thought, and action), but rather, that thanks to the hoard of knowledge Alberich (both Light and Dark) will gather, all men will eventually recognize that egoism is the sole motive which has ever and always motivated them, even from the beginning. If we can logically affirm that all men, when either sufficiently tempted or earnestly threatened, have their price for renouncing all their most cherished values, how much more would this empirical knowledge based on experience demonstrate the veracity of this assumption, since ultimately we can never wholly transcend our origin and our history. It has only been during the period in which religious mythology was man’s most valued source of alleged knowledge, providing the answer to his big questions about his origin, identity, nature, history, and destiny, that he could delude himself into believing that divine sentiments could inspire him, not seeing that these sentiments are merely sublimations of our egoistic animal drives. For Feuerbach noted that our sublime religious sentiments are not at all distinct from the emotions which we openly acknowledge have a basis in our material life:
“The purely, truly human emotions are religious; but for that reason the religious emotions are purely human … . Religion has thus no dispositions or emotions which are peculiar to itself; what it claims as belonging exclusively to its object, are simply the same dispositions and emotions that man experiences either in relation to himself (as, for example, to his conscience), or to his fellow-man, or to Nature.” [144F-EOC: p. 282]
And speaking of the Christian sacrament, the communion, involving an alleged spiritual transmutation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ (a sacrament which can stand for all religious ceremonies of any conceivable spiritual significance), Feuerbach offered the following logical demonstration of the physical significance and origin of all such practices of believers:
[P. 277] “ … for the sake of comprehending the religious significance of bread and wine, place thyself in a position where the daily act [i.e., of eating and drinking per se] is unnaturally, violently interrupted. Hunger and thirst destroy not only the physical, but also the mental and moral powers of man; they rob [P. 278] him of his humanity – of understanding, of consciousness. (…) It needs only that the natural course of things be interrupted in order to vindicate to common things an uncommon significance, to life, as such, a religious import.” [143F-EOC: p. 277-278]
So, let us ask one of the most important questions posed by Wagner’s Ring. Is the logical consequence of Alberich’s threat to demonstrate that all human beings will forsake love for gold and the power it can bring, true? Is it the case that man’s sole true motive is egoism, and that all of anyone’s other motives, especially those of compassion and self-sacrifice for the sake of others, will always be superceded by egoism when put to a drastic test? Wagner’s personal reflections provide two possible answers, one cynical, the other hopeful.
In a passage cited previously [See 1017W], we found Wagner opining that if it weren’t for the religious assumption (which presumably Wagner believes is illusory) that the world was made by a good god, it would be easy to understand why in nature (which of course includes mankind), all living beings live off the death of other living beings.
On the other hand, later in life Wagner tried to counter Schopenhauer’s cynicism about human motives, his assumption that the human species as a whole is irrevocably subject to the egoistic Will. Wagner speculated on the possibility that human nature might not be founded solely on
