idea!” said Katavasov with a loud
roar of laughter.

“‘I bring not peace, but a sword,’ says Christ,” Sergey Ivanovitch
rejoined for his part, quoting as simply as though it were the easiest
thing to understand the very passage that had always puzzled Levin
most.

“That’s so, no doubt,” the old man repeated again. He was standing near
them and responded to a chance glance turned in his direction.

“Ah, my dear fellow, you’re defeated, utterly defeated!” cried
Katavasov good-humoredly.

Levin reddened with vexation, not at being defeated, but at having
failed to control himself and being drawn into argument.

“No, I can’t argue with them,” he thought; “they wear impenetrable
armor, while I’m naked.”

He saw that it was impossible to convince his brother and Katavasov,
and he saw even less possibility of himself agreeing with them. What
they advocated was the very pride of intellect that had almost been his
ruin. He could not admit that some dozens of men, among them his
brother, had the right, on the ground of what they were told by some
hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the capital, to say that they
and the newspapers were expressing the will and feeling of the people,
and a feeling which was expressed in vengeance and murder. He could not
admit this, because he neither saw the expression of such feelings in
the people among whom he was living, nor found them in himself (and he
could not but consider himself one of the persons making up the Russian
people), and most of all because he, like the people, did not know and
could not know what is for the general good, though he knew beyond a
doubt that this general good could be attained only by the strict
observance of that law of right and wrong which has been revealed to
every man, and therefore he could not wish for war or advocate war for
any general objects whatever. He said as Mihalitch did and the people,
who had expressed their feeling in the traditional invitations of the
Varyagi: “Be princes and rule over us. Gladly we promise complete
submission. All the labor, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take
upon ourselves; but we will not judge and decide.” And now, according
to Sergey Ivanovitch’s account, the people had foregone this privilege
they had bought at such a costly price.

He wanted to say too that if public opinion were an infallible guide,
then why were not revolutions and the commune as lawful as the movement
in favor of the Slavonic peoples? But these were merely thoughts that
could settle nothing. One thing could be seen beyond doubt—that was
that at the actual moment the discussion was irritating Sergey
Ivanovitch, and so it was wrong to continue it. And Levin ceased
speaking and then called the attention of his guests to the fact that
the storm clouds were gathering, and that they had better be going home
before it rained.