The love of a man for a woman has been superseded by love for
the absolute and supernatural. Thus, after Wagner had experienced all
the stages of love through which humanity has passed, and embodied them
in his works, he reached a new point of view, a stage to which we have
not yet attained and which, very likely, we are not even able fully to
understand. This fourth stage--not unlike Weininger's ideal--is the
overthrow of the female and earthly element in man by a voluntary
surrender to the metaphysical.
Wagner's last position, taken up quite deliberately, permits of two
explanations which I will point out without pressing either of them.
Only a man possessing both the wisdom of the aged Wagner and a knowledge
of the evolution of the race, and the road which still stretches out in
front of it, would be entitled to speak a decisive word. The first
obviously is that Wagner divined a last stage in the emotional life of
man, a period which has outgrown sexual love and replaced it by
mysticism.
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