uch higher
degree than we do at present we can never get rid of the wasteful and
iniquitous welter of a little riches and a deal of poverty which current
political humbug calls our prosperity and civilization. Liberty is an
excellent thing; but it cannot begin until society has paid its daily
debt to Nature by first earning its living. There is no liberty before
that except the liberty to live at somebody else's expense, a liberty
much sought after nowadays, since it is the criterion of gentility, but
not wholesome from the point of view of the common weal.

SIEGFRIED CONCLUDED

In returning now to the adventures of Siegfried there is little more
to be described except the finale of an opera. Siegfried, having passed
unharmed through the fire, wakes Brynhild and goes through all the
fancies and ecstasies of love at first sight in a duet which ends with
an apostrophe to "leuchtende Liebe, lachender Tod!", which has been
romantically translated into "Love that illumines, laughing at Death,"
whereas it really identifies enlightening love and laughing death as
involving each other so closely as to be usually one and the same thing.

NIGHT FALLS ON THE GODS

PROLOGUE

Die Gottrerdammerung begins with an elaborate prologue. The three Norns
sit in the night on Brynhild's mountain top spinning their thread of
destiny, and telling the story of Wotan's sacrifice of his eye, and
of his breaking off a bough from the World Ash to make a heft for his
spear, also how the tree withered after suffering that violence. They
have also some fresher news to discuss. Wotan, on the breaking of his
spear by Siegfried, has called all his heroes to cut down the withered
World Ash and stack its faggots in a mighty pyre about Valhalla. Then,
with his broken spear in his hand, he has seated himself in state in
the great hall, with the Gods and Heroes assembled about him as if
in council, solemnly waiting for the end. All this belongs to the old
legendary materials with which Wagner began The Ring.

The tale is broken by the thread snapping in the hands of the third
Norn; for the hour has arrived when man has taken his destiny in his
own hands to shape it for himself, and no longer bows to circumstance,
environment, necessity (which he now freely wills), and all the rest of
the inevitables. So the Norns recognize that the world has no further
use for them, and sink into the earth to return to the First Mother.
Then the day dawns; a