inted essay which will at least leave no doubt as
to my earnestness in regard to this question. The title of this essay is:
"What Wagner has cost us."

One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. Even to-day a vague
feeling that this is so, still prevails. Even Wagner's success, his
triumph, did not uproot this feeling thoroughly. But formerly it was
strong, it was terrible, it was a gloomy hate throughout almost
three-quarters of Wagner's life. The resistance which he met with among us
Germans cannot be too highly valued or too highly honoured. People guarded
themselves against him as against an illness,--not with arguments--it is
impossible to refute an illness,--but with obstruction, with mistrust, with
repugnance, with loathing, with sombre earnestness, as though he were a
great rampant danger. The aesthetes gave themselves away when out of three
schools of German philosophy they waged an absurd war against Wagner's
principles with "ifs" and "fors"--what did he care about principles, even
his own!--The Germans themselves had enough instinctive good sense to
dispense with every "if" and "for" in this matter. An instinct is weakened
when it becomes conscious: for by becoming conscious it makes itself
feeble. If there were any signs that in spite of the universal character
of European decadence there was still a modicum of health, still an
instinctive premonition of what is harmful and dangerous, residing in the
German soul, then it would be precisely this blunt resistance to Wagner
which I should least like to see underrated. It does us honour, it gives
us some reason to hope: France no longer has such an amount of health at
her disposal. The Germans, these _loiterers par excellence_, as history
shows, are to-day the most backward among the civilised nations of Europe;
this has its advantages,--for they are thus relatively the youngest.

One pays dearly for having been a follower of Wagner. It is only quite
recently that the Germans have overcome a sort of dread of him,--the desire
to be rid of him occurred to them again and again.(12) Does anybody
remember a very curious occurrence in which, quite unexpectedly towards
the end, this old feeling once more manifested itself? It happened at
Wagner's funeral. The first Wagner Society, the one in Munich, laid a
wreath on his grave with this inscription, which immediately became
famous: "Salvation to the Saviour!" Everybody admired the lofty
inspiration which had