CHAPTER VIII

_RICHARD WAGNER_

We all have met with people who, without being degenerates to any great extent repeat stories of their own invention so persistently, that they end by believing in them. In this kind of folly, if folly it be, there is a great deal of method when indulged in by people who are anxious, for some reason or another, that their views should _nolens volens_ be accepted by others. When one comes to deal with the intellectual development of a nation or a race, and wishes to prove certain forms of progress or retrogression, it is half the battle to bring your opponent to believe in the existence of some special, well-defined psychological phenomenon or social tendency, and to give it a high-sounding name. What would astrology have been without the horoscope, or alchemy without the philosopher’s stone? What would modern statecraft be without such terms as “foreign competition” and “international jealousy”? What would German socialism be without the term “revolutionary socialism”? What would bi-metallism be without the phrase, “the stability of the currency”? And what would Nordau’s theory of degeneration be without the “mystic movement”?

He takes for granted that there is such a thing as mysticism, as well as that it constitutes a movement, and then endeavours to explain everything as partaking of or resulting from it. According to him, Wagnerism is the reappearance in Germany of that romanticism which originated there, and afterwards travelled through France and England. It reappeared, according to him, through Wagner’s degeneration, and spread in virtue of the degeneration of his contemporaries. He says that he finds in Wagner a greater abundance of degeneration than in all the other degenerates put together. “The stigmata of his morbid condition,” he says, “are united in him in the most complete and most luxuriant development.”

This is a bold assertion, and will appear bolder yet to any one who has read his chapter in _The Richard Wagner Cult_. Wagner’s dislike of the Jews, which Nordau calls anti-semitism, and his views on social questions, which our alienist calls Anarchism, are pointed out as unfailing stigmata of degeneration. One of the methods of our alienist is to notice and make much of certain extreme opinions in people who are actually made, or who have made themselves, intensely objectionable, and then to point out that similar opinions and ideas are present in the mind of some celebrity, and then to draw the conclusion that this celebrity must be on the road to madness. Either he does not see himself, or he trusts his readers will not see, that by such methods every man in the world might be proved to some extent deranged. He forgets that exaggerated virtues become vices, and that some of the most prominent men in the world have had idiosyncrasies to which they have even given considerable play without at all coming within the range of degeneration.

The anti-semitism in Germany, which Nordau ascribes to degeneration—probably with the approval of the majority of Jews—in that country, as well as in Russia, France, and the United States, springs from causes so patent, that no man who aspires to be considered an acute observer of his time should ignore them.

Let us instance Russia first—a country where the latest wave of anti-semitism first took a violent form. Can any one who is acquainted with the typical financial history of the Russian villages wonder that the Jews in Russia should be looked upon as a scourge? What has happened in thousands of such villages is this. An energetic, clever Jew settles amongst the Russian _moujiks_, who combine thriftlessness and love of an easy life with many of the good qualities and innocence of primitive races. The Jew is bent on making money, and caring little about the opinion the community may form of him, and too brave to fear their enmity, he has no hesitation in taking up any kind of business, however unpopular it may render him. He willingly becomes a publican, a pawnbroker, a land-grabber, and, in combination with other Jews, a speculator and cornerer. His attention to business, his self-denial, his hardheartedness to his customers, his knowledge of the tricks of trades and finance, the ready support he gets from his co-religionists in other districts in carrying out his purposes, however derogatory they may be to the community—all this soon renders him the master of the situation. The stranger, who at first in such a friendly spirit invited his customer to drink his _vodka_ and borrow his money, is soon transformed into a harsh tyrant who, by hook or by crook, came into possession of all the belongings of the villagers, and calmly makes use of their destitution to extort from them their future earnings. The Jews, as a rule, on the one hand, and the Russians on the other, form diametrically opposite views on this social phenomenon. The Jews say, and Nordau evidently sides with them, that this successful village tyrant has done nothing to deserve blame. He has only been more frugal, more thrifty, and more intelligent than the Russians, who were bound by their inferior character to go to the wall; and that if Russia hates the Jews, it is with that hatred against successful men common in human failures.

The ruined Russian peasants simply know that the Jew who came among them is rich and they are poor, that what used to be their possessions form his wealth, and that the means he has used to obtain it would not have been used by them under any circumstances. They think they have been robbed, and that they and their descendants would be robbed by the Jew and his descendants if they cannot be freed from him. Hence anti-semitism in Russia.

Nordau has no right to call the anti-semitists degenerate, even though they be wrong in their logic, because he is wrong himself, and he cannot point to ruined homes and wrecked lives as a substantial foundation for his opinion.

In Germany the Jews play the same part, though under modified conditions. Though bad, German laws and German officialism are better than those of Russia, and the German people do not so easily fall a prey to the strong-minded Jew. But, on the other hand, the Jews make themselves obnoxious in other ways, both in Germany and Austria. Here they act everywhere as trade-spoilers. The Jew undersells everybody. He stops short of nothing, save breaking the law, to extend his business. He is obsequious to those in power and in wealth, but relentlessly hard to competitors and to creditors. Many of them will take the greatest possible advantage of other people’s, especially Christians’, misfortunes, and will gain their end by deliberately wounding other people’s feelings. It is the Jews who generally pay the lowest wages, and who are found in the ranks of the sweaters.

We hasten to state that there are in Germany a great many exceptions to the types here referred to. But either they are not numerous enough, or the Jew must possess some inability to show his better qualities, for no one acquainted with the circumstances in Germany would deny that the Jew-haters there look upon their enemies in exactly the light we have described.

But this is not all. Accusations are levelled against the Jews which are partly untrue, or else vastly exaggerated, and those who make them should be called upon to prove their statements. Whether they may be able to do this or not, the fact remains that the Jew-hating Germans believe that the Jews have formed one vast conspiracy, the object of which is to secure for the Jews large advantages at the expense of the Christians. It is alleged that the methods employed are as follows: The Jews are supposed to meet in secret conclave, in which those of them who desire to accomplish any special aim state it to their brethren, who then combine in assisting them. Such aims may be the possession of a house or a shop in the hands of a Christian, the ruin of some obnoxious competitor, the miscarriage of some public auction of goods coveted by some Jew, and so on. With such ideas prevailing, how is it possible to ascribe Jew hatred to degeneracy? Such logic is all the more surprising as it remains a palpable fact that the fortunes of the Jewish houses are growing apace, that Jews seem to succeed no matter what they undertake, that they certainly are more charitable to their co-religionists than to Christians, and for that matter than Christians are to Christians, while at the same time poverty and misery are on the increase among the Christian masses.

