Anna Karenina

from Part 8, Chapter 13
by Leo Tolstoy
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"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 life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity has given me, full of them, and living on these blessings, like the children I did not understand them, and destroy, want to destroy, what 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 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 now 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 rounded vault? But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it as not round and infinite, and, in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a firm blue vault, 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.