"Those who have read this book [War and Peace] will remember how the great heart of the author sought, even in the past of his people, the eternal secret of love. In Anna Karenina we find, already distinctly set forth in the personality of Levine, the aspirations of Tolstoi himself, which become more and more conscious and defined. The criticism of modern society, and all its institutions, its science and its literature; the tendency towards the simple and natural life of the people, original and novel ideas in regard to religion—all this is beginning, in the book in question, to take in the heart and brain of the writer a more or less precise form."