Anna Karenina - Part 8 - Page 24/52

Whether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and

far from trying to prove that he was, nowadays he avoided all

thought or talk about it.

Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented him from seeing

what he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not

think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence

of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two

possible courses of action was the better and which was the

worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once

aware of it.

So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing

what he was and what he was living for, and harassed at this lack

of knowledge to such a point that he was afraid of suicide, and

yet firmly laying down his own individual definite path in life.