Wagner’s graphomania is shown not only by the substance, but also by the outward form of his writings. The reader will have been able to remark in the quotations given what a misuse Wagner makes of italics. He often has whole half-pages printed in spaced letters. Lombroso expressly establishes this phenomenon among graphomaniacs.[195] It is sufficiently explained by the peculiarity of mystical thought, so often set forth in this work. No linguistic form which the mystically degenerate subject can give to his thought-phantoms satisfies him; he is always conscious that the phrases he is writing do not express the mazy processes of his brain; and as he is forced to abandon the attempt to embody these in words, he seeks, by means of notes of exclamation, dashes, dots, and blanks, to impart to his writings more of mystery than the words themselves can express. The irresistible propensity to play on words--another peculiarity of graphomaniacs and imbeciles--is developed to a high degree in Wagner. I will here give only a few examples from the _Art-work of the Future_--p. 56: ‘Thus it [the science of music] acquires through sound, which has become speech ... its most _exalted satisfaction_, and at the same time its most _satisfying exaltation_,’ p. 91: ‘Like a second Prometheus, who from _Thon_ (clay) formed men, Beethoven had striven to form them from _Ton_ (music). Not from clay or music (_Thon_ or _Ton_), but from both of these substances, should man, the image of Zeus, the dispenser of life, be created.’ Special attention may, however, be called to the following astounding passage (p. 103): ‘If fashion or custom permitted us again to adopt, in speech and writing, the genuine and true use of _Tichten_ for _Dichten_ (to compose poetry), we should thus obtain, in the united names of the three primitive human arts, _Tanz_-, _Ton_-, and _Tichtkunst_ (dancing, music, and poetry), a beautifully significant, sensuous image of the essence of this trinity of sisters, viz., a perfect alliteration.... This alliteration would, moreover, be peculiarly characteristic, on account of the position held in it by _Tichtkunst_ (poetry), for only as its last member would _Tichtkunst_ transform the alliteration into rhyme,’ etc.