Anna Karenina

still damp morning paper and began
to read it.
Stepan Arkadyevich took in and read a liberal paper, not an
extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in
spite of the fact that science, art and politics had no special
interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects
which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only
changed them when the majority changed them- or, more strictly
speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of
themselves within him.
Stepan Arkadyevich had not chosen his political opinions or his
views- these political opinions and views had come to him of
themselves- just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and
coat, but simply accepted those that were being worn. And for him,
living in a certain society- owing to the need, ordinarily developed
at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity- to have
views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a
reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were
held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering
liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with
his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything
was wrong, and indeed Stepan Arkadyevich had many debts and was
decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage was
an institution quite out of date, and that it stood in need of
reconstruction, and indeed family life afforded Stepan Arkadyevich
little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which
were so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather
allowed it to be understood, that religion was only a curb to keep
in check the barbarous classes of the people, and indeed Stepan
Arkadyevich could not stand through even a short service without his
legs aching, and could never make out what was the object of all the
terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might
be so very amusing in this world. And with all this Stepan
Arkadyevich, who liked a merry joke, was fond of embarrassing some
plain man by saying that if one were to pride oneself on one's origin,
one ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the founder of the line- the
monkey. And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevich,
and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for
the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading
article, which maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to
raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all
conservative elements, and that the government ought to take
measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary,
"in our opinion the danger lies not in that imaginary revolutionary
hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress,"
etc., etc. He