“Those human desires that are not imaginary and fantastic are fulfilled in the course of history, of the future. Many desires which today remain mere desires will someday be fulfilled; innumerable things which the presumptuous champions of present-day religious dogmas and institutions, present-day social and political conditions, regard as impossible, will one day be reality; innumerable things that today we do not know but would like to know, will be known to our descendents. We must therefore modify our goals and exchange divinity, in which only man’s groundless and gratuitous desires are fulfilled, for the human race or human nature, religion for education, the hereafter in heaven for the hereafter on earth, that is, the historical future, the future of mankind.” [316F-LER: p. 281]
Here, then, is the ultimate reason why Fafner told Fasolt that the immortality the Giants could obtain from the goddess Freia’s golden apples, could also be obtained by commanding Alberich’s Hoard of Treasure.
Stimulated to intense meditation on these matters by Feuerbach, Wagner had much to say on the importance to world history of man’s capacity to master himself and nature by accumulating a hoard of knowledge. We might recall, for instance, the passage from Wagner’s “Art and Climate” I cited previously [See 447W], in which Wagner described how nature eventually left man to fend for himself, and that his growing consciousness of his need made him aware also of his power. Nature thus “… became the object of his observation, inquiry, and dominion.” And Wagner went on to say that the process whereby man forced nature to satisfy “… those needs that waxed with his ever-waxing powers, is the history of Culture.”
Clearly, Alberich is the one who became conscious of his “Noth” and power, by making nature his object of observation, inquiry, and dominion, after the Rhinedaughters, representing nature, forced him to satisfy himself when they would not. Keeping in mind that the Ring is Wagner’s allegory for the totality of human history, from man’s beginnings to, perhaps, his predestined end, note that Wagner describes the history of the world, cultural progress, as the account of how man satisfied that need that nature (i.e., preconscious animal instinct, represented by the Rhinedaughters) no longer would.
There is of course also ample evidence in Wagner’s writings that he construed the Nibelung Hoard as a metaphor for money, capital accumulation, property, a reading which needless to say is suggested by Wotan himself when he wonders why Alberich would bother amassing his hoard in joyless Nibelheim where nothing can be bought. In our extract below Wagner describes the Jews’ alleged gift in amassing great hoards of money, suggesting that a primary concern of the anti-Semitic movement was the question, where did the Jews get it? But Wagner’s retort was that the Jews were not to blame since the very nature of the State itself (which is to say, the very nature of man himself, the human species per se) is possession, property, ownership:
“… the astounding success of our resident Jews in the gaining and amassing of huge stores of money has always filled our Military State authorities with nothing but respect and joyful admiration: so that the present campaign against the Jews seems to point to a wish to draw the attention of those authorities to the question, Where do the Jews get it from? The bottom of the whole dispute, as it appears to us, is Property, Ownership, which we suddenly perceive to be in
