Page 1722 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

the cows, and so on. Would they be naughty then? Why,
they’d die of hunger! Well, then, leave us with our
passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one God,
of the Creator, or without any idea of what is right,

without any idea of moral evil.
‘Just try and build up anything without those ideas!
‘We only try to destroy them, because we’re spiritually
provided for. Exactly like the children!
‘Whence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the
peasant, that alone gives peace to my soul? Whence did I
get it?
‘Brought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my
whole life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity has
given me, full of them, and living on those blessings, like
the children I did not understand them, and destroy, that
is try to destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an
important moment of life comes, like the children when
they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less
than the children when their mother scolds them for their
childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at
wanton madness are reckoned against me.
‘Yes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has
been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my
heart, by faith in the chief thing taught by the church.

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