Nor could the mysterious and charming Kitty love such an unattractive man as he considered himself to be, and above all such a simple man, not distinguished in any way. Besides that, his former relations with Kitty - the relations of an adult to a child, because of his friendship with her brother - seemed to him another new obstacle to love. An unattractive, kindly man like himself might, he supposed, be loved as a friend, but to be loved with the love he himself felt for Kitty, one had to be a handsome - and above all a special - man.
He had heard that women often love unattractive, simple people, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself, and he could only love beautiful, mysterious and special women.
Yet, after spending two months alone in the country, he became convinced that this was not one of those loves he had experienced in his early youth; that this feeling would not leave him a moment’s peace; that he could not live without resolving the question whether she would or would not be his wife; and that his despair came only from his imagination - he had no proof that he would be refused. And now he had come to Moscow with the firm determination to propose and to marry if he was accepted. Or ... but he could not think what would become of him if he were refused.
VII
Arriving in Moscow on the morning train, Levin had gone to stay with his older half-brother Koznyshev and, after changing, entered his study, intending to tell him at once what he had come for and to ask his advice; but his brother was not alone. With him was a well-known professor of philosophy, who had actually come from Kharkov to resolve a misunderstanding that had arisen between them on a rather important philosophical question. The professor was engaged in heated polemics with the materialists. Sergei Koznyshev had followed these polemics with interest and, after reading the professor’s last article, had written him a letter with his objections; he had reproached the professor with making rather large concessions to the materialists. And the professor had come at once to talk it over. The discussion was about a fashionable question: is there a borderline between psychological and physiological phenomena in human activity, and where does it lie?12
Sergei Ivanovich met his brother with the benignly cool smile he gave to everyone and, after introducing him to the professor, went on with the conversation.
The small, yellow-skinned man in spectacles, with a narrow brow, turned away from the conversation for a moment to greet Levin and, paying no further attention to him, went on talking. Levin sat down to wait until the professor left, but soon became interested in the subject of the conversation.
Levin had come across the articles they were discussing in magazines, and had read them, being interested in them as a development of the bases of natural science, familiar to him from his studies at the university, but he had never brought together these scientific conclusions about the animal origin of man,13 about reflexes, biology and sociology, with those questions about the meaning of life and death which lately had been coming more and more often to his mind.
Listening to his brother’s conversation with the professor, he noticed that they connected the scientific questions with the inner, spiritual ones, several times almost touched upon them, but that each time they came close to what seemed to him the most important thing, they hastily retreated and again dug deeper into the realm of fine distinctions, reservations, quotations, allusions, references to authorities, and he had difficulty understanding what they were talking about.
‘I cannot allow,’ Sergei Ivanovich said with his usual clarity and precision of expression and elegance of diction, ‘I can by no means agree with Keiss that my whole notion of the external world stems from sense impressions. The fundamental concept of being itself is not received through the senses, for there exists no special organ for conveying that concept.’
‘Yes, but they - Wurst and Knaust and Pripasov -14 will reply to you that your consciousness of being comes from the totality of your sense impressions, that this consciousness of being is the result of sensations. Wurst even says directly that where there are no sensations, there is no concept of being.’
‘I would say the reverse,’ Sergei Ivanovich began ...
But here again it seemed to Levin that, having approached the most important thing, they were once more moving away, and he decided to put a question to the professor.
‘Therefore, if my senses are destroyed, if my body dies, there can be no further existence?’ he asked.
The professor, vexed and as if mentally pained by the interruption, turned to the strange questioner, who looked more like a barge-hauler than a philosopher, then shifted his gaze to Sergei Ivanovich as if to ask: what can one say to that? But Sergei Ivanovich, who spoke with far less strain and one-sidedness than the professor, and in whose head there still remained room enough both for responding to the professor and for understanding the simple and natural point of view from which the question had been put, smiled and said:
‘That question we still have no right to answer ...’
‘We have no data,’ the professor confirmed and went on with his arguments. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I will point out that if, as Pripasov states directly, sensation does have its basis in impression, we must distinguish strictly between these two concepts.’
Levin listened no more and waited until the professor left.
VIII
When the professor had gone, Sergei Ivanovich turned to his brother.
‘Very glad you’ve come. Staying long? How’s the farming?’
Levin knew that his older brother had little interest in farming and that he asked about it only as a concession to him, and therefore he answered only about the sales of wheat and about money.
Levin wanted to tell his brother of his intention to marry and to ask his advice; he was even firmly resolved on it. But when he saw his brother, listened to his conversation with the professor, and then heard the inadvertently patronizing tone with which his brother asked him about farm matters (their mother’s estate had not been divided, and Levin was in charge of both parts), for some reason he felt unable to begin talking with his brother about his decision to marry. He felt that his brother would not look upon it as he would have wished.
‘Well, how are things with your zemstvo?’ asked Sergei Ivanovich, who was very interested in the zemstvo and ascribed great significance to it.
‘I don’t really know ...’
‘How’s that? Aren’t you a member of the board?’
‘No, I’m no longer a member. I resigned,’ replied Konstantin Levin, ‘and I don’t go to the meetings any more.’
‘Too bad!’ said Sergei Ivanovich, frowning.
Levin, to vindicate himself, began to describe what went on at the meetings in his district.
‘But it’s always like that!’ Sergei Ivanovich interrupted. ‘We Russians are always like that. Maybe it’s a good feature of ours - the ability to see our own failings - but we overdo it, we take comfort in irony, which always comes readily to our tongues. I’ll tell you only that if they gave some other European nation the same rights as in our zemstvo institutions - the Germans or the English would have worked their way to freedom with them, while we just laugh.’
‘But what to do?’ Levin said guiltily. ‘This was my last attempt. And I put my whole soul into it. I can’t. I’m incapable.’
‘Not incapable,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, ‘but you don’t have the right view of the matter.’
‘Maybe,’ Levin replied glumly.