, which is so careless as to be unworthy of such an artist.

66.

In Wagner, as in Brahms, there is a blind denial of the healthy, in his
followers this denial is deliberate and conscious.

67.

Wagner's art is for those who are conscious of an essential blunder in the
conduct of their lives. They feel either that they have checked a great
nature by a base occupation, or squandered it through idle pursuits, a
conventional marriage, &c. &c.

In this quarter the condemnation of the world is the outcome of the
condemnation of the ego.

68.

Wagnerites do not wish to alter themselves in any way, they live
discontentedly in insipid, conventional and brutal circumstances--only at
intervals does art have to raise them as by magic above these things.
Weakness of will.

69.

Wagner's art is for scholars who do not dare to become philosophers: they
feel discontented with themselves and are generally in a state of obtuse
stupefaction--from time to time they take a bath in the _opposite
conditions_.

70.

I feel as if I had recovered from an illness: with a feeling of
unutterable joy I think of Mozart's _Requiem_. I can once more enjoy
simple fare.

71.

I understand Sophocles' development through and through--it was the
repugnance to pomp and pageantry.

72.

I gained an insight into the injustice of _idealism_, by noticing that I
avenged myself on Wagner for the disappointed hopes I had cherished of
him.

73.

I leave my loftiest duty to the end, and that is to thank Wagner and
Schopenhauer publicly, and to make them as it were take sides against
themselves.

74.

I counsel everybody not to fight shy of such paths (Wagner and
Schopenhauer). The wholly _unphilosophic_ feeling of remorse, has become
quite strange to me.

_Wagner's Effects._

75.

We must strive to oppose the false after-effects of Wagner's art. If he,
in order to create Parsifal, is forced to pump fresh strength from
religious sources, this is not an example but a danger.

76.

I entertain the fear that the effects of Wagner's art will ultimately pour
into that torrent which takes its rise on the other side of the mountains,
and which knows how to flow even over mountains.(18)

FOOTNOTES

1 It should be noted that the first and second editions of these
essays on Wagner appeared in pamphlet form, for which the above
first preface was