The professor and the soul

Levin is staying at his half-brother Sergius Ivanich Koznyshev's house, and goes to his study meaning to ask his advice. Koznyshev is not alone: a professor of philosophy has come from Kharkov to settle their disagreement over how much ground should be conceded to the materialists, the fashionable question of whether a line divides psychological from physiological phenomena. Levin, who studied natural science at the University, has read the articles but has never joined man's animal origin and reflex action to the questions of life and death that have lately been pressing on him. He notices that each time the two men approach the spiritual question they hurry back into sub-divisions and authorities, and asks his own: if his body dies, is no further existence possible? The professor, vexed, looks at this questioner who resembles a barge-hauler. Koznyshev says they have no right yet to decide it. Levin stops listening.

Levin's question — does anything survive the body — is the one the novel will spend eight parts answering, and it is planted here as a rudeness that stops a conversation. Tolstoy sets the terms early: professional philosophy retreats into distinctions, and the answer, when it comes, will arrive through a peasant rather than an argument.