Sunday, August 14:
R. slept tolerably well, but the irksome weather - constantly cold and gray - annoys him. He works, and today completes page 201. In the newspaper there are again reports of Jew-baiting in Russia, and R. observes that this is all that is left, expression of a people’s strength. He says, “Gobineau is right, they - the Russians - still see themselves as Christians.”
We spend an afternoon at Jouk.’s. Nietzsche’s childish and malicious remarks about it: “How bad a person can be, just in order to make an impression!” The evening passes in chat; among other things, the relationship of the earth to the sun, and that the latter is cooling off and gets its heat from bodies falling into it. R. reads the conclusion of G.’s work. I feel he is right, but it all seems to me rather insignificant in comparison with the death of a great person; if such have to perish, what do masses and celestial bodies matter?