the Jews, however, but the Jewish spirit, that represents
the antagonist--that spirit which at first, after the birth of
Christianity, and aided by the filth of Roman civilization, with its
inherent evil germs, this people devoted to a world-historic power of
evil; and which, even in its most brilliant revelation, in Spinoza, as
has been most clearly demonstrated from his own works by Schopenhauer,
seeks only its own advantage, to which it sacrifices the whole, but
does not recognize the whole to which it must lovingly sacrifice
itself.

Such concrete, actual historical developments Wagner regards not as a
hindrance, but as the external support of his art-work. For a poetic
composition requires some connection with a time or space to make
perceptible to the senses its view of the advancing development of
the mind of humanity. So it is that Kleist's "Arminius-battle" does
not in the least refer to the ancient Romans, but to the degenerate
race, the mixture of tiger and ape, as Voltaire has called them, and
in this symbol of art he strengthened the determination of his people
until in the battles of nations it conquered. Wagner even transfers
the scene of this conflict into those distant centuries in which the
struggle between Christians and Infidels was very fierce, while that
between Jews and Occidentals had not yet even in existence. Like the
real artist, he also uses only individual phases of the present time,
which, it is quite true, bear but too close a relation to the
character of that Arabian world that once engaged in conflict
with Christianity for the world's control, and thus proves that
this question, least of all is a passing "Question of time and
controversy," but is one of the ever-present questions of humanity
which has again come to the front in a specially vivid and urgent
form. His inborn feeling for the purely human, which we have seen
displayed with such touching warmth in all his doings, and that has
created for us the genuine human forms of a "Flying Dutchman,"
"Tannhaeuser," "Lohengrin," and "Siegfried" is true to itself this
time, indeed this time more than ever. He anticipates the struggling
aspiration. He sees the form already appear on the surface, and only
seeks a pure human sympathy to show the true and full solution which
denies to neither of the disputing parties the God-given right of
existence.

Klingsor, the sorcerer, representative of everything hostile to the
Holy Grail and its kni