Anna Karenina - Part 8

Ever since, by his beloved brother's deathbed, Levin had first

glanced into the questions of life and death in the light of

these new convictions, as he called them, which had during the

period from his twentieth to his thirty-fourth year imperceptibly

replaced his childish and youthful beliefs--he had been stricken

with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any

knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was. The

physical organization, its decay, the indestructibility of

matter, the law of the conservation of energy, evolution, were

the words which usurped the place of his old belief. These words

and the ideas associated with them were very well for

intellectual purposes. But for life they yielded nothing, and

Levin felt suddenly like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak

for a muslin garment, and going for the first time into the frost

is immediately convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature

that he is as good as naked, and that he must infallibly perish

miserably.

From that moment, though he did not distinctly face it, and still

went on living as before, Levin had never lost this sense of

terror at his lack of knowledge.

He vaguely felt, too, that what he called his new convictions

were not merely lack of knowledge, but that they were part of a

whole order of ideas, in which no knowledge of what he needed was

possible.

At first, marriage, with the new joys and duties bound up with

it, had completely crowded out these thoughts. But of late,

while he was staying in Moscow after his wife's confinement, with

nothing to do, the question that clamored for solution had more

and more often, more and more insistently, haunted Levin's mind.

The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the

answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what

answers do I accept?" And in the whole arsenal of his

convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was

utterly unable to find anything at all like an answer.

He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy shops and

tool shops.

Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every

conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for

light on these questions and their solution.

What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the

majority of men of his age and circle had, like him, exchanged

their old beliefs for the same new convictions, and yet saw

nothing to lament in this, and were perfectly satisfied and

serene. So that, apart from the principal question, Levin was

tortured by other questions too. Were these people sincere? he

asked himself, or were they playing a part? or was it that they

understood the answers science gave to these problems in some

different, clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied

both these men's opinions and the books which treated of these

scientific explanations.