le idea on the
subject, and so in their arguments Konstantin was readily
convicted of contradicting himself.

In Sergey Ivanovitch's eyes his younger brother was a capital
fellow, _with his heart in the right place_ (as he expressed it in
French), but with a mind which, though fairly quick, was too much
influenced by the impressions of the moment, and consequently
filled with contradictions. With all the condescension of an
elder brother he sometimes explained to him the true import of
things, but he derived little satisfaction from arguing with him
because he got the better of him too easily.

Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense
intellect and culture, as generous in the highest sense of the
word, and possessed of a special faculty for working for the
public good. But in the depths of his heart, the older he
became, and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more and
more frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of
working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly
devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something
--not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a
lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse
which drives a man to choose someone out of the innumerable
paths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he knew
his brother, the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many
other people who worked for the public welfare, were not led by
an impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but reasoned
from intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to
take interest in public affairs, and consequently took interest
in them. Levin was confirmed in this generalization by observing
that his brother did not take questions affecting the public
welfare or the question of the immortality of the soul a bit more
to heart than he did chess problems, or the ingenious
construction of a new machine.

Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with his
brother, because in summer in the country Levin was continually
busy with work on the land, and the long summer day was not long
enough for him to get through all he had to do, while Sergey
Ivanovitch was taking a holiday. But though he was taking a
holiday now, that is to say, he was doing no writing, he was so
used to intellectual activity that he liked to put into concise
and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to
have