Page 1693 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 8

Ever since, by his beloved brother’s deathbed, Levin
had first glanced into the questions of life and death in the
light of these new convictions, as he called them, which
had during the period from his twentieth to his thirty-
fourth year imperceptibly replaced his childish and
youthful beliefs—he had been stricken with horror, not so
much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of
whence, and why, and how, and what it was. The physical
organization, its decay, the indestructibility of matter, the
law of the conservation of energy, evolution, were the
words which usurped the place of his old belief. These
words and the ideas associated with them were very well
for intellectual purposes. But for life they yielded nothing,
and Levin felt suddenly like a man who has changed his
warm fur cloak for a muslin garment, and going for the
first time into the frost is immediately convinced, not by
reason, but by his whole nature that he is as good as
naked, and that he must infallibly perish miserably.
From that moment, though he did not distinctly face it,
and still went on living as before, Levin had never lost this
sense of terror at his lack of knowledge.

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