Part Eight: Chapter 13

by Leo Tolstoy

　　And Levin remembered a scene he had lately witnessed betweenDolly and her children. The children, left to themselves, hadbegun cooking raspberries over the candles and squirting milkinto each other's mouths with a syringe. Their mother, catchingthem at these pranks, began reminding them in Levin's presence ofthe trouble their mischief gave to the grown-up people, and thatthis trouble was all for their sake, and that if they smashed thecups they would have nothing to drink their tea out of, and thatif they wasted the milk, they would have nothing to eat, and dieof hunger.

　　And Levin had been struck by the passive, weary incredulity withwhich the children heard what their mother said to them. Theywere simply annoyed that their amusing play had been interrupted,and did not believe a word of what their mother was saying. Theycould not believe it indeed, for they could not take in theimmensity of all they habitually enjoyed, and so could notconceive that what they were destroying was the very thing theylived by.

　　"That all comes of itself," they thought, "and there's nothinginteresting or important about it because it has always been so,and always will be so. And it's all always the same. We've noneed to think about that, it's all ready. But we want to inventsomething of our own, and new. So we thought of puttingraspberries in a cup, and cooking them over a candle, andsquirting milk straight into each other's mouths. That's fun,and something new, and not a bit worse than drinking out ofcups."

　　"Isn't it just the same that we do, that I did, searching by theaid of reason for the significance of the forces of nature andthe meaning of the life of man?" he thought.

　　"And don't all the theories of philosophy do the same, trying bythe path of thought, which is strange and not natural to man, tobring him to a knowledge of what he has known long ago, and knowsso certainly that he could not live at all without it? Isn't itdistinctly to be seen in the development of each philosopher'stheory, that he knows what is the chief significance of lifebeforehand, just as positively as the peasant Fyodor, and not abit more clearly than he, and is simply trying by a dubiousintellectual path to come back to what everyone knows?

　　"Now then, leave the children to themselves to get things aloneand make their crockery, get the milk from the cows, and so on.Would they be naughty then? Why, they'd die of hunger! Well,then, leave us with our passions and thoughts, without any ideaof the one God, of the Creator, or without any idea of what isright, without any idea of moral evil.

　　"Just try and build up anything without those ideas!

　　"We only try to destroy them, because we're spiritually providedfor. Exactly like the children!

　　"Whence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the peasant,that alone gives peace to my soul? Whence did I get it?

　　"Brought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my whole lifefilled with the spiritual blessings Christianity has given me,full of them, and living on those blessings, like the children Idid not understand them, and destroy, that is try to destroy,what I live by. And as soon as an important moment of lifecomes, like the children when they are cold and hungry, I turn toHim, and even less than the children when their mother scoldsthem for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childishefforts at wanton madness are reckoned against me.

　　"Yes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has been given tome, revealed to me, and I know it with my heart, by faith in thechief thing taught by the church.

　　"The church! the church!" Levin repeated to himself. He turnedover on the other side, and leaning on his elbow, fell to gazinginto the distance at a herd of cattle crossing over to the river.

　　"But can I believe in all the church teaches?" he thought, tryinghimself, and thinking of everything that could destroy hispresent peace of mind. Itentionally he recalled all thosedoctrines of the church which had always seemed most strange andhad 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 hasbeen told to me and all men."

　　And it seemed to him that there was not a single article of faithof 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 faithin the service of truth instead of one's desires. And eachdoctrine did not simply leave that faith unshaken, each doctrineseemed essential to complete that great miracle, continuallymanifest upon earth, that made it possible for each man andmillions of different sorts of men, wise men and imbeciles, oldmen and children--all men, peasants, Lvov, Kitty, beggars andkings to understand perfectly the same one thing, and to build upthereby that life of the soul which alone is worth living, andwhich 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 around 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 myknowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I seea solid blue dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes tosee beyond it."

　　Levin ceased thinking, and only, as it were, listened tomysterious voices that seemed talking joyfully and earnestlywithin him.

　　"Can this be faith?" he thought, afraid to believe in hishappiness. "My God, I thank Thee!" he said, gulping down hissobs, and with both hands brushing away the tears that filled hiseyes.