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peasants, whom he regarded as good and interesting people, and he
was continually observing new points in them, altering his former views
of them and forming new ones. With Sergey Ivanovitch it was quite
the contrary. Just as he liked and praised a country life in comparison
with the life he did not like, so too he liked the peasantry in contradis-
tinction to the class of men he did not like, and so too he knew the
peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to men generally.
In his methodical brain there were distinctly formulated certain as-
pects of peasant life, deduced partly from that life itself, but chiefly
from contrast with other modes of life. He never changed his opinion
of the peasantry and his sympathetic attitude towards them.
In the discussions that arose between the brothers on their views
of the peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got the better of his brother,
precisely because Sergey Ivanovitch had definite ideas about the peas-
ant—his character, his qualities, and his tastes. Konstantin Levin had
no definite and unalterable idea on the subject, and so in their argu-
ments Konstantin was readily convicted of contradicting himself.
I 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 contradic-
tions. With all the condescension of an elder brother he sometimes
explained to him the true import of things, but he derived little satis-
faction from arguing with him because he got the better of him too
easily.
Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense intel-
lect 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 someone to listen to him. His most usual and
natural listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness and
directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardness in leaving
him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself on the grass in
the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting lazily.
“You wouldn’t believe,” he would say to his brother, “what a plea-