Page 1463 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Metrov.
‘What I began precisely was to write a book on
agriculture; but studying the chief instrument of
agriculture, the laborer,’ said Levin, reddening, ‘I could

not help coming to quite unexpected results.’
And Levin began carefully, as it were, feeling his
ground, to expound his views. He knew Metrov had
written an article against the generally accepted theory of
political economy, but to what extent he could reckon on
his sympathy with his own new views he did not know
and could not guess from the clever and serene face of the
learned man.
‘But in what do you see the special characteristics of the
Russian laborer?’ said Metrov; ‘in his biological
characteristics, so to speak, or in the condition in which he
is placed?’
Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this
question with which he did not agree. But he went on
explaining his own idea that the Russian laborer has a
quite special view of the land, different from that of other
people; and to support this proposition he made haste to
add that in his opinion this attitude of the Russian peasant
was due to the consciousness of his vocation to people vast
unoccupied expanses in the East.

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