intervals of descending
fourths and fifths. Those once transcendent progressions, luxuriant
suggestions of Debussy chords of the 9th, 11th, etc., were becoming
slimy. An unearned exultation--a sentimentality deadening something
within hides around in the music. Wagner seems less and less to measure
up to the substance and reality of Cesar Franck, Brahms, d'Indy, or
even Elgar (with all his tiresomeness), the wholesomeness, manliness,
humility, and deep spiritual, possibly religious feeling of these men
seem missing and not made up for by his (Wagner's) manner and
eloquence, even if greater than theirs (which is very doubtful).

From the above we would try to prove that as this stream of change
flows towards the eventual ocean of mankind's perfection, the art-works
in which we identify our higher ideals come by this process to be
identified with the lower ideals of those who embark after us when the
stream has grown in depth. If we stop with the above experience, our
theory of the effect of man's changing nature, as thus explaining
artistic progress, is perhaps sustained. Thus would we show that the
perpetual flow of the life stream is affected by and affects each
individual riverbed of the universal watersheds. Thus would we prove
that the Wagner period was normal, because we intuitively recognized
whatever identity we were looking for at a certain period in our life,
and the fact that it was so made the Franck period possible and then
normal at a later period in our life. Thus would we assume that this is
as it should be, and that it is not Wagner's content or substance or
his lack of virtue, that something in us has made us flow past him and
not he past us. But something blocks our theory! Something makes our
hypotheses seem purely speculative if not useless. It is men like Bach
and Beethoven.

Is it not a matter nowadays of common impression or general opinion
(for the law of averages plays strongly in any theory relating to human
attributes) that the world's attitude towards the substance and quality
and spirit of these two men, or other men of like character, if there
be such, has not been affected by the flowing stream that has changed
us? But if by the measure of this public opinion, as well as it can be
measured, Bach and Beethoven are being flowed past--not as fast perhaps
as Wagner is, but if they are being passed at all from this deeper
viewpoint, then this "change" theory holds.

Here we shall have to ass