Nordau does a bad service to the Jews of Germany when he attempts to lay the blame for anti-semitism exclusively at the door of the Christians and calls them degenerates, while he entirely exempts the Jews. This partiality, coupled with his contempt for the masses and his belief in government by the more strong-minded men, points to a future state in Germany in which the Jews should be the ruling aristocracy. His unfairness thus, instead of abating the persecution against the Jews, might easily be construed into an excuse for a more bitter anti-semitism.

This error of his is due to his besetting habit of taking his postulates from doubtful authorities and of drawing illogical conclusions. It is a common thing for men who have been successful in one branch of knowledge, and who are regarded as authorities in a specialty by others, to jump at rash conclusions with regard to subjects on which authorities differ or do not exist. This is exactly what Nordau does when he comes to consider facts which cannot be rightly understood without a clear insight into sociology and other social sciences. He then evinces impossible opinions, and gives us to understand that he has a ready-made scheme for reconstructing society on a new and perfect plan.

It is not difficult to see what this plan is. It is quasi-Collectivism and Communism. He wishes the State to become the universal heir of all fortunes and the universal benefactor. The absurdity and impracticability of this scheme—which, by the way, is always the very one that first enters the head of a young student who tackles social science for the first time—are obvious. As however he does not insist upon his scheme in his volume _Degeneration_, it would be out of place to explain its hollowness here. We have referred to it simply to show that his superficiality regarding the anti-semitic question is not incidental. It will be evident to anybody who tackles this question with an unprejudiced mind that the Christians in Russia and Germany are utterly at fault when they believe that they can escape from their troubles by persecuting Jews, and also that the Jews are utterly at fault when they attribute anti-semitism to the jealousy and wickedness of the Christians. Both these parties, as well as Nordau himself, allow their feelings instead of their intelligence to determine these questions. But they are not necessarily degenerate.

The true explanation of the imbroglio is as follows: The Jewish race, which might have acquired a few unpleasant characteristics by no fault of their own but through a cruel and unjust persecution for centuries, is a highly-gifted one, distinguishing itself by strong-mindedness, great will-power, remarkable powers of endurance, morality, and singleness of purpose. Deprived, in a great number of countries of social rights and the privileges of citizenship, they have for centuries found only one way open to them by which they could attain to independence, security, and consideration—the accumulation of wealth. In modern times, when social institutions and laws tend to render wealth almost omnipotent, its acquisition has become to this people of greater importance than ever. Success in a business, however small, may mean millions in the future, while failure may result in life-long misery. Consequently, the Jews apply themselves to their trades or professions with an energy and assiduity such as few races can command.

They therefore represent a power in the development of humanity which is bound to produce far-reaching effects. Whether these will constitute a blessing or a curse to the nations among whom the Jews live and work depends entirely on the institutions and the laws of those countries. If these are such as to render the oppression of the poor, the workers, the borrowers, the tenants—in fact, all the sections of society on which the Jews now batten,—a condition for the thriving of the capitalists, the employers, the lenders, the tenants, and the fortunate classes in general—if the laws are of this description, then the Jews will be conspicuous as the oppressors of others. But if, on the contrary, the laws and institutions of the countries are such as to render the success of the upper classes and leaders of trade, industry, and finance dependent on the welfare of the workers, then the Jews will be the most liberal lenders, the most generous employers, and the most accommodating landlords. In fact, the question resolves itself simply into one of demand and supply; as long as there is a greater demand for Jews’ services than the Jews are able to supply, the latter will dominate; but when there are more services offered on the part of the Jews than the people can avail themselves of, these can dictate terms to the Jews. And this relation of demand and supply depends on laws and institutions.

Even if Nordau’s prejudices prevented him from taking this view of the anti-semitic question—which is not only the correct one but which greatly facilitates the solution of the question, and thus would prevent the disgraceful persecution which in many countries threatens to become more serious—he might have found, by simply looking at the actualities, in the different countries that anti-semitism prevails in an inverse ratio to good government. He could not have asked for a better proof of the fact that laws and institutions are at fault and not the Jews or the Christians. To take only the two extremes: in Russia, where the Government, from the people’s point of view, is probably the worst in Europe, anti-semitism is most vehement; in England, where the Government is more influenced by the consideration of the good of the people than in any other country, there is scarcely any animosity against the Jews, and this in spite of the efforts of certain politicians to promote it.

The reception of Dr. Stöcker, when he attempted to address a public meeting in London in favour of anti-semitism, would have convinced Nordau, had he been present, what a poor chance anti-semitism has in a country where the working classes are free to follow those instincts which Nordau fears so much. We may relate that hardly had the proceedings begun when the hall was filled by labourers, who, contrary to their habit on such occasions, had not changed their dress, and who hooted Dr. Stöcker, stormed the platform, overpowered the anti-semitists, and cleared the hall.

In face of the fact that anti-semitic questions turn so entirely on prejudices and mistakes, one cannot surely accuse Wagner of madness because he sided with what may be called a national party, and approved of a movement the object of which was to stay the progressive influence of an alien race over the destiny of the Fatherland.

In several places in his work Nordau insists upon considering the anarchist tendencies of our age as among the stigmata of degeneration. If he were right, we should be face to face with a calamity likely to end in the brutalization or the annihilation of our race. For Anarchism in some form of other is certainly spreading rapidly. That there is Anarchism and Anarchism seems of little importance to our alienist in his eagerness to draw his preconceived conclusions. He reasons as usual. Starting from the hypothesis that some of the criminal Anarchists were, to some extent, mentally deranged and morally weak, he arrives at the conclusion that Wagner was a degenerate, because he shared to some extent with the Anarchists the hatred of our present social system and of the injurious effects it produces on the masses of the people.

