t can
be done well and even with a master hand are small. In this department
alone is honesty still possible. Nothing, however, can cure music as a
whole of its chief fault, of its fate, which is to be the expression of
general physiological contradiction,--which is, in fact, to be modern.

The best instruction, the most conscientious schooling, the most thorough
familiarity, yea, and even isolation, with the Old Masters,--all this only
acts as a palliative, or, more strictly speaking, has but an illusory
effect, because the first condition of the right thing is no longer in our
bodies; whether this first condition be the strong race of a Handel or the
overflowing animal spirits of a Rossini. Not everyone has the right to
every teacher: and this holds good of whole epochs.--In itself it is not
impossible that there are still remains of stronger natures, typical
unadapted men, somewhere in Europe: from this quarter the advent of a
somewhat belated form of beauty and perfection, even in music, might still
be hoped for. But the most that we can expect to see are exceptional
cases. From the rule, that corruption is paramount, that corruption is a
fatality,--not even a God can save music.

Epilogue

And now let us take breath and withdraw a moment from this narrow world
which necessarily must be narrow, because we have to make enquiries
relative to the value of _persons_. A philosopher feels that he wants to
wash his hands after he has concerned himself so long with the "Case of
Wagner". I shall now give my notion of what is _modern_. According to the
measure of energy of every age, there is also a standard that determines
which virtues shall be allowed and which forbidden. The age either has the
virtues of _ascending_ life, in which case it resists the virtues of
degeneration with all its deepest instincts. Or it is in itself an age of
degeneration, in which case it requires the virtues of declining life,--in
which case it hates everything that justifies itself, solely as being the
outcome of a plenitude, or a superabundance of strength. AEsthetic is
inextricably bound up with these biological principles: there is decadent
aesthetic, and _classical_ aesthetic,--"beauty in itself" is just as much a
chimera as any other kind of idealism.--Within the narrow sphere of the
so-called moral values, no greater antithesis could be found than that of
_master-morality_ and the morality of _Christian_ valuations: the latter
h