Page 1699 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

redemption, than to begin with God, a mysterious, far-
away God, the creation, etc. But afterwards, on reading a
Catholic writer’s history of the church, and then a Greek
orthodox writer’s history of the church, and seeing that

the two churches, in their very conception infallible, each
deny the authority of the other, Homiakov’s doctrine of
the church lost all its charm for him, and this edifice
crumbled into dust like the philosophers’ edifices.
All that spring he was not himself, and went through
fearful moments of horror.
‘Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life’s
impossible; and that I can’t know, and so I can’t live,’
Levin said to himself.
‘In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is
formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while
and bursts, and that bubble is Me.’
It was an agonizing error, but it was the sole logical
result of ages of human thought in that direction.
This was the ultimate belief on which all the systems
elaborated by human thought in almost all their
ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and
of all other explanations Levin had unconsciously, not
knowing when or how, chosen it, as anyway the clearest,
and made it his own.

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