Page 1698 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to
pieces at once like a house of cards, and it became clear
that the edifice had been built up out of those transposed
words, apart from anything in life more important than

reason.
At one time, reading Schopenhauer, he put in place of
his will the word love, and for a couple of days this new
philosophy charmed him, till he removed a little away
from it. But then, when he turned from life itself to glance
at it again, it fell away too, and proved to be the same
muslin garment with no warmth in it.
His brother Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to read the
theological works of Homiakov. Levin read the second
volume of Homiakov’s works, and in spite of the elegant,
epigrammatic, argumentative style which at first repelled
him, he was impressed by the doctrine of the church he
found in them. He was struck at first by the idea that the
apprehension of divine truths had not been vouchsafed to
man, but to a corporation of men bound together by
love—to the church. What delighted him was the thought
how much easier it was to believe in a still existing living
church, embracing all the beliefs of men, and having God
at its head, and therefore holy and infallible, and from it to
accept the faith in God, in the creation, the fall, the

1697 of 1759