y." Seven
months before this he had written as follows: "Believe me, I too was
once possessed by the idea of a country life. In order to become a
radically healthy human being, I went two years ago to a Hydropathic
Establishment, prepared to give up Art and everything if I could once
more become a child of Nature. But, my good friend, I was obliged to
laugh at my own naivete when I found myself almost going mad. None of
us will reach the promised land: we shall all die in the wilderness.
Intellect is, as some one has said, a sort of disease: it is incurable."

Roeckel knew his man of old, and evidently pressed him for explanations
of the inconsistencies of The Ring with Night Falls On The Gods. Wagner
defended himself with unfailing cleverness and occasional petulances,
ranging from such pleas as "I believe a true instinct has kept me from a
too great definiteness; for it has been borne in on me that an absolute
disclosure of the intention disturbs true insight," to a volley of
explanations and commentaries on the explanations. He gets excited and
annoyed because Roeckel will not admire the Brynhild of Night Falls On
The Gods; re-invents the Tarnhelm scene; and finally, the case being
desperate, exclaims, "It is wrong of you to challenge me to explain it
in words: you must feel that something is being enacted that is not to
be expressed in mere words."

THE PESSIMIST AS AMORIST

Sometimes he gets very far away from Pessimism indeed, and recommends
Roeckel to solace his captivity, not by conquering the will to live at
liberty, but by "the inspiring influences of the Beautiful." The next
moment he throws over even Art for Life. "Where life ends," he says,
very wittily, "Art begins. In youth we turn to Art, we know not why; and
only when we have gone through with Art and come out on the other side,
we learn to our cost that we have missed Life itself." His only comfort
is that he is beloved. And on the subject of love he lets himself loose
in a manner that would have roused the bitterest scorn in Schopenhaur,
though, as we have seen (Love Panacea), it is highly characteristic of
Wagner. "Love in its most perfect reality," he says, "is only possible
between the sexes: it is only as man and woman that human beings can
truly love. Every other manifestation of love can be traced back to that
one absorbingly real feeling, of which all other affections are but an
emanation, a connection, or an imitation. It is an error t