Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART EIGHT CHAPTER 16
“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 goodhumoredly.
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
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