Page:The spirit of place, and other essays, Meynell, 1899.djvu/112



might do somewhat to control the personal habits for which ungenerous observant men are inclined to dislike one another. It has done little. As to literature, this has had the most curiously diverse influence upon the human sensitiveness to habit. Tolstoi's perception of habits is keener than a child's, and he takes them uneasily, as a child does not. He holds them to be the occasion, if not the cause, of hatred. Anna Karénina, as she drank her coffee, knew that her sometime lover was dreading to hear her swallow it, and was hating the crooking of her little finger as she held her cup. It is impossible to live in a world of habits with such an apprehension of habits as this.

It is no wonder that Tolstoi denies to other men unconsciousness, and even preoccupation. With him perception never lapses, and he will not describe a murderer as rapt away by