One fact he had found out since these questions had engrossed his
mind, was that he had been quite wrong in supposing from the
recollections of the circle of his young days at college, that
religion had outlived its day, and that it was now practically
non-existent. All the people nearest to him who were good in
their lives were believers. The old prince, and Lvov, whom he
liked so much, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and all the women believed,
and his wife believed as simply as he had believed in his
earliest childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the Russian
people, all the working people for whose life he felt the deepest
respect, believed.
Another fact of which he became convinced, after reading many
scientific books, was that the men who shared his views had no
other construction to put on them, and that they gave no
explanation of the questions which he felt he could not live
without answering, but simply ignored their existence and
attempted to explain other questions of no possible interest to
him, such as the evolution of organisms, the materialistic theory
of consciousness, and so forth.
Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened
that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen
into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that
moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at
that moment fit into the rest of his life.
He could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and
that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly
about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was
mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to
him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been
to desecrate those moments. He was miserably divided against
himself, and strained all his spiritual forces to the utmost to
escape from this condition.