would say, let us exchange a word or two in private. It is
easier to compose bad music than good music. But what, if apart from this
it were also more profitable, more effective, more convincing, more
exalting, more secure, more _Wagnerian_?{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} _Pulchrum est paucorum hominum._
Bad enough in all conscience! We understand Latin, and perhaps we also
understand which side our bread is buttered. Beauty has its drawbacks: we
know that. Wherefore beauty then? Why not rather aim at size, at the
sublime, the gigantic, that which moves the _masses_?--And to repeat, it is
easier to be titanic than to be beautiful; we know that.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

We know the masses, we know the theatre. The best of those who assemble
there,--German youths, horned Siegfrieds and other Wagnerites, require the
sublime, the profound, and the overwhelming. This much still lies within
our power. And as for the others who assemble there,--the cultured
_cretins_, the _blase_ pigmies, the eternally feminine, the gastrically
happy, in short the people--they also require the sublime, the profound,
the overwhelming. All these people argue in the same way. "He who
overthrows us is strong; he who elevates us is godly; he who makes us
wonder vaguely is profound."--Let us make up our mind then, my friends in
music: we do want to overthrow them, we do want to elevate them, we do
want to make them wonder vaguely. This much still lies within our powers.

In regard to the process of making them wonder: it is here that our notion
of "style" finds its starting-point. Above all, no thoughts! Nothing is
more compromising than a thought! But the state of mind which _precedes_
thought, the labour of the thought still unborn, the promise of future
thought, the world as it was before God created it--a recrudescence of
chaos.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Chaos makes people wonder.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

In the words of the master: infinity but without melody.

In the second place, with regard to the overthrowing,--this belongs at
least in part, to physiology. Let us, in the first place, examine the
instruments. A few of them would convince even our intestines (--they
_throw open_ doors, as Handel would say), others becharm our very marrow.
The _colour of the melody is_ all-important here, _the melody itself_ is
of no importance. Let us be precise about _this_ point. To what other
purpose should we spend our strength? Let us be characteristic in tone
even