Anna Karenina (Louise Maude's Translation). Leo Tolstoy

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Chapter 7

      HAVING reached Moscow by a morning train, Levin went to stay at the house of his half-brother Koznyshev, who was older than he, and after changing his clothes entered his brother’s study, intending to tell him why he had come and to ask his advice. But his brother was not alone. A well-known professor of philosophy was with him, who had come specially from Kharkov to settle a dispute that had arisen between them on an important philosophical question. The professor was engaged in a fierce polemic against the materialists, and Sergius Koznyshev, who followed this polemic with interest, on reading the professor’s last article had written to him reproaching him with having conceded too much to the materialists; and the professor had come at once to talk the matter over. The question was the fashionable one, whether a definite line exists between psychological and physiological phenomena in human activity; and if so, where it lies?

      When Levin entered, Sergius Ivanich greeted him with the coldly affable smile he bestowed on everybody and, having introduced him to the professor, went on with the discussion.

      The small spectacled man with the narrow forehead interrupted the conversation a moment to say, ‘how do you do’ to Levin and, paying no further attention to him, went on talking. Levin sat down to wait till the professor should go, but soon became interested in the subject of their conversation.

      He had seen in the papers the articles they were discussing, and had read them because they interested him as a development of the bases of natural science — familiar to him as he had studied in that faculty at the University; but he had never connected these scientific deductions as to man’s animal origin, reflex actions, biology and sociology, with those questions concerning the meaning to himself of life and death, which had of late more and more frequently occurred to him.

      Listening to his brother’s conversation with the professor, he noticed that they connected the scientific question with the spiritual and several times almost reached the latter, but every time they approached this, which seemed to him the most important question, they at once hurriedly retreated and again plunged into the domain of fine subdivisions, reservations, quotations, hints and references to authorities; and he found it difficult to understand what they were talking about.

      ‘I cannot admit,’ said Koznyshev with his usual clear and precise expression and polished style, ‘I cannot on any account agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world is the outcome of impressions. The most fundamental perception — that of existence — is not received through the senses, for there is no special organ to convey that perception.’

      ‘Yes, but they (Wurst and Knaust and Pripasov) will tell you that your conception of existence results from the collective effect of all your sensations and is therefore a result of sensations. Wurst actually says that without the senses there can be no perception of existence.’

      ‘I would maintain the opposite …’ began Koznyshev.

      But here again it seemed to Levin that having reached the most important matter they avoided it; and he made up his mind to ask the professor a question.

      ‘Consequently, if my senses are destroyed, if my body dies, no further existence is possible?’ he asked.

      The professor, vexed and apparently mentally hurt by the interruption, turned to look at this strange questioner who resembled a barge-hauler rather than a philosopher, and then looked at Koznyshev, as if asking, ‘What can one say to this?’

      But Koznyshev, who did not speak with anything like the same effort, or as one-sidedly, as the professor, and had room in his head for an answer to his opponent as well as for comprehension of the simple and natural point of view from which the question arose, smiled and said:

      ‘That question we have as yet no right to decide …’

      ‘We have not the data …’ added the professor and went back to his arguments. ‘No,’ said he; ‘I point out that if as Pripasov definitely states, sensation is based on impressions, we must still carefully distinguish between these two perceptions.’

      Levin listened no longer but sat waiting for the professor to go.