In a letter to Liszt Wagner says he would not have undertaken the toil of completing so gigantic a work as the Ring but for his love of Siegfried, his ideal of manhood.  It is as well, from one point of view, that his love of his ideal was so intense, for in consequence we have the Ring; but from another point of view it is not so well, for the youth Siegfried is the least lovable, perhaps the most inane and detestable character to be found in any form of drama.  He is a combination of impudence, stupidity and sheer animal strength—­mere bone and sinew; his courage comes from his stupidity.  The courage and strength and impudence carry him through to his one victory; then his stupidity leads him straight to destruction.  He possesses not one fine trait:  he is as weak in will and intellect as he is strong in muscle.  In the ’fifties and ’sixties not only Germans but men of all other nationalities seem to have vainly imagined they had solved all the problems of this very difficult world by assuming and proclaiