ladly the truth concerning his real nature. As an actor his
ruling passion was vanity, but in his case it was correlated with a
semi-conscious knowledge of the fact that all was not right with him and
his art. It was this that caused him to suffer. His egomaniacal behaviour
and his almost Rousseauesque fear and suspicion of others were only the
external manifestations of his inner discrepancies. But, to repeat what I
have already said, these abnormal symptoms are not in the least
incompatible with Wagner's music, they are rather its very cause, the root
from which it springs.

In reality, therefore, Wagner the man and Wagner the artist were
undoubtedly one, and constituted a splendid romanticist. His music as well
as his autobiography are proofs of his wonderful gifts in this direction.
His success in his time, as in ours, is due to the craving of the modern
world for actors, sorcerers, bewilderers and idealists who are able to
conceal the ill-health and the weakness that prevail, and who please by
intoxicating and exalting. But this being so, the world must not be
disappointed to find the hero of a preceding age explode in the next. It
must not be astonished to find a disparity between the hero's private life
and his "elevating" art or romantic and idealistic gospel. As long as
people will admire heroic attitudes more than heroism, such
disillusionment is bound to be the price of their error. In a truly great
man, life-theory and life-practice, if seen from a sufficiently lofty
point of view, must and do always agree, in an actor, in a romanticist, in
an idealist, and in a Christian, there is always a yawning chasm between
the two, which, whatever well-meaning critics may do, cannot be bridged
posthumously by acrobatic feats _in psychologicis_.

Let anyone apply this point of view to Nietzsche's life and theory. Let
anyone turn his life inside out, not only as he gives it to us in his
_Ecce Homo_, but as we find it related by all his biographers, friends and
foes alike, and what will be the result? Even if we ignore his works--the
blooms which blowed from time to time from his life--we absolutely cannot
deny the greatness of the man's _private practice_, and if we fully
understand and appreciate the latter, we must be singularly deficient in
instinct and in _flair_ if we do not suspect that some of this greatness
is reflected in his life-task.

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI

London, _July 1911_.

THE CASE OF WAGNER: