nful
affirmation of decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian
wishes _to be rid_ of himself. _Le moi est toujours haissable._ Noble
morality, master-morality, on the other hand, is rooted in a triumphant
saying of yea to _one's self_,--it is the self-affirmation and
self-glorification of life; it also requires sublime symbols and
practices; but only "because its heart is too full." The whole of
beautiful art and of great art belongs here; their common essence is
gratitude. But we must allow it a certain instinctive repugnance _to
decadents_, and a scorn and horror of the latter's symbolism: such things
almost prove it. The noble Romans considered Christianity as a _foeda
superstitio_: let me call to your minds the feelings which the last German
of noble taste--Goethe--had in regard to the cross. It is idle to look for
more valuable, more _necessary_ contrasts.(14)

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.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} But all
of us, though we do not know it, involuntarily have values, words,
formulae, and morals in our bodies, which are quite _antagonistic_ in their
origin--regarded from a physiological standpoint, we are _false_.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} 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,
b