Page 1721 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘That all comes of itself,’ they thought, ‘and there’s
nothing interesting or important about it because it has
always been so, and always will be so. And it’s all always
the same. We’ve no need to think about that, it’s all ready.

But we want to invent something of our own, and new.
So we thought of putting raspberries in a cup, and
cooking them over a candle, and squirting milk straight
into each other’s mouths. That’s fun, and something new,
and not a bit worse than drinking out of cups.’
‘Isn’t it just the same that we do, that I did, searching
by the aid of reason for the significance of the forces of
nature and the meaning of the life of man?’ he thought.
‘And don’t all the theories of philosophy do the same,
trying by the path of thought, which is strange and not
natural to man, to bring him to a knowledge of what he
has known long ago, and knows so certainly that he could
not live at all without it? Isn’t it distinctly to be seen in the
development of each philosopher’s theory, that he knows
what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as
positively as the peasant Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly
than he, and is simply trying by a dubious intellectual path
to come back to what everyone knows?
‘Now then, leave the children to themselves to get
things alone and make their crockery, get the milk from

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