Page 1695 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and
were perfectly satisfied and serene. So that, apart from the
principal question, Levin was tortured by other questions
too. Were these people sincere? he asked himself, or were

they playing a part? or was it that they understood the
answers science gave to these problems in some different,
clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied both
these men’s opinions and the books which treated of these
scientific explanations.
One fact he had found out since these questions had
engrossed his mind, was that he had been quite wrong in
supposing from the recollections of the circle of his young
days at college, that religion had outlived its day, and that
it was now practically non-existent. All the people nearest
to him who were good in their lives were believers. The
old prince, and Lvov, whom he liked so much, and Sergey
Ivanovitch, and all the women believed, and his wife
believed as simply as he had believed in his earliest
childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the Russian
people, all the working people for whose life he felt the
deepest respect, believed.
Another fact of which he became convinced, after
reading many scientific books, was that the men who
shared his views had no other construction to put on

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