o look on this
as only one of the forms in which love is revealed, as if there were
other forms coequal with it, or even superior to it. He who after the
manner of metaphysicians prefers UNREALITY to REALITY, and derives the
concrete from the abstract--in short, puts the word before the fact--may
be right in esteeming the idea of love as higher than the expression
of love, and may affirm that actual love made manifest in feeling
is nothing but the outward and visible sign of a pre-existent,
non-sensuous, abstract love; and he will do well to despise that
sensuous function in general. In any case it were safe to bet that such
a man had never loved or been loved as human beings can love, or he
would have understood that in despising this feeling, what he condemned
was its sensual expression, the outcome of man's animal nature, and
not true human love. The highest satisfaction and expression of the
individual is only to be found in his complete absorption, and that is
only possible through love. Now a human being is both MAN and WOMAN: it
is only when these two are united that the real human being exists; and
thus it is only by love that man and woman attain to the full measure
of humanity. But when nowadays we talk of a human being, such heartless
blockheads are we that quite involuntarily we only think of man. It is
only in the union of man and woman by love (sensuous and supersensuous)
that the human being exists; and as the human being cannot rise to the
conception of anything higher than his own existence--his own being--so
the transcendent act of his life is this consummation of his humanity
through love."

It is clear after this utterance from the would-be Schopenhaurian, that
Wagner's explanations of his works for the most part explain nothing but
the mood in which he happened to be on the day he advanced them, or
the train of thought suggested to his very susceptible imagination and
active mind by the points raised by his questioner. Especially in his
private letters, where his outpourings are modified by his dramatic
consciousness of the personality of his correspondent, do we find him
taking all manner of positions, and putting forward all sorts of cases
which must be taken as clever and suggestive special pleadings, and
not as serious and permanent expositions of his works. These works must
speak for themselves: if The Ring says one thing, and a letter written
afterwards says that it said something else, The Ri