“ … religion has essentially a practical aim and foundation; the drive that gives rise to religion, its ultimate foundation, is the striving for happiness, and if this is an egoistic drive, it follows that the ultimate foundation of religion is egoism.” [271F-LER: p. 200]
“ … the religious imagination [say, the Tarnhelm] is not the free imagination of the artist, but has a practical egoistic purpose … .” [269F-LER: p. 196]
Mime therefore represents a dark-side of man’s religious longing for transcendence, embodying Wagner’s cynical, Feuerbach-inspired grasp of the true, practical, egoistic motives which drive man even in his religious aspirations. In the following extract Wagner expresses his suspicion that even those poor men whom man’s religious conscience prompts him to aid (as Loge offers to help Mime) would, if given power, be just as cruel as those who oppress them, echoing Mime’s remark that he’d like, if given the opportunity, to subject Alberich to the same fate to which Alberich has subjected Mime:
[P. 456] “ … R. [says], ‘It is very difficult to preserve one’s compassion for other people, even for the poor, since the thought must always be in one’s mind that, given the chance, they would be just as cruel as the more fortunate ones.’ “ [1010W-{3/23/80} CD Vol. II, p. 456]
[R.3: E]
This culminates in Loge’s offer to free the Nibelungs from their “Noth,” i.e., their anguish at being the victims of Alberich’s will, an anguish which is embodied here by their Labor Motif #41:
Loge: (to Wotan) Admit it, his capture won’t be easy.
Wotan: (#33b:) But our foe will fall with the help of your cunning (:#33b). (…)
Mime: Who are you strangers, with all your questions?
Loge: Friends of yours; from their plight [“Noth”] (#41:) we shall free the Nibelung folk (:#41).
That is to say, if the gods, with the help of their artist-savior Loge, are able to co-opt the objective powers of the human mind (Alberich’s Ring), especially the imagination (the Tarnhelm), to serve their subjective desire for illusory consolations, Mime and the other Nibelungs will find themselves exalted to a near-divine dignity and seeming freedom from subjection to their own egoistic drives like the self-preservation instinct, which is the foundation of their enslavement by Alberich. Believing in gods as founders and lawgivers, men can exalt themselves above their otherwise animal level of existence, giving life transcendent meaning and value. If Wotan and Loge can take possession of Alberich’s Ring, Tarnhelm, and Hoard of treasure, and thus take the objective human
