unconscious _mind of the people_" (--"when I
realised this, I naturally became a thorough revolutionist"--).

Do not let us forget that, when Hegel and Schelling were misleading the
minds of Germany, Wagner was still young: that he guessed, or rather fully
grasped, that the only thing which Germans take seriously is--"the
idea,"--that is to say, something obscure, uncertain, wonderful; that among
Germans lucidity is an objection, logic a refutation. Schopenhauer
rigorously pointed out the dishonesty of Hegel's and Schelling's
age,--rigorously, but also unjustly, for he himself, the pessimistic old
counterfeiter, was in no way more "honest" than his more famous
contemporaries. But let us leave morality out of the question, Hegel is a
_matter of taste_.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} And not only of German but of European taste!{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} A taste
which Wagner understood!--which he felt equal to! which he has
immortalised!--All he did was to apply it to music--he invented a style for
himself, which might mean an "infinity of things,"--he was _Hegel's_ heir.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}
Music as "Idea."--

And how well Wagner was understood!--The same kind of man who used to gush
over Hegel, now gushes over Wagner, in his school they even _write_
Hegelian.(11) But he who understood Wagner best, was the German youthlet.
The two words "infinity" and "meaning" were sufficient for this: at their
sound the youthlet immediately began to feel exceptionally happy. Wagner
did _not_ conquer these boys with music, but with the "idea":--it is the
enigmatical vagueness of his art, its game of hide-and-seek amid a hundred
symbols, its polychromy in ideals, which leads and lures the lads. It is
Wagner's genius for forming clouds, his sweeps and swoops through the air,
his ubiquity and nullibiety--precisely the same qualities with which Hegel
led and lured in his time!--Moreover in the presence of Wagner's
multifariousness, plenitude and arbitrariness, they seem to themselves
justified--"saved". Tremulously they listen while the _great symbols_ in
his art seem to make themselves heard from out the misty distance, with a
gentle roll of thunder, and they are not at all displeased if at times it
gets a little grey, gruesome and cold. Are they not one and all, like
Wagner himself, on _quite intimate terms_ with bad weather, with German
weather! Wotan is their God, but Wotan is the God of bad weather.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} They
are right, how c