ume, for we haven't proved it, that artistic
intuitions can sense in music a weakening of moral strength and
vitality, and that it is sensed in relation to Wagner and not sensed in
relation to Bach and Beethoven. If, in this common opinion, there is a
particle of change toward the latter's art, our theory stands--mind
you, this admits a change in the manner, form, external expression,
etc., but not in substance. If there is no change here towards the
substance of these two men, our theory not only falls but its failure
superimposes or allows us to presume a fundamental duality in music,
and in all art for that matter.

Does the progress of intrinsic beauty or truth (we assume there is such
a thing) have its exposures as well as its discoveries? Does the
non-acceptance of the foregoing theory mean that Wagner's substance and
reality are lower and his manner higher; that his beauty was not
intrinsic; that he was more interested in the repose of pride than in
the truth of humility? It appears that he chose the representative
instead of the spirit itself,--that he chose consciously or
unconsciously, it matters not,--the lower set of values in this
dualism. These are severe accusations to bring--especially when a man
is a little down as Wagner is today. But these convictions were present
some time before he was banished from the Metropolitan. Wagner seems to
take Hugo's place in Faguet's criticism of de Vigny that, "The staging
to him (Hugo) was the important thing--not the conception--that in de
Vigny, the artist was inferior to the poet"; finally that Hugo and so
Wagner have a certain pauvrete de fond. Thus would we ungenerously make
Wagner prove our sum! But it is a sum that won't prove! The theory at
its best does little more than suggest something, which if it is true
at all, is a platitude, viz.: that progressive growth in all life makes
it more and more possible for men to separate, in an art-work, moral
weakness from artistic strength.

3

Human attributes are definite enough when it comes to their
description, but the expression of them, or the paralleling of them in
an art-process, has to be, as said above, more or less arbitrary, but
we believe that their expression can be less vague if the basic
distinction of this art-dualism is kept in mind. It is morally certain
that the higher part is founded, as Sturt suggests, on something that
has to do with those kinds of unselfish human interests which we call
kn