ty 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.

"The church! the church!" Levin repeated to himself. He turned
over on the other side, and leaning on his elbow, fell to gazing
into the distance at a herd of cattle crossing over to the river.

"But can I believe in all the church teaches?" he thought, trying
himself, and thinking of everything that could destroy his
present peace of mind. Intentionally he recalled all those
doctrines of the church which had always seemed most strange and
had always been a stumbling block to him.

"The Creation? But how did I explain existence? By existence?
By nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I explain evil?...
The atonement?...

"But I know nothing, nothing, and I can know nothing but what has
been told to me and all men."

And it seemed to him that there was not a single article of faith
of the church which could destroy the chief thing--faith in God,
in goodness, as the one goal of man's destiny.

Under every article of faith of the church could be put the faith
in the service of truth instead of one's desires. And each
doctrine did not simply leave that faith unshaken, each doctrine
seemed essential to complete that great miracle, continually
manifest upon earth, that made it possible for each man and
millions of different