5

What, then, is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In the case of an artist we are getting to understand their meaning: Nothing at all ⁠ ⁠… or so much that it is as good as nothing at all. Indeed, what is the use of them? Our artists have for a long time past not taken up a sufficiently independent attitude, either in the world or against it, to warrant their valuations and the changes in these valuations exciting interest. At all times they have played the valet of some morality, philosophy, or religion, quite apart from the fact that unfortunately they have often enough been the inordinately supple courtiers of their clients and patrons, and the inquisitive toadies of the powers that are existing, or even of the new powers to come. To put it at the lowest, they always need a rampart, a support, an already constituted authority: artists never stand by themselves, standing alone is opposed to their deepest instincts. So, for example, did Richard Wagner take, “when the time had come,” the philosopher Schopenhauer for his covering man in front, for his rampart. Who would consider it even thinkable, that he would have had the