Friday, 21 December 1877

After the studio I went to the Swiss girls', and Breslau and I argued about the different theories of creation!!! The girl is afflicted with Darwinism — but since that system is proven false... no doubt false, very logical, very learned, but it is like a drawing whose starting point was wrongly taken. And it is so unfortunate when a man employs his logic, his science, his talent in the service of false things — the more talent one has, the better one succeeds in passing them off as scientific truths, which is truly terrible.
It is not the cause of the Good Lord that I am pleading — He would lose nothing by having created the races gradually, if one wishes it to be He who is the creator — He or nature, Isis and Osiris, Phta, heaven, call it as you will.
People far more respectable than I have demonstrated what I feel by instinct.
In the evening I posed for Kennedy — a sketch.
Father stayed with us and we had a merry time.
Berthe and her sister and little Zurlo came to us, and now I must wash my face, then go to bed so as not to be tired tomorrow at the Opera — and so as not to prove Monsieur Darwin right.