s acknowledge that music "may be a recreation," that it may
"enliven," that it may "give pleasure." _Never let us give pleasure!_--we
shall be lost if people once again think of music hedonistically.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} That
belongs to the bad eighteenth century.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} On the other hand, nothing would
be more advisable (between ourselves) than a dose of--_cant, sit venia
verbo_. This imparts dignity.--And let us take care to select the precise
moment when it would be fitting to have black looks, to sigh openly, to
sigh devoutly, to flaunt grand Christian sympathy before their eyes. "Man
is corrupt who will save him? _what will save him?_" Do not let us reply.
We must be on our guard. We must control our ambition, which would bid us
found new religions. But no one must doubt that it is _we_ who save him,
that in _our_ music alone salvation is to be found.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} (See Wagner's essay,
"Religion and Art.")

7.

Enough! Enough! I fear that, beneath all my merry jests, you are beginning
to recognise the sinister truth only too clearly--the picture of the
decline of art, of the decline of the artist. The latter, which is a
decline of character, might perhaps be defined provisionally in the
following manner: the musician is now becoming an actor, his art is
developing ever more and more into a talent for _telling lies_. In a
certain chapter of my principal work which bears the title "Concerning the
Physiology of Art,"(9) I shall have an opportunity of showing more
thoroughly how this transformation of art as a whole into histrionics is
just as much a sign of physiological degeneration (or more precisely a
form of hysteria), as any other individual corruption, and infirmity
peculiar to the art which Wagner inaugurated: for instance the
restlessness of its optics, which makes it necessary to change one's
attitude to it every second. They understand nothing of Wagner who see in
him but a sport of nature, an arbitrary mood, a chapter of accidents. He
was not the "defective," "ill-fated," "contradictory" genius that people
have declared him to be. Wagner was something _complete_, he was a typical
_decadent_, in whom every sign of "free will" was lacking, in whom every
feature was necessary. If there is anything at all of interest in Wagner,
it is the consistency with which a critical physiological condition may
convert itself, step by step, conclusion after conclusion, into a method,
a for