But the kind of falsity which is characteristic of the Bayreuthians is not exceptional to-day. We all know the hybrid concept of the Christian gentleman. This _innocence_ in contradiction, this “clean conscience” in falsehood, is rather modern _par excellence_, with it modernity is almost defined. Biologically, modern man represents a _contradiction of values_, he sits between two stools, he says yea and nay in one breath. No wonder that it is precisely in our age that falseness itself became flesh and blood, and even genius! No wonder _Wagner_ dwelt amongst us! It was not without reason that I called Wagner the Cagliostro of modernity.… But all of us, though we do not know it, involuntarily have values, words, formulæ, and morals in our bodies, which are quite _antagonistic_ in their origin—regarded from a physiological standpoint, we are _false_.… How would a _diagnosis of the modern soul_ begin? With a determined incision into this agglomeration of contradictory instincts, with the total suppression of its antagonistic values, with vivisection applied to its most _instructive_ case. To philosophers the “Case of Wagner” is a _windfall_—this essay, as you observe, was inspired by gratitude. NIETZSCHE _CONTRA_ WAGNER THE BRIEF OF A PSYCHOLOGIST Preface The following chapters have been selected from past works of mine, and not without care. Some of them date back as far as 1877. Here and there, of course, they will be found to have been made a little more intelligible, but above all, more brief. Read consecutively, they can leave no one in any doubt, either concerning myself, or concerning Wagner: we are antipodes. The reader will come to other conclusions, too, in his perusal of these pages: for instance, that this is an essay for psychologists and _not_ for Germans.… I have my readers everywhere, in Vienna, St Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and New York—but _I have none_ in Europe’s Flat-land—Germany.… And I might even have something to say to Italians whom I love just as much as I … _Quousque tandem, Crispi_ … Triple alliance: a people can only conclude a _mésalliance_ with the “Empire.”… Friedrich Nietzsche. Turin, _Christmas 1888_. Wherein I Admire Wagner.