Granting this, we are at once led to ask, why the penetrating vision of genius? To this query a brief answer is that because the possibilities either latent or unfolding in man are immeasurable as the universe itself, therefore that which men are pleased to call genius is but the foreshowing of what the race as a whole shall attain to, but, in the present stage of human progress, genius is in fact a rare exception to Nature's slow and thorough methods. Nevertheless, the price of its defiance of the universal law must be paid by genius, and that price is unsymmetrical development.
Because of unsymmetrical development, genius may at times produce what, to the average normal being would seem the work of a degenerate mind; but in estimating Strauss it should be considered that the tonal interpreter of Don Quixote can often be sanely logical, and even wholly conventional.
The genius of Strauss, like that of Whitman, is essentially the genius of the explorer. Each of these burned to reach the limits of his art and plant victorious feet upon the pole. As in the material world, so here, such daring spirits are necessary if we would know the geography of the world of tone. To our old musical possessions, Strauss has joined a vast and as yet vague territory much of which, while of little present value, may yet develop unexpected and perhaps indispensable uses.
It argues against the real sanity of Strauss' art as a whole, that, for the exercise of his gifts, he chooses Oscar Wilde's version of the story of Salomé, a version in which the central theme is a monstrous and revolting passion unmatchable in actual life, and even unthinkable except by the sexual pervert. Also, it is ominous that Strauss undertakes the tonal treatment of the brilliantly written but illogical work, «Thus spake Zarathustra;» a work wherein is discovered the philosopher Neitzsche's ideal, the earth-shaping, earth-dominating man to be, a proud, unconcerned, scornful, violent, and fear-inspiring personage beloved of Wisdom the goddess woman that loves the warrior only. In this «Super Man» evolved evil and evolved good are necessary. Free from gods, and every adoration save that of self, he rises over unnumbered small folk and timorous weaklings, and that protection artfully invented for them by the Christian Church, «Slave Morality;» and so he attains his goal, «Master Morality,» that which, to all but the mind of the moral pervert, is the morality of the tyrant whose will none dares gainsay.