If Levine, like Tolstoy, whose incarnation he is, also became purified in the epilogue to the book, it was because he too was touched by mortality. Previously, "incapable of believing, he was equally incapable of absolute doubt."[12] After he beheld his brother die the terror of his ignorance possessed him. For a time this misery was stifled by his marriage; but it re-awakened at the birth of his firstborn. He passed alternately through crises of prayer and negation. He read the philosophers in vain. He began, in his distracted state, to fear the temptation of suicide. Physical work was a solace; it presented no doubts; all was clear. Levine conversed with the peasants; one of them spoke of the men "who live not for self, but for God." This was to him an illumination. He saw the antagonism between the reason and the heart. Reason preached the ferocious struggle for life; there is nothing reasonable in loving one's neighbour: "Reason has taught me nothing; all that I know has been given to me, revealed to me by the heart."[13] From this time peace returned. The word of the humble peasant, whose heart was his only guide, had led him back to God.... To what God? He did not seek to know. His attitude toward the Church at this moment, as was Tolstoy's for a long period, was humble, and in no wise defiant of her dogmas. "There is a truth even in the illusion of the celestial vault and in the apparent movement of the stars."[14] [1] It is regrettable that the beauty of the poetical conception of the work is often tarnished by the philosophical chatter with which Tolstoy has loaded his work, especially in the later portions. He is determined to make an exposition of his theory of the fatality of history. The pity is that he returns to the point incessantly, and obstinately repeats himself. Flaubert, who "gave vent to cries of admiration" while reading the first two volumes, which he declared "sublime" and "full of Shakespearean things," threw the third volume aside in boredom: "He goes off horribly. He repeats himself, and he philosophises. We see the aristocrat, the author, and the Russian, while hitherto we have seen nothing but Nature and Humanity." (Letter to Tourgenev, January, 1880.) [2] While he was finishing _War and Peace_, in the summer of 1869, he discovered Schopenhauer, and was filled with enthusiasm. "I am convinced that Schopenhauer is the most genial of men. Here is the whole universe reflected with an extraordinary clearness and beauty." (Letter to Fet, August 30, 1869.) [3] "Between Homer and his translators," he says again, "there is the difference between boiled and distilled water and the spring-water broken on the rocks, which may carry the sand along with it as it flows, but becomes more pure and fresh on that account." [4] Papers of Countess Tolstoy (_Vie et Oeuvre)._ [5] It was completed in 1877. It appeared--minus the epilogue--in the _Rousski Viestniki._