... Corrected Art, it is pretty good; wrote a letter to Maude. A good letter from Galia.
Have been thinking:
1) It always seems to us that we are loved because we are good, but it does not occur to us that we are loved because they who love us are good. This can be seen if you listen to what that miserable, disgusting and vain man says whom with a great effort you have pitied: he says that he is so good you could not have acted otherwise. The same thing, when you are loved.
2) “Lobsters like to be boiled alive.” That is no joke. How often do you hear it, or have said it yourself or are saying it: Man has the capacity of not seeing the suffering which he does not want to see. And he does not want to see the suffering which he himself causes. How often I have heard it said about coachmen who are waiting, about cooks, lackeys, peasants at their work, that they are having a good time—“Lobsters like to be boiled alive.”
Nov. 26. Y. P. If I live.
To-day, Nov. 28, Y. P.
Two days I haven’t written. I am still busy with Art and the preface to Carpenter....
This morning Makovitsky arrived, a nice, mild, clean man. He told me many joyful things about our friends. I went to Yasenki: a letter from Maude, a good one, and from Grot—not a good one.[255]
[All] these days, have not been in a good mood. How to be in Moscow in such a state?
Have been thinking: