Wagner is a great corrupter of music. With it, he found the means of stimulating tired nerves,--and in this way he made music ill. In the art of spurring exhausted creatures back into activity, and of recalling half-corpses to life, the inventiveness he shows is of no mean order. He is the master of hypnotic trickery, and he fells the strongest like bullocks. Wagner's _success_--his success with nerves, and therefore with women--converted the whole world of ambitious musicians into disciples of his secret art. And not only the ambitious, but also the _shrewd...._ Only with morbid music can money be made to-day; our big theatres live on Wagner. 6. --Once more I will venture to indulge in a little levity. Let us suppose that Wagner's _success_ could become flesh and blood and assume a human form; that, dressed up as a good-natured musical savant, it could move among budding artists. How do you think it would then be likely to express itself?-- My friends, it would say, let us exchange a word or two in private. It is easier to compose bad music than good music. But what, if apart from this it were also more profitable, more effective, more convincing, more exalting, more secure, more _Wagnerian?... Pulchrum est paucorum hominum._ Bad enough in all conscience! We understand Latin, and perhaps we also understand which side our bread is buttered. Beauty has its drawbacks: we know that. Wherefore beauty then? Why not rather aim at size, at the sublime, the gigantic, that which moves the _masses?_--And to repeat: it is easier to be titanic than to be beautiful; we know that.... We know the masses, we know the theatre. The best of those who assemble there,--German youths, horned Siegfrieds and other Wagnerites, require the sublime, the profound, and the overwhelming. This much still lies within our power. And as for the others who assemble there,--the cultured _crétins,_ the _blasé_ pigmies, the eternally feminine, the gastrically happy, in short the people--they also require the sublime, the profound, the overwhelming. All these people argue in the same way. "He who overthrows us is strong; he who elevates us is godly; he who makes us wonder vaguely is profound."--Let us make up our mind then, my friends in music: we do want to overthrow them, we do want to elevate them, we do want to make them wonder vaguely. This much still lies within our powers. In regard to the process of making them wonder: it is here that our notion of "style" finds its starting-point. Above all, no thoughts! Nothing is more compromising than a thought! But the state of mind which _precedes_ thought, the labour of the thought still unborn, the promise of future thought, the world as it was before God created it --a recrudescence of chaos.... Chaos makes people wonder ... In the words of the master: infinity but without melody.