Though Nordau dwells far more lengthily on poetry, and art, and cognate subjects than on the graver question of Anarchism, there is no point on which it behoves us better to set him and his readers right than that of the relation between Anarchism and degeneration.

The Anarchist is not a cause. He is an effect. There is a feeling in the consciousness of almost every human being, be he a believer in a divine religion or in Nordau’s religion of humanity, that our race is destined to a high degree of development, and to a far larger sphere of happiness than now falls to the lot of most of us. This yearning for happiness, for elevation, is not only a feeling but a conviction consequent upon our knowledge of the past stages of the development of man.

There was a time when fervent religious beliefs induced patience and resignation under suffering, and when our future destiny was left in the hands of Providence. But the French encyclopædists, and after them the modern scientists, have done their best to undermine this belief and to show us that the destiny of future generations will largely depend upon us and themselves, that science is placing in our hands an ever-growing control over the forces of nature, and that if humanity suffers it is because the present generation has not the moral courage to throw off religious scruples and boldly shape their own destiny.

These doctrines, in unison with the general progressive spirit of the age, led to revolutions and political reforms. In the absence of a providence the nations shifted their faith to constitutional governments. But the new faith did not last long. The more democratic the governments were the more they applied the principles of Collectivism—they yielded to those instincts which Nordau calls the social instincts. Under the pretext of exercising paternal kindness towards the people, the governments demanded paternal rights. Communistic and socialistic ideas spread among the masses, who, well aware that a providence without power would be no providence at all, wanted to render the State omnipotent. When however socialistic features were introduced into the constitutions, matters did not mend, but the freedom of the individual was more and more infringed.

When detailed schemes of further socialistic development were made public, a great many freedom-loving men and women beheld with terror that the chief cause of the favour with which the progressing socialism was regarded was to be found in the plan of complete subjection of the individual under government.

This discovery naturally caused a reaction in favour of liberty. Those who became Anarchists felt keenly the claws of the State upon them, and they foresaw that more socialism would aggravate their grievances. They took for granted that humanity had now tried all forms of government and that they had all failed, and that the salvation of the race could only be found in absolute personal freedom.

The first extreme Russian Nihilists paved the way for the Anarchist movement in Europe. They, like their first followers in France, had only one idea, that of destroying at all costs the present order of things, and thus clearing the ground for a new system to grow up free from the tyranny of governments, aristocracies, militarism, landlordism, and capitalism.

They saw that an immense mass of poor, hard-working, honest people with but a small chance of happiness for themselves, but imbued with a strong desire to see the whole of humanity happy, were oppressed by a small number of selfish people who arrogated to themselves the lion’s share of the good things of life. They found that this band of selfish people attained to their immense power by a social system of slow and gradual growth. Tracing all the troubles to the few egotists whom they regarded as criminals, they imagined that by destroying them and the system, the unselfish and humanitarian aspirations of the masses would blossom forth free and unvitiated.

The Anarchists were thus the backbone of the religion of humanity, only their faith was stronger than that of Nordau, for they were willing to sacrifice all, including life, for the good of the race.

If these people were, and are, degenerate, then every mistake in reasoning is a sign of degeneration, and faith in humanity and its destiny is the beginning of madness.

When Nordau designates Wagner as an Anarchist, he evidently ignores the fact that there are two kinds of Anarchists, the violent ones just described, and the moderate or constitutional ones. The latter call themselves simply Anarchists. Their numbers are growing rapidly in France, as well as in England, and in both these countries Nordau would be surprised at their moderation and common sense. The movement they represent is a reaction against the socialistic tendencies, and their programme is not violence and destruction, but the gradual abolition of all harmful and useless legislation. It is true that so far they have no precise policy. But such special measures as are advocated—partly in France, partly in England, and partly in the United States—seem to be founded on clear and thorough reasoning, and when their leading principle is compared with the shallow chatter of Socialists and Communists of every school it appears as wisdom itself.

What all these people believe, what they long for, and what they hope for, is exactly what Wagner believed, longed for, and hoped for. He saw in Philistinism, in official tyranny, in police government, and in legal trammels standing in the way of trades, industries, and arts, so many impediments to the realization of the best instincts and the highest aspirations of humanity. Whatever opinions he held, they can only be judged by the few exasperated exclamations he gave vent to with regard to the corruption of modern society. It is not likely that he, with such immense works on hand, should have given sufficient attention to social questions to allow him to express himself in learned terms. But what he said and wrote on the subject shows clearly that the foundation of his social views was trust in humanity, in the sanctity of nature, and in the ennobling power of liberty. Can any one with a true love of art imagine an artist without such a creed?

What was more natural than that, fêted and praised as he was, he should have a good opinion of his own talent and consider himself a great man? If for this he deserved to be suspected of megalomania, what are we to say about other celebrities, mediocrities, and nonentities, who imagine themselves demi-gods because they happen to be the sons of their fathers, to be born in purple, or to have a title attached to their name?

Nordau is extremely hard on those who have sung the praises of Wagner, and insinuates that they have been actuated by base motives when they have not been absolutely degenerated. According to him, admiration for Wagner’s works is a sure sign of mental unsoundness. And yet this same Nordau finds reasons for praising Wagner’s genius which a host of his panegyrists have overlooked. He says: “Wagner, as a dramatist is really an historical painter of the highest rank.... This [a fresco painter] he is in a degree never yet attained by any other dramatic author in the whole world of literature. Every action embodies itself for him in a series of most imposing pictures, which, when they are composed as Wagner has seen them with his inner eye, must overwhelm and enrapture the beholder. The reception of the guests in the hall of Wartburg; the arrival and departure of Lohengrin in the boat drawn by the swan; the gambols of the Rhine maidens in the river; the defiling of the gods over the rainbow-bridge towards the castle of Asgard; the bursting of the moonlight into Hunding’s hut; the ride of the Walküre over the battle-field; Brunhilde in the circle of fire; the final scene in ‘Götterdämmerung,’ where Brunhilde flings herself on to her horse and leaps into the midst of the funeral pyre, while Hagan throws himself into the surging Rhine, and the heavens are aflame with the glow from the burning palace of the gods; the love-feast of the knights in the castle of the Grail; the obsequies of Titurel and the healing of Amfortas—these are pictures to which nothing in art hitherto approaches.”

