Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART EIGHT CHAPTER 13
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.
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