Wagner almost discovered the magic which can be wrought even now by means of music which is both incoherent and _elementary._ His consciousness of this attains to huge proportions, as does also his instinct to dispense entirely with higher law and _style._ The elementary factors--sound, movement, colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music--suffice. Wagner never calculates as a musician with a musician's conscience: all he strains after is effect, nothing more than effect. And he knows what he has to make an effect upon!--In this he is as unhesitating as Schiller was, as any theatrical man must be; he has also the latter's contempt for the world which he brings to its knees before him. A man is an actor when he is ahead of mankind in his possession of this one view, that everything which has to strike people as true, must not be true. This rule was formulated by Talma: it contains the whole psychology of the actor, it also contains--and this we need not doubt--all his morality. Wagner's music is never true. --But it is supposed to be so: and thus everything is as it should be. As long as we are young, and Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as a great landlord in the realm of sound. We admire him in very much the same way as young Frenchmen admire Victor Hugo--that is to say, for his "royal liberality." Later on we admire the one as well as the other for the opposite reason: as masters and paragons in economy, as _prudent_ amphitryons. Nobody can equal them in the art of providing a princely board with such a modest outlay.--The Wagnerite, with his credulous stomach, is even sated with the fare which his master conjures up before him. But we others who, in books as in music, desire above all to find _substance,_ and who are scarcely satisfied with the mere representation of a banquet, are much worse off. In plain English, Wagner does not give us enough to masticate. His recitative--very little meat, more bones, and plenty of broth--I christened "_alia genovese_": I had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this remark, but rather the _older recitativo,_ the _recitativo secco._ And as to Wagnerian _leitmotif,_ I fear I lack the necessary culinary understanding for it. If hard pressed, I might say that I regard it perhaps as an ideal toothpick, as an opportunity of ridding one's self of what remains of one's meal. Wagner's "arias" are still left over. But now I shall hold my tongue. 9.