Only a being completely in the grip of the greed for riches
and dominion, a being who looks upon the world and all men as objects to
be bent to his will, and who has consequently renounced love, could have
thus enslaved the world. Love does not impair the worth of a
fellow-creature, but sets him above all things; a lover cannot be
entirely selfish; his feeling at least for his mistress, and through her
for the rest of the world, must be pure and unselfish. The struggle
between these two most powerful instincts, both in the race and in the
heart of the individual (Wotan), is the incomparable subject of this
tragedy. The whole world-process is represented as a struggle between
the apparently great, who are yet the slaves of gold and authority, and
the truly free man who serves love, and on whom ambition has no hold.
The representatives of the petty, greedy, toiling human vermin, who
readily renounced love for the sake of wealth, because the latter will
always buy lust and pleasure, are the Niebelungs, the dwellers in the
Netherworld who never see the sun.
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