Monday, December 6:
For me a sleepless night meant the loss of our breakfast conversation. R. waited for me till 11, then had breakfast alone. He came up to me around 12, when I was still alternating between sleeping and waking. He reads to me, partly to our horror, partly to our great amusement, passages from Schelling’s transcendental philosophy, in which God is treated more or less as a tumbler doll.
At 1 o’clock friend Stein; great joy at seeing him again, particularly because of Fidi; hopes that it will after all be possible to maintain the connection, that Stein will come to us for a few months each year and later Fidi go to him in Halle. He intends to lecture on Schopenhauer at Halle, this at R.’s urging, for he considers it essential that the doctrine be used as a basis for education. Friend Joukowsky has also returned home from Dresden. Stories of all kinds.
In the evening R. comes back to his cosmogonical ideas and says, among other things, that in Africa one can actually see from the natives how they came into existence as awkward afterthoughts, other expressions, too, which I have unfortunately forgotten. In the shape of America he sees a repetition of the shape of the other world, but slimmer, more complete. He is in very gay spirits, and when our sudden departure from Naples is mentioned, he says, “It was when I got corns on my face.” Then he says that he is in the youth of his 3rd period of life.