Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part One/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
Coming to Moscow by the morning train, Levin had stopped at the house of his half-brother, Koznuishef. After making his toilet, he went to the library with the intention of telling him why he had come, and asking his advice; but his brother was not alone. He was talking with a famous professor of philosophy who had come up from Kharkof expressly to settle a vexed question which had arisen between them on some very important philosophical subject. The professor was waging a bitter war on materialists, and Sergeï Koznuishef followed his argument with interest; and, having read the professor's latest article, he had written him a letter expressing some objections. He blamed the professor for having made too large concessions to the materialists, and the professor had come on purpose to explain what he meant. The conversation turned on the question then fashionable: Is there a dividing line between the psychical and the physiological phenomena of man's action? and where is it to be found?
Sergeï Ivanovitch welcomed his brother with the same coldly benevolent smile which he bestowed on all, and, after introducing him to the professor, continued the discussion.
The professor, a small man with spectacles, and narrow forehead, stopped long enough to return Levin's bow, and then continued without noticing him further. Levin sat down to wait till the professor should go, but soon began to feel interested in the discussion.
He had read in the reviews articles on this subject, but he had read them with only that general interest which a man who has studied the natural sciences at the university is likely to take in their development; but he had never appreciated the connection that exists between these learned questions of the origin of man, of reflex action, of biology, of sociology, and those touching the significance of life and of death for himself, which had of late been more and more engaging his attention.
As he listened to the discussion between his brother and the professor, he noticed that they agreed to a certain kinship between scientific and psychological questions, that several times they almost took up this subject; but each time that they came near what seemed to him the most important question of all, they instantly took pains to avoid it, and sought refuge in the domain of subtile distinctions, explanations, citations, references to authorities, and he found it hard to understand what they were talking about.
"I cannot accept the theory of Keis," said Sergeï Ivanovitch in his characteristically elegant and correct diction and expression, "and I cannot at all admit that my whole conception of the exterior world is derived from my sensations. The most fundamental concept of being does not arise from the senses, nor is there any special organ by which this conception is produced."
"Yes; but Wurst and Knaust and Pripasof will reply that your consciousness of existence is derived from an accumulation of all sensations, that it is only the result of sensations. Wurst himself says explicitly that where sensation does not exist, there is no consciousness of existence."
"I will say, on the other hand ...." began Sergeï Ivanovitch. ....
But here Levin noticed that, just as they were about to touch the root of the whole matter, they again steered clear of it, and he determined to put the following question to the professor.
"Suppose my sensations ceased, if my body were dead, would further existence be possible?"
The professor, with some vexation, and, as it were, intellectual anger at this interruption, looked at the strange questioner as if he took him for a clown rather than a philosopher, and turned his eyes to Sergeï Ivanovitch as if to ask, "What does this man mean?"
But Sergeï Ivanovitch, who was not nearly so one-sided and zealous a partisan as the professor, and who had sufficient health of mind both to answer the professor and to see the simple and natural point of view from which the question was asked, smiled and said:—
"We have not yet gained the right to answer that question."....
"Our capacities are not sufficient," continued the professor, taking up the thread of his argument. "No, I insist upon this, that if, as Pripasof says plainly, sensations are based upon impressions, we cannot too closely distinguish between the two notions."
Levin did not listen any longer, and waited until the professor took his departure.