Friday, October 28:
R. feels a little unwell. He reads Lubbock on primitive man but soon loses interest in it. At lunch all kinds of trouble with the children, Loldi somewhat willful and rude toward me, R. feeling she has some cause; I am sad.
We drive to the theater, inspect the royal box, and then visit friend Feustel, who talks with great confidence about the performances next year. In the evening we discuss Pastor Stoecker's speech with friend Wolz., and R. says what is bad about it is the appeal, 'If you are against progress, vote for us.' R. feels foreigners would be quite unable to understand that.
Then R. plays pieces from Marschner's Der Vampyr, and we are astonished by the vulgarity of the text (for instance, in the vampire's aria) and the naive plagiarisms of Weber and Mozart, though there are signs of talent, such as the seduction scene. 'But it is a good thing to go through a work like this, so that one doesn't make too much of it.' How it makes one cherish Weber's delicacy! R. finds the beginning of the overture superb, and he plays it - leaving aside the wrong notes - with a rousing sense of its character.
Late in the evening R. comes back to the subject of male and female and says the essence of the female is sympathy with the male in his struggles against the outside world; if the man perishes, the sympathy ceases, and the woman becomes hard. R. spends a long time looking at the illustration of the socialists' trial in the J. Z. and says that the accused look like madmen, the judges very evil, and the watching audience - a dismal sight. By contrast, the F. Blätter provides much amusement and gives rise to many plays on words, such as 'As Othello I visit many hotellos,' etc.
But during our drive we are in a serious mood, and as the carriage turns away from the theater, R. asks me, 'What would you have replied to Pilate when he asked, 'What is truth?' - something which cannot be said to a liar?' I: 'I think I should also have kept silent, etc.' He: 'Quite right, truth lies not in words, but in deeds; its center of gravity lies wholly in morality.'
Following this conversation, we drive down the Bürgerreuth highway in silence, in a glorious sunset. This part of our countryside is particularly dear to R., and today - because of our departure? - it seems to me more than usually transfigured. Before the music in the evening R. read to us a passage from the preface to Kant's Theory of the Heavens dealing with the purpose of creation; the way it is described pleases him. A picture of two Mongolians in a new installment of India brings from him - on account of their strange faces - the exclamation 'This is what our conquerors will look like.'