both Schopenhauer and Wagner with qualities and aspirations so utterly
foreign to them both, that neither of them would have recognised
himself in the images he painted of them. His love for them was
unusual; perhaps it can only be fully understood emotionally by us:
like all men who are capable of very great love, Nietzsche lent the
objects of his affection anything they might happen to lack in the way
of greatness, and when at last his eyes were opened, genuine pain, not
malice, was the motive of even the most bitter of his diatribes.

Finally, we should just like to give one more passage from Ecce Homo
bearing upon the subject under discussion. It is particularly
interesting from an autobiographical standpoint, and will perhaps
afford the best possible conclusion to this preface.

Nietzsche is writing about Wagner's music, and he says: "The world
must indeed be empty for him who has never been unhealthy enough for
this 'infernal voluptuousness'; it is allowable and yet almost
forbidden to use a mystical expression in this behalf. I suppose I
know better than any one the prodigies Wagner was capable of, the
fifty worlds of strange raptures to which no one save him could soar;
and as I stand to-day--strong enough to convert even the most
suspicious and dangerous phenomenon to my own use and be the stronger
for it--I declare Wagner to be the great benefactor of my life.
Something will always keep our names associated in the minds of men,
and that is, that we are two who have suffered more
excruciatingly--even at each other's hands--than most men are able to
suffer nowadays. And just as Wagner is merely a misunderstanding among
Germans, so am I and ever will be. You lack two centuries of
psychological and artistic discipline, my dear countrymen!... But it
will be impossible for you ever to recover the time now lost" (p. 43).