40.
Wagner's art is absolutely the art of the age; an æsthetic age would have rejected it. The more subtle people amongst us actually do reject it even now. The coarsifying of everything Æsthetic.—Compared with Goethe's ideal it is very far behind. The moral contrast of these self-indulgent burningly loyal creatures of Wagner, acts like a spur, like an irritant: and even this sensation is turned to account in obtaining an effect.
41.
What is it in our age that Wagner's art expresses? That brutality and most delicate weakness which exist side by side, that running wild of natural instincts, and nervous hyper-sensitiveness, that thirst for emotion which arises from fatigue and the love of fatigue.—All this is understood by the Wagnerites.
42.
Stupefaction or intoxication constitute all Wagnerian art. On the other hand I could mention instances in which Wagner stands higher, in which real joy flows from him.
43.
The reason why the figures in Wagner's art behave so madly, is because he greatly feared lest people would doubt that they were alive.
44.