It is strange that Nordau in his love for authorities should quote Nietzsche—a German author whom, in another part of his book, he makes out to be a hopeless degenerate and charlatan—in support of his views of Wagner! But Nietzsche has written a book called _Der Fall Wagner_, and that suffices. This Nietzsche calls Wagner a comedian, but Nordau insists upon his being a painter, and that “if he had been a healthy genius, endowed with intellectual equilibrium, that is what he would undoubtedly have become. His inner vision would have forced the brush into his hand, and would have constrained him to use it on canvas by means of colour.”

When Nordau says a painter, he evidently restricts the meaning of the word to its narrowest sense, and makes it difficult to at all class a man who, like Wagner, evolved and produced pictures of such grandeur and such beauty as those our alienist so well describes. The fact that the artist uses actual perspective, real draperies, living people, actual fire, that he selects his own light, and personally arranges this mass of objects so as to exactly reproduce the daring conception of his mind—all this should surely not be cited as so many proofs of the unhealthiness of his genius. Would he have been a greater, a sounder genius, had his ability been restricted to sketching and colouring his conceptions on cardboard or canvas? Should then a painter’s genius be confined to the production of pictures suitable only to decorate Philistine houses and official galleries? Because Nordau’s pedantic tendencies have formed such a Philistine idea about the art of painting, is it right to deny true genius to a man who has produced unapproachable pictures on a colossal scale, not by the means of brushes and pigments, but by materials infinitely more difficult to handle?

But these masterpieces of painting do not alone bear witness to Wagner’s powers. His paintings are not fixed; they are movable. They represent actually an enchanting succession of pictures. The true genius _à la_ Nordau gives us the pictures of figures in motion that never move, and tires us with a Quintus Curtius suspended in mid-air half way down a chasm, until we wish him at the bottom of it. Such a moving picture of Wagner’s is not thrust upon us suddenly in the manner of gallery pictures, but is presented to us as the fit illustration of a beautiful poem, and often as the climax of a series of other pictures which explain it, relieve it, and work up our emotions for its reception.

To this must be added that the same painter-genius, the same dramatist, the same poet, has created the wondrous and enchanting music which accompanies the poem and the pictures. And because he has done all this, because he has not followed the routine of other German painters, because he has dared to and succeeded in transporting his audiences into the highest possible region of imagination, and given them a glimpse of real creative powers, he is to be classed as a degenerate; to rank among those of whom humanity is ashamed, and whose degraded state is to warn us of the coming decay of our race.

Can any one with a grain of humour read Nordau’s attacks on Wagner without imagining an irascible toy-terrier barking at the moon?

Nordau probably feels that Wagner’s anti-semitism, his Anarchism, and his ability to create transcendentally beautiful pictures are stigmata which hardly any of his readers would accept as such, and consequently feels impelled to make much of what it pleases him to call Wagner’s eroticism. Here, as everywhere in his book, in order to impress his readers he counts on the mystical effect which the use of a high-sounding scientific word generally produces upon unscientific readers. A favourite expression of his, when speaking of some psychological phenomenon, is that science knows all about it, and he calls it megalomania, graphomania, echolalia, or some such name. With people who have only a superficial knowledge of science, and who stand in awe of its achievements, such nouns stand for a special definite thing, thoroughly investigated and explained. They do not know that these scientific names have been invented, not in order to designate something real and palpable, but simply for the purpose of bringing order into an arbitrary classification, invented so that the exchange of ideas may be facilitated on the subject thus treated. Such scientific terms might even be classed among mystical symbols, in so far as they often stand for something of which hardly anything is known, but at the same time serve the same useful end as algebraical figures. Psychologists are prone to speak of a man’s consciousness, though scarcely two scientific men would agree as to what it is. But this does not prevent them from dividing consciousness up into divisions and sub-divisions, all with their special names, in order to be able to express their ideas in words. The unscientific reader should bear in mind that consciousness has never been under the microscope, or in the crucible, and that the classification of the scientists has no counterpart in consciousness itself, and that this remains the impalpable and indivisible _Ego_, with its infinite number of attributes inseparably commingled. All the different states, conditions, faculties, perfections, and defects of the _Ego_ are of course known only by the results they produce in the physical world, and it is by these results that they have been classified. It is evident that such methods of classification should leave an immense margin for those who wish, or feel impelled by their own idiosyncrasies, to misuse scientific terms designating psychological phenomena.

Nordau indulges in this misuse of scientific terms to the fullest extent, in a way not to be easily discovered by the non-scientific reader. The word “eroticism” used by him so frequently, with all the pomposity of a scientific term, is coined from the word “erotic,” a literary term which again is derived, as we all know, from Eros, the Greek god of love. It is an adjective which means pertaining to or expressive of love-passion. Such an adjective necessarily finds an enormously wide application, considering that love in one sense is the leading principle in organic creation, and, in a more psychological sense, the motive power in the human drama. We may say that we ourselves, the outcome of love, regulate our whole life, and sometimes base our hopes of a future state on love. Consequently there is hardly anything in our lives that is not covered by the adjective “erotic.”

The alienists having adopted the word “eroticism” in order to designate a state of mind which certain actions reveal to them, and which state of mind, when its existence is corroborated by other facts, may be considered as a disease, it is evident that, while they may apply the word “eroticism” to almost anything in the organic world and in human society, it is better for their purpose to apply it only to a certain form of a diseased mind. While a strictly logical and careful alienist might deem it irrational and confusing to use the term “eroticism,” or even the adjective “erotic,” outside a clearly defined case of mental disease, it cannot be considered absolutely wrong to apply such terms whenever the love-passion is in question, even a love-passion of a most legitimate kind.

We shall now show how Nordau manages to slip over the border within which scientific terms should be used, and applies them indiscriminately to everything; and how he, in this manner, tries to establish that Wagner suffers from erotic madness, because he looks upon love as one of the chief motors in the human drama and the tree of knowledge for good or evil.

