Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/1056

 milking, instead of playing pranks, they would die of hunger.

"There, now! give us over to our own ideas and pas- sions, with no knowledge of our Creator, without the consciousness of moral good and evil, and what would be the result? We reason because we are spiritually satiated. We are children. Whence comes this joyous knowledge, which I share with the muzhik, and which alone gives me serenity of spirit? Where did I get it? Here am I, a Christian, brought up in the faith, surrounded by the blessings of Christianity, living upon these spiritual blessings without being conscious of them; and like children I have been reasoning, or at least trying to reason, out the meaning of life.

"But in the serious moments of life, in the hour of suffering, just as when children are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and, like these same children whom their mother reprimands for their childish faults, I feel that my childish efforts to get out of the mad circle of reasoning have done me no good.

"Yes, reason has taught me nothing. What I know has been given, revealed to me through the heart, and especially through faith in the teachings of the Church.

"The Church, the Church?" repeated Levin, turning over again, and, as he rested his head on his hand, looking at a herd of cattle down by the river at a distance. "Can I really believe all that the Church teaches?" said he, to test himself, and to bring up everything that might destroy his present feeling of security. He expressly called to mind the Church teachings which more than all had seemed strange to him, and disgusted him.

"Creation? Yes; but how did I myself explain existence? existence? the devil? sin? How did I explain evil? redemption?"

"But I know nothing and can know nothing except what is told me and every one else."

And now it seemed to him that not one of these Church dogmas was inimical to the great objects of life,—faith in God, in goodness.

On the contrary, all tended to produce that greatest