uld do; but we must
not save the credit of the allegory by a quip. Not until she reappears
in the next play (The Valkyries) does her function in the allegorical
scheme become plain.

One preconception will bewilder the spectator hopelessly unless he
has been warned against it or is naturally free from it. In the
old-fashioned orders of creation, the supernatural personages are
invariably conceived as greater than man, for good or evil. In the
modern humanitarian order as adopted by Wagner, Man is the highest.
In The Rhine Gold, it is pretended that there are as yet no men on the
earth. There are dwarfs, giants, and gods. The danger is that you will
jump to the conclusion that the gods, at least, are a higher order than
the human order. On the contrary, the world is waiting for Man to redeem
it from the lame and cramped government of the gods. Once grasp that;
and the allegory becomes simple enough. Really, of course, the dwarfs,
giants, and gods are dramatizations of the three main orders of men: to
wit, the instinctive, predatory, lustful, greedy people; the patient,
toiling, stupid, respectful, money-worshipping people; and the
intellectual, moral, talented people who devise and administer States
and Churches. History shows us only one order higher than the highest of
these: namely, the order of Heroes.

Now it is quite clear--though you have perhaps never thought of it--that
if the next generation of Englishmen consisted wholly of Julius Caesars,
all our political, ecclesiastical, and moral institutions would
vanish, and the less perishable of their appurtenances be classed with
Stonehenge and the cromlechs and round towers as inexplicable relics of
a bygone social order. Julius Caesars would no more trouble themselves
about such contrivances as our codes and churches than a fellow of the
Royal Society will touch his hat to the squire and listen to the village
curate's sermons. This is precisely what must happen some day if life
continues thrusting towards higher and higher organization as it has
hitherto done. As most of our English professional men are to Australian
bushmen, so, we must suppose, will the average man of some future day
be to Julius Caesar. Let any man of middle age, pondering this prospect
consider what has happened within a single generation to the articles
of faith his father regarded as eternal nay, to the very scepticisms and
blasphemies of his youth (Bishop Colenso's criticism of the Pentateuc