Nordau, in a flippant criticism, which he endeavours to render funny, of the behaviour of Wagner’s characters on the stage, forgets his self-criticism to such an extent as to liken them to mad tom-cats—a simile which probably no sane man would accept as true. Having once conceived the idea of mad tom-cats, it at once becomes an obsession in his mind, and suggests presentations of real cases of erotic fury. He consequently, according to his habit, takes for granted that the actors on the stage must necessarily represent the exact state of mind of the author, and cries out that this state of the author’s mind (which he has persuaded himself is that of a mad tom-cat) is well known to science, and is called sadism. Then, with a regret at having to touch upon subjects in order to make his readers understand Wagner’s real mental condition, he gives a disgusting example of a maniac whose erotic madness has brought him below the level of the brute.

This is a fair sample of Nordau’s logic. For the sake of clearness, we recapitulate the logical _tour de force_ he has been compelled to exercise in order to arrive at such an absurdity: Wagner, like all poets and dramatists before him, creates a love scene. Love is an erotic emotion. Eroticism is a disease of the mind. Tom-cats are erotically influenced. The characters on the stage remind Nordau of tom-cats. The obsession of a “tom-cat in convulsions over a root of valerian” suggests a raving madman. Consequently Wagner is mad.

Such is the use a scientist is tempted to make of his science when he throws self-criticism overboard.

When Nordau says of Wagner that he has been all his life an erotic, he is fair enough to add in parentheses, “in a psychiatric sense.” But this is not enough. The word “psychiatric” is a strictly scientific word, not to be found in any ordinary English dictionary; and the ordinary reader might easily conclude that, instead of removing Wagner’s eroticism into the deep recesses of his soul, it might have been used by the author, as so many scientific words have been used, in order to aggravate his charge.

In order to justify his opinion with regard to Wagner’s erotic madness, he says: “The most ordinary incitements, even those farthest removed from the province of sexual instincts, never fail to awaken in his consciousness voluptuous images of an erotic character.” Why “sexual instincts”? Why not love-instincts, an expression which had so much better fitted in with the scenes Wagner represents? But, as it suits Nordau’s purpose to keep his reader’s mind upon love in its lowest, most animal form, we shall let it pass. We must however express our astonishment at the example he gives in order to show how incitements, “far removed from the province of sexual instincts,” caused Wagner’s mind to revert to voluptuous images. The “farthest removed incitements” which Nordau quotes is the description by Wagner of a ballet—a _pas de trois_—evidently intended to represent the blending of the beautiful with love, to give Wagner’s own words, “love and life, the joy and wooing of art.” What on earth, then, would more arouse such eroticism that might be found in a man than a ballet representing love and life? And this especially when we consider the modern freedom with regard to the costume of ballet girls. In order to show what Nordau considers to be the outcome of erotic madness in Wagner’s choregraphic representation of love, life, and art, we give _in extenso_ the passage from _Art-Work of the Future_, to which he refers:

“In the contemplation of this ravishing dance of the most genuine and noblest muses of the artistic man, we now see the three arm in arm lovingly entwined up to their necks, then this, then that one, detaching herself from the entwinement, as if to display to the others her beautiful form in complete separation, touching the hands of the others only with the extreme tips of her fingers; now the one, entwined by a backward glance at the twin forms of her closely entwined sisters, bending towards them; then two, carried away by the allurements of the one, greeting her in homage; finally all, in close embrace, breast to breast, limb to limb, in an ardent kiss of love, coalescing in one blissfully living shape. This is the love and life, the joy and wooing of art,” etc.

When Nordau wishes to traduce the love scenes in Wagner’s operas into arguments of the musician’s erotic madness, he forgets many things. He forgets what he himself has given as a test of a sound mind, namely, the ability to look after one’s own business. Even if Wagner had produced scenes on his stage of an utterly corrupt character in order to gain money and popularity, he having succeeded completely in such objects could not possibly be called mad by a critic who has made material success in life a test for sound-mindedness, and who declares the belief in personal responsibility reaching beyond the grave to be a sign of madness. But he also forgets, what is more important, that there is no line of demarcation drawn to indicate how far the representation of human passions may be carried on the stage.

Even Nordau does not seem to have discovered an authority on this subject. He himself will not serve as an authority, because he has shown himself too apt to fall into the error of newspaper critics, that of judging a work or a piece, not according to its merits, but according to the author who has produced it. He would praise in Goethe what he would condemn in Wagner. If we were to indiscriminately ask people how far we may go in representing human passion on the stage, we should get a mass of replies all differing according to the bias of the respondents. The Ultramontane abbé, the zealous Methodist, would differ enormously from the Bohemian artist; the prudish old maid would differ from the poet. Nay, even two artists, both painters of the nude, or two ballet girls appearing in the same costume, might hold almost opposite opinions on this subject. How then shall we judge? By leaving out of court all the extremists—those who object to theatres, ballets, and nature in art—as well as those who would clamour for indecent and obscene representations, we might considerably narrow the ground for inquiry, and elicit certain rules likely to meet the suffrage of the majority within these limits. It might be argued that emotions, playing by far the most important _rôle_ in the human drama, and lying as they do at the root of all our actions, educational agencies, and amusements, ought to be appealed to by the arts. Also that art, in affording us opportunities of giving expression to our emotions, elevates and ennobles our lives: consequently, that the passive, objective contemplation of human emotions which the stage affords us helps us to study our own emotions and to bring them into harmony with our noblest aspirations, our future happiness, our judgment, and our will. In order to accomplish their mission, such representations should be as true to life as possible, whether they be beautiful or not. On this plea, it would be legitimate to represent on the stage erotic emotions in the full strength in which we meet with them in reality among sound-minded people. A good deal of exaggeration may be permitted to the actor as he is under the difficulty of having to convey by actions, gestures, or facial expression a distinct representation of emotions which may rage in the consciousness of a human being without betraying themselves in physical signs.

From this it must be concluded that the purity of the stage depends more on what is acted than how it is acted. The author who does not wish to desecrate the drama is therefore bound to represent emotions which are the outcome of natural life, and acted upon by incidents such as we see around us and to avoid the representation of, even if he cannot avoid the reference to, emotions which spring from a diseased mind or a morbid moral state.

