Two brothers and the peasants

Koznyshev comes to stay in the country instead of going abroad, and Levin, glad of him, is not at ease with him. For Levin the country is where one lives, rejoices, suffers and labours; for Koznyshev it is rest from work and a useful antidote to depravity, good precisely because one need do nothing there. Their views of the peasants differ in the same way: Koznyshev knows and loves them as a class, draws proofs of his own understanding from every conversation, and never alters his opinion, so he wins every argument; Levin, who counts them as partners in a common undertaking and cannot say whether he likes them any more than he can say whether he likes human beings, contradicts himself constantly. The older he gets the more Levin suspects that his brother's capacity for public good is not a virtue but a lack — of heart, of the power to want one path above all others. Koznyshev takes not a thought in his brain for pleasure; Levin worries about where the manure is being dropped.

The essay chapter that sets up the whole Levin movement of Part Three, arguing that fixed opinions win debates and that winning is the symptom. Tolstoy's charge against Koznyshev is precise and devastating: he does not take immortality more to heart than a game of chess. Levin's inability to answer whether he likes the peasants is offered as the healthier condition.