Wagner’s assertion that the natural evolution of each art leads to the surrender of its independence and to its fusion with other arts is looked upon by Nordau as delirious. To prove this he falls back on biology, and points out that nature develops from the simple to the complex, that originally similar parts develop into separate organs of different structure and independent functions. Why on earth should there necessarily be an analogy between the growth of plants and animals, and between the development of the arts? Any other writer who had been unfortunate enough to indulge in such profound mysticism would certainly have been condemned by Nordau to the lunatic asylum. Even if we admit the analogy as permissible, he gains very little by it: for when he speaks of nature as always proceeding from the simple to the complex he describes exactly the development of the arts into the opera—music, poetry, and dancing representing each the simple, and the opera representing the complex. What would Nordau think of a mad doctor who based his verdict of insanity on such reasoning? The attentive student of Nordau’s impeachment of Wagner cannot fail to see that, despite all his efforts to brand him as a degenerate, he has only succeeded in throwing the grand power of that genius into bolder relief. Instead of inducing us to look upon Wagner as a sign of degeneration, he has impressed us with the fact that Wagner’s work constitutes an awakening from the slumber in which Philistinism and conventionalism have so long enwrapped humanity, and opened a new vista for the ennobling mission of the arts. While we must reject Nordau’s clinging to that pedantry and conventionalism which limit the mission of the arts to the production of isolated pictures for public galleries and the salons of modern Mæcenases, statues for public places, and compositions of _Kammer-musik_ for drawing-rooms, we at the same time do not believe that the opera, even as regenerated by the genius of a Wagner, is the highest expression of the arts. There will come a day when the illusions of the stage will be realities, when we shall dispense with the dusty sceneries, the garish footlights, the painted faces, the prudish trappings, which go to make up the mirage which heralds an ideal future. The arts, instead of being relegated to the nursery in order to make room for science, as Nordau prophesies, will become its aim. When science has given us health, strength, and beauty, an extended power over nature’s forces, when it has solved the terrible social problem on the basis of liberty and progress, then will science be the handmaiden of the arts. Then will the answer be granted to the poet’s prayer: “Oh! for a muse of fire that shall ascend The highest heaven of invention; A kingdom for a stage; princes to act; And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”