Love, being an emotion to which every sound-minded being may be subject, there would be no objection to represent it in the most intense manner on the stage so long as we understand under the name of love that strong degree of affection which sometimes people of the opposite sex may conceive for each other apart from sexual emotions. What makes Nordau’s reasoning plausible is that he does not admit that this kind of love exists. He distinguishes only two degrees, or two categories, of love, comradeship or friendship on the one hand, and the animal instinct on the other. But no one who has gone through life with open eyes can possibly deny the reality of what we here, for want of a better expression, would call pure love. Everywhere we meet with manifestations of it. Even young children, who might have no idea of sexual emotion, often love each other with a genuine passion which sometimes lasts through life. Adults may be so absorbed in love for each other as to prefer death to separation, and yet never experience any sexual emotion in each other’s company. Men and women lovers who have been separated have wasted away from sheer love of each other, and yet been remarkably chaste in character. In the English-speaking countries, where the relations between the sexes are free and natural, we find any number of proofs of the reality of pure love. Those cases alone which have ended tragically, and therefore come before the public, more than suffice to prove it. Even in countries like France, for example, where the sexual instincts are apt to become morbid from the one-sided education of the young, it is not difficult to find examples of pure love. It is even to be found where least expected, as, for instance, between a licentious man and a fallen woman. It is true that when pure love runs its usual course it gets, so to say, inflamed by animal passion, but this is generally the case only as a result of the demonstrations by which pure love tries to manifest itself. It may also be true that there exists a mysterious, that is to say a so far unexplained, connection between the purest love and sexual instinct even in loving couples to whom sexuality may be an abomination. But all this does not disprove that, speaking from a practical and ethical point of view, there is such an emotion as pure love, and that this emotion is a powerful motor in the human drama.

If it then be a fact that this yearning to love and to be loved with a pure love exists, and ought to exist, in rational human beings, and that in running its natural course it will manifest itself in demonstrations extremely likely to rouse animal passions, the question arises how far a love scene on the stage may display those demonstrations which, while they are the only possible means of expressing pure love, at the same time suggest sexual emotions.

Here then is the point where the difference will arise, and where we may well be careful whose decision we accept. Can we do better than Wagner did—leave the audience to decide?

Wagner’s German audiences, described by Nordau as including wives and daughters, have, to his great bewilderment, given the verdict in favour of Wagner’s most passionate scenes. “How unperverted,” Nordau cries out, “must wives and maidens be, when they are in a state of mind to witness these pieces without blushing crimson, and sinking to the earth for shame!” No. They have not blushed in following calmly and serenely the objective representations of passions which by nature have been implanted in every breast. The very vehemence, the very naturalness of the scenes inspire that awe and reverence which great natural forces always do, and the young girl in the audience does not for a moment revert to any impure representations or animal promptings which might have come within her experience, because she is æsthetically and not sexually excited. But if Nordau could watch her when she reads the above quoted passage in his book, he would see her blush deeply, not at the memory of Wagner’s scenes, but at the feeling of having the first seed of degeneration sown in her heart.

Among the phrases used by Nordau in order to inculcate his readers with the idea that Wagner, instead of being the very essence of an artist, one of the greatest practically creative geniuses of the world, is a mere erotic maniac, is this one—“all his ideas revolve about woman.” While this phrase may lead the unwary reader astray, it throws a vivid light on the extent to which Nordau’s opinion with regard to the relation of the sexes has been influenced by his continental bias. This ought to be made clear to his readers. Such expressions, if of any use at all in Nordau’s reasoning, pre-suppose that it is quite an unusual thing for the ideas of poets, dramatists, and writers of fiction to revolve about woman. For our alienist does not refer to Wagner’s private life. He is speaking only of Wagner the author. The actual fact, of course, is that love and women have from times immemorial been the subject of legends, fairy tales, troubadour songs, poems, romances, novels, and dramas. Thus, according to the gospel of our alienist, all the past and present poetical authors of the world must have been, and are, “subject to erotic madness,” like Wagner.

There are, of course, men who, like Faust, devote their lives to intellectual pursuits and expend all their energy in forcing nature to yield up her secrets. But such men are not only exceptions—they may be looked upon as degenerates. This is what Faust at last discovered. He recognised that life was essentially emotional, and that by having crushed out his emotional nature he had failed to live his life. Whether Goethe intended to impart the lesson his _Faust_ teaches us may be doubtful, but we can thus read it: we may suppress our emotional nature for a long time, but it will one day claim its rights, and, in its explosive escape from unnatural bondage, avenge itself on the suppressor, and hurl him to perdition. The emotions, Faust regrets, are all those inspired by women.

But the great majority of men do not suppress the emotions inspired by women, but, on the contrary, allow their whole lives to be influenced by them. To find confirmation of this fact in countries like France and Germany might not be so easy as in the English-speaking countries. Wherever the sexes are separated in youth, and where conventional marriages are the rule, the erotic impulses become over-stimulated and lead to the excitement of animal passion. The love of the beautiful, all the æsthetic aspirations, the yearning for the society of women, the love of excitement, the chivalrous leanings, and the craving for pure love—all these are thrown as so much fuel into the furnace of sexual love. It is then that the struggle arises between the terrible demoniac love and pure love—a struggle so frequently depicted in Wagner’s operas and which determines the lives of so many men on the continent.

Part of the struggle of the continental man is to avoid the influence of women altogether, or else to look upon them after the manner of the Mahommedans. In countries therefore where pure love is left but little or no scope, the influence of women is not very marked, and certainly not acknowledged, because for a man to acknowledge it would be to avow himself an “erotic madman.”

To understand the immense influence which a woman exercises over man’s destiny and how closely men’s minds “revolve about women,” we must study the English-speaking countries where pure love has, if not free scope, freer scope than anywhere else, and where few healthy-minded men are ashamed to avow the value they place upon woman, her love, and her influence.

