Part Eight: Chapter 19

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Going out of the nursery and being again alone, Levin went backat once to the thought, in which there was something not clear.

　　Instead of going into the drawing room, where he heard voices, hestopped on the terrace, and leaning his elbows on the parapet, hegazed up at the sky.

　　It was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was looking,there were no clouds. The storm had drifted on to the oppositeside of the sky, and there were flashes of lightning and distantthunder from that quarter. Levin listened to the monotonous dripfrom the lime trees in the garden, and looked at the triangle ofstars he knew so well, and the Milky Way with its branches thatran through its midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way,and even the bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightningdied away, they reappeared in their places as though some handhad flung them back with careful aim.

　　"Well, what is it perplexes me?" Levin said to himself, feelingbeforehand that the solution of his difficulties was ready in hissoul, though he did not know it yet. "Yes, the one unmistakable,incontestable manifestation of the Divinity is the law of rightand wrong, which has come into the world by revelation, and whichI feel in myself, and in the recognition of which--I don't makemyself, but whether I will or not--I am made one with other menin one body of believers, which is called the church. Well, butthe Jews, the Mohammedans, the Confucians, the Buddhists--what ofthem?" he put to himself the question he had feared to face."Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of thathighest blessing without which life has no meaning?" He pondereda moment, but immediately corrected himself. "But what am Iquestioning?" he said to himself. "I am questioning the relationto Divinity of all the different religions of all mankind. I amquestioning the universal manifestation of God to all the worldwith all those misty blurs. What am I about? To meindividually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyondall doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinatelytrying to express that knowledge in reason and words.

　　"Don't I know that the stars don't move?" he asked himself,gazing at the bright planet which had shifted its position up tothe topmost twig of the birch-tree. "But looking at themovements of the stars, I can't picture to myself the rotation ofthe earth, and I'm right in saying that the stars move.

　　"And could the astronomers have understood and calculatedanything, if they had taken into account all the complicated andvaried motions of the earth? All the marvelous conclusions theyhave reached about the distances, weights, movements, anddeflections of the heavenly bodies are only founded on theapparent motions of the heavenly bodies about a stationary earth,on that very motion I see before me now, which has been so formillions of men during long ages, and was and will be alwaysalike, and can always be trusted. And just as the conclusions ofthe astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not foundedon observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a singlemeridian and a single horizon, so would my conclusions be vainand uncertain if not founded on that conception of right, whichhas been and will be always alike for all men, which has beenrevealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be trusted inmy soul. The question of other religions and their relations toDivinity I have no right to decide, and no possibility ofdeciding."

　　"Oh, you haven't gone in then?" he heard Kitty's voice all atonce, as she came by the same way to the drawing-room.

　　"What is it? you're not worried about anything?" she said,looking intently at his face in the starlight.

　　But she could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning hadnot hidden the stars and revealed it. In that flash she saw hisface distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she smiled athim.

　　"She understands," he thought; "she knows what I'm thinkingabout. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I'll tell her." But at themoment he was about to speak, she began speaking.

　　"Kostya! do something for me," she said; "go into the corner roomand see if they've made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. Ican't very well. See if they've put the new wash stand in it."

　　"Very well, I'll go directly," said Levin, standing up andkissing her.

　　"No, I'd better not speak of it," he thought, when she had gonein before him. "It is a secret for me alone, of vital importancefor me, and not to be put into words.

　　"This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy andenlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like thefeeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either.Faith--or not faith--I don't know what it is--but this feelinghas come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has takenfirm root in my soul.

　　"I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan thecoachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinionstactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy ofholies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall stillgo on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful forit; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason whyI pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, mywhole life apart from anything that can happen to me, everyminute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it hasthe positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to putinto it."