-fourth year imperceptibly
replaced his childish and youthful beliefs--he had been stricken
with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any
knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was. The
physical organization, its decay, the indestructibility of
matter, the law of the conservation of energy, evolution, were
the words which usurped the place of his old belief. These words
and the ideas associated with them were very well for
intellectual purposes. But for life they yielded nothing, and
Levin felt suddenly like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak
for a muslin garment, and going for the first time into the frost
is immediately convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature
that he is as good as naked, and that he must infallibly perish
miserably.

From that moment, though he did not distinctly face it, and still
went on living as before, Levin had never lost this sense of
terror at his lack of knowledge.

He vaguely felt, too, that what he called his new convictions
were not merely lack of knowledge, but that they were part of a
whole order of ideas, in which no knowledge of what he needed was
possible.

At first, marriage, with the new joys and duties bound up with
it, had completely crowded out these thoughts. But of late,
while he was staying in Moscow after his wife's confinement, with
nothing to do, the question that clamored for solution had more
and more often, more and more insistently, haunted Levin's mind.

The question was summed up for him thus: "If I do not accept the
answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what
answers do I accept?" And in the whole arsenal of his
convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was
utterly unable to find anything at all like an answer.

He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy shops and
tool shops.

Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every
conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for
light on these questions and their solution.

What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the
majority of men of his age and circle had, like him, exchanged
their old beliefs for the same new 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 th