Despite the fact that Englishmen do not display towards women of all classes that engaging politeness which favourably distinguishes Frenchmen, a stranger who visits England cannot fail soon to perceive in what high estimation woman is held. Her name is seldom taken in vain. There is no trace of that gross satire upon women which so often disfigures continental prints; she may be represented as sharp, worldly, extravagant, but rarely as immoral, unfaithful, or ugly. Some of the lower-class papers are strongly influenced by French views, but they never indulge in adaptations without some modification, and such papers as have been started in order to emulate the fast journals of Paris have always been extremely short-lived.

The same respect for women is manifest in fiction as well as on the stage. Here again in consequence of French influence we meet with women who have sinned, and women with a past, but they never play such degraded parts as they often do in French novels and plays. Ladies are allowed an extensive liberty, and they are rarely insulted; and obtain, even under trying circumstances, a respectful treatment at the hands of the lowest class of labourers. We have unfortunately amongst us ruffians who beat their wives, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred these are drunken and debauched human failures. The average working man treats his wife and his daughter with as much consideration as a nobleman could his, and their home is kept morally pure and as comfortable for the women as his resources allow. He is not ashamed to carry parcels, burdens, the children, or to perambulate the baby in public places in order to spare his wife the trouble.

The men most reluctantly suspect a woman of immorality, and generally not until there seems a strong case against her. Indecent words and allusions are entirely excluded in the presence of ladies, and if a woman in her innocence inadvertently makes a risky remark, it passes unheeded and without producing a smile.

The average Englishman’s life brings him into constant contact with women, and he is perfectly aware that he owes to them much that is bright and happy in his existence. Already as a child he is the trusted protector of his sisters, and often the cavalier of their friends. Early in life he loves some young woman, and his long courtship is to him a happy time. When he works hard, when he risks his life on the sea or in dangerous climes, it is generally with a view to marrying the girl he loves. When he is married, he wishes to succeed that he may gain his wife’s approval, beautify her home, and make her life happy; while at the same time he never remains insensible to the admiration of other women. While his wife is yet young, his daughters grow up and become important features in his life and his happiness.

It may therefore be said of the men of the English-speaking countries that their “ideas revolve about women,” and it will be difficult to persuade us Englishmen that respect, admiration, and love for women are the signs of a degenerate mind. Coleridge well expresses the English feeling—a feeling which, under circumstances similar to those prevailing in England, would be universal:

“All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.”

Wagner’s music, which may be said to have been the delight of millions of people, is not approved of by Nordau. He condemns it on the usual ground that it is novel, and that it differs from the standards accepted before Wagner. According to him, it is the music of an unsound mind, because it contains no distinct ideas in the shape of melodies. He objects to the _Leit-motiv_ and to the unending melody, but it is difficult to harmonize what he says against the one with what he says against the other. Speaking of the _Leit-motiv_, he says: “To express ideas is not the function of music. Language provides for that as completely as could be desired. When the word is accompanied by song or orchestra, it is not to make it more definite, but to reinforce it by the intervention of emotion. Music is a kind of sounding-board in which the word has to awake something like an echo from the infinite.” Later on he says about melody: “It is a regular grouping of notes in a highly expressive series of tones. Melody in music corresponds to what in language is a logically constructed sentence distinctly presenting an idea, and having a clearly marked beginning and ending.”

Music being an art which exclusively appeals to emotion, it is not surprising that any attempt to measure its value by a reasoning process should result in utter failure. But this is no excuse for an author to contradict himself so flatly as Nordau does in the above passages. To say on one page that “_to express ideas is not the function of music_,” and on another page to say that melody is indispensable to music, because it “corresponds to a logically constructed sentence _distinctly presenting an idea_.” Again he says: “Melody may be said to be an effort to say something definite,” and how can this harmonize with the other mission of music: “to awake something like an echo from the infinite.” The latter expression is not only a true definition of the mission of music, but also an exact description of the aim of Wagner’s music.

Nordau feels that his scientific reasoning about music will affect no one who has heard the music of Wagner, and that those who admire it will be slow to believe that an unsound mind could have accomplished such complicated, intricate, and complete work. To prepare his reader’s mind for his rash conclusion, he once more goes to the lunatic asylum for his arguments, in order to show that a man may be a lunatic and yet be a good musician. But here again he is strangely blind to the fact that such arguments tell directly against his theory. He cites cases of lunatics who “improvised on the piano,” who “sang very beautiful airs and at the same time improvised two different themes on the piano... who composed very beautiful, new, and melodious tunes.”

The remarkable thing about the music of his maniacs is that it is tuny and melodious, and consequently the only rational music, according to Nordau, while Wagner’s music is condemned by him, and Wagner himself is held up as a lunatic because his music is not like that of acknowledged lunatics! It stands to reason that a weak mind could follow and repeat a style of music which it has heard for years, but that it requires a strong and sound mind to break a new road in the domain of music with the full approval of millions of musical people.

Nordau also feels the necessity of backing up his opinion by authorities. He sees a conclusive proof of Wagner’s inferiority in the criticism of professional musicians and composers. He might as well form his opinion of an actress on the criticism of her by her most dangerous rival. It seems that Hiller and Schumann would not acknowledge Wagner’s musical endowment, but attributed his success to the _libretti_ written by himself. Regarding this Nordau exclaims: “The same old story: musicians regard him as a poet, and poets as a musician.” This means that our alienist is, or pretends to be, so utterly innocent of humour and satire as to accept this very common way of minimizing the talent of a rival as a trustworthy judgment. It is the commonest thing in the world for a man to deny his rival’s talent in his own specialty, and then, in order to strengthen the effect of his opinion and to give it the colour of impartiality, to acknowledge in him talents outside that specialty. Practical men, when they hear one musician run down another musician, generally conclude that the latter has a dangerous talent. Voltaire, in speaking of a writer none of whose works were in existence, said that he must have been a man of genius judging from the savage attacks made upon him by another writer.

Hiller and Schumann are the only authorities whom Nordau can point to in support of his views, and he himself raises some doubts whether their dislike of Wagner’s music was not due to the difficulty of immediately appreciating a tendency so novel as Wagner’s. Our alienist is only able to add that Rubinstein can only make some important reservations, and that it was some time before Hanslick struck his colours. In view, then, of the enormous literature that has grown up around Wagner and Wagnerism, Nordau’s habit of referring to authorities in this instance simply has the effect of showing that he stands unsupported in his opinion by all musical authorities. It is irresistibly comic to notice how Nordau regrets that the brochure—_Der Fall Wagner_—in which Nietzsche attacks Wagner, is quite as “insanely delirious” as another brochure written by the same writer twelve years before in deification of Wagner. Had it not been for this awkward circumstance, Nordau, it seems, would have been only too glad to exalt Nietzsche—the man whom in another part of his work he strenuously endeavours to prove an imbecile—to the rank of an authority. His amazing lack of logic prevents him from seeing that a certificate of lunacy issued by a lunatic is really a certificate of sanity, in virtue of the logical axiom that two negatives are equal to one affirmative.

Such faults and defects as may be found in Wagner’s prose writings have little importance in relation—and are almost irrelevant—to the question of his supposed degeneracy. He had to deal with subjects which, though intensely real to our emotional nature, can only be treated inadequately in words. Whatever we may think of Wagner’s style, there can be little doubt that he has succeeded in making himself understood by a great number of people whose emotional nature sympathizes with that of Wagner, and whom even Nordau would not undertake to prove to be mentally deranged or morally degenerate. Wagner’s writings have the defect, very general among German writers, and conspicuous in Nordau, of being verbose. They all make us crave for “Der langen Rede, kurzen Sinn.”

The fundamental idea in Wagner’s great work—_The Art-Work of the Future_—is that the arts should co-operate, and that each individual art should attain to its perfection in conjunction with other arts. Nordau in no way disproves the soundness of this view by saying that “Goethe’s lyric poetry and the _Divina Commedia_” need no landscape painting, that “Michael Angelo’s ‘Moses’ would hardly produce a deeper impression surrounded by dancers and singers,” and that “the ‘Pastoral Symphony’ does not require a complement of words in order to exercise its full charm.”

With that logic peculiar to Nordau, he quotes a passage from Schopenhauer in which this thinker mildly deprecates such co-ordination of the arts as was to be found in the operas of his time, and our alienist wishes us to accept this as a proof of insanity in Wagner’s admiration for the opera. He forgets the important fact that Wagner’s greatness is proved by the way in which he has succeeded in obliterating at least the worst defects of the opera as it existed before him, and that he has rendered it a complete and harmonious expression of combined and elevated arts. The quoted passage from Schopenhauer could be no condemnation of Wagner’s operas as it was written before they saw the light. In the operas, as they used to be, there was much that tended to disturb the imagination and even to arouse laughter. The most exasperating incongruities were indulged in. An exciting hunting chorus would be played and sung while two rows of lady supers would walk in from each side of the wings in Indian file, each bearing as a hunting implement a yard-long piece of wood surmounted by a piece of tin. The impossible dresses, the demure demeanour, the solemn faces, the absurd lances—carried like candles in a nuns’ procession—all this clashed so terribly with the music and the theme as to suggest a burlesque. A band of conspirators afraid of being detected, yet shouting at the top of their voices some compromising chorus; a man with a deadly wound rising to his feet and singing a lively and complicated aria; a messenger in the hottest haste delivering a message in a slow and long-drawn recitative; an intensely modern consumptive lady dying amid ancient surroundings, trilling in her last gasps musical complexities, during a quarter of an hour, with a marvellously strong and healthy voice—such, and many other absurdities, disfigured the opera before Wagner and Gounod, and well deserved the condemnation of Schopenhauer.

Wagner’s assertion that the natural evolution of each art leads to the surrender of its independence and to its fusion with other arts is looked upon by Nordau as delirious. To prove this he falls back on biology, and points out that nature develops from the simple to the complex, that originally similar parts develop into separate organs of different structure and independent functions. Why on earth should there necessarily be an analogy between the growth of plants and animals, and between the development of the arts? Any other writer who had been unfortunate enough to indulge in such profound mysticism would certainly have been condemned by Nordau to the lunatic asylum. Even if we admit the analogy as permissible, he gains very little by it: for when he speaks of nature as always proceeding from the simple to the complex he describes exactly the development of the arts into the opera—music, poetry, and dancing representing each the simple, and the opera representing the complex. What would Nordau think of a mad doctor who based his verdict of insanity on such reasoning?

The attentive student of Nordau’s impeachment of Wagner cannot fail to see that, despite all his efforts to brand him as a degenerate, he has only succeeded in throwing the grand power of that genius into bolder relief. Instead of inducing us to look upon Wagner as a sign of degeneration, he has impressed us with the fact that Wagner’s work constitutes an awakening from the slumber in which Philistinism and conventionalism have so long enwrapped humanity, and opened a new vista for the ennobling mission of the arts.

While we must reject Nordau’s clinging to that pedantry and conventionalism which limit the mission of the arts to the production of isolated pictures for public galleries and the salons of modern Mæcenases, statues for public places, and compositions of _Kammer-musik_ for drawing-rooms, we at the same time do not believe that the opera, even as regenerated by the genius of a Wagner, is the highest expression of the arts. There will come a day when the illusions of the stage will be realities, when we shall dispense with the dusty sceneries, the garish footlights, the painted faces, the prudish trappings, which go to make up the mirage which heralds an ideal future. The arts, instead of being relegated to the nursery in order to make room for science, as Nordau prophesies, will become its aim. When science has given us health, strength, and beauty, an extended power over nature’s forces, when it has solved the terrible social problem on the basis of liberty and progress, then will science be the handmaiden of the arts. Then will the answer be granted to the poet’s prayer:

“Oh! for a muse of fire that shall ascend The highest heaven of invention; A kingdom for a stage; princes to act; And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”

The arts, after having demonstrated in the opera their solidarity and their independence, will leave that artificial shelter and take up their abode in our homes and in our civic buildings, in our streets, and in our public places, in our arenas and in our temples.

A new renaissance lies ahead of us, and we are all struggling to reach it. The man who thinks and writes, the artist who paints or composes, the peasant at the plough, the miner in the bowels of the earth, all are contributing to further the advent of a new era when the life, the work, the pleasure, and the worship of a regenerate race shall be exalted by the arts, and present a realization of what Wagner dreamed while he created.