his trait lie the original
seeds of his destruction; it is for the sake of the tokens of power,
the castle and later the ring, that he commits the injustices which
bring about ruin. Athirst, too, for wisdom: he has given one of his
eyes for Wisdom, in the person of Fricka, who combines in herself
law and order and domestic virtue. And athirst for love,--something
of a grievance to Fricka. "_Ehr ich die Frauen doch mehr als dich
freut_," "I honour women more than pleases you," he retorts to
her reproach of contempt for woman's love and worth, evidenced in
his light ceding of Freia.

He calls himself and all call him a god, adding "eternal" even
when the gods' end is glaringly at hand. The other gods look to
him as chief among them. But he is ever acknowledging the existence
of something outside and above himself, a law, a moral necessity,
which it is no use to contend against; through which, do what he
may, disaster finally overtakes him for having tried to disregard it.
There is a stray hint from him that the world is his very possession
and that he could at will destroy it; but this which so many facts
contradict we may regard as a dream. Yet he feels toward the world
most certainly a responsibility, such as a sovereign's toward his
people; a duty, part of which is that for its sake he must not
allow his spear to be dishonoured. Compacts it must sacredly guard.
All his personal troubles come from this necessity, this constant
check to him: he must respect covenants, his spear stands for their
integrity. Alberich in a bitter discussion declares his knowledge
of where the god is weak, and reminds him that if he should break
a covenant sanctioned by the spear in his hand, this, the symbol
of his power, would split into spray!

He is perhaps best understood, on the whole, with his remorse and
despair, the tortures of his heart and his struggle with his soul,
if one can conceive him as a sort of sublimated aristocrat; a
resplendent great personage--just imaginable in the dawn of history,
when there were giants upon earth--lifted far above the ordinary of
the race by superior gifts, "reigning through beauty," as Fasolt
describes; possessing faculties not shared by common mortals, but
these rudimentary or else in their decline: the power of divination,
not always accurate or clear; the power of miracle, not altogether
to be relied upon; remaining young indefinitely, yet not wholly
enfranchised from time and circumstance; l