Chapter 7 — Anna Karenina

Levin arrives at his half-brother Sergey Koznishev's Moscow rooms ready to ask advice about proposing to Kitty, but Sergey is hosting a professor from Harkov over a fierce dispute about materialism. The fight is fashionable and technical: where do psychological phenomena end and physiological ones begin? Sergey greets Levin with chilly courtesy and barely pauses the argument. Levin sits down to wait, then gets pulled in.

He has read the magazine pieces as science, yet never linked evolution, reflex action, and sociology to his own questions about life and death until he hears these men brush against them and retreat every time. They cite Wurt, Knaust, Pripasov, Keiss; they sharpen distinctions while Levin feels the real point slip away. When they near what matters to him, they dive back into reservations and authorities. Levin finally interrupts: if his senses are annihilated and his body dead, does he exist at all?

The professor flinches as if a bargeman had spoken. Sergey smiles and says they have no right to answer yet, no requisite data. The professor returns to his thread. Levin stops listening and simply waits for the room to empty so he can speak like a person again. His question about existence goes unanswered, and the confession about Kitty still waits for a private minute Sergey has not offered.