this music, like any other, did not know how to speak about itself save ambiguously: for _musica is a woman...._ We must not let ourselves be misled concerning this state of things, by the fact that at this very moment we are living in a reaction, _in the heart itself_ of a reaction. The age of international wars, of ultramontane martyrdom, in fact, the whole interlude-character which typifies the present condition of Europe, may indeed help an art like Wagner's to sudden glory, without, however, in the least ensuring its _future prosperity._ The Germans themselves have no future.... WE ANTIPODES. Perhaps a few people, or at least my friends, will remember that I made my first plunge into life armed with some errors and some exaggerations, but that, in any case, I began with _hope_ in my heart. In the philosophical pessimism of the nineteenth century, I recognised--who knows by what by-paths of personal experience--the symptom of a higher power of thought, a more triumphant plenitude of life, than had manifested itself hitherto in the philosophies of Hume, Kant and Hegel!--I regarded _tragic_ knowledge as the most beautiful luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most noble, most dangerous kind of prodigality; but, nevertheless, in view of its overflowing wealth, as a justifiable _luxury._ In the same way, I began by interpreting Wagner's music as the expression of a Dionysian powerfulness of soul. In it I thought I heard the earthquake by means of which a primeval life-force, which had been constrained for ages, was seeking at last to burst its bonds, quite indifferent to how much of that which nowadays calls itself culture, would thereby be shaken to ruins. You see how I misinterpreted, you see also, what I _bestowed_ upon Wagner and Schopenhauer--myself.... Every art and every philosophy may be regarded either as a cure or as a stimulant to ascending or declining life: they always presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferers:--those that suffer from _overflowing vitality,_ who need Dionysian art and require a tragic insight into, and a tragic outlook upon, the phenomenon life,--and there are those who suffer from _reduced_ vitality, and who crave for repose, quietness, calm seas, or else the intoxication, the spasm, the bewilderment which art and philosophy provide. Revenge upon life itself--this is the most voluptuous form of intoxication for such indigent souls!... Now Wagner responds quite as well as Schopenhauer to the twofold cravings of these people,--they both deny life, they both slander it but precisely on this account they are my antipodes.--The richest creature, brimming over with vitality,--the Dionysian God and man, may not only allow himself to gaze upon the horrible and the questionable; but he can also lend his hand to the terrible deed, and can indulge in all the luxury of destruction, disaggregation, and negation,--in him evil, purposelessness and