unavoidable. This salvation is pointed out in the powerful scene of the illness of the heroine, when criminals and enemies are transformed into superior beings, into brothers pardoning each other, by mutual forgiveness liberating themselves from lies, faults, and crimes, and thus at once purifying themselves with the full consciousness that pardon has become theirs by right.”
Unfortunately, Dostoevsky did not agree with Tolstoy about the end of the novel, when Levin, the positive character of the story, declares himself hostile to the volunteer movement for Servia. This divergence was caused by the Slavophile tendencies from which Dostoevsky could not emancipate himself.
In opposition to the history of the fallen woman, Anna Karenin, another story of spotless family happiness is developed in which we can trace much of Tolstoy’s own home-life. The third element is the spiritual development of Levin, who, from a sceptic and egoist, little by little is transformed into a Christian, receiving from an artless peasant his faith, the quintessence of which is shortly expressed in the formula, “To live for God and your own soul.”
The religious note now sounded in Tolstoy’s literary work was the echo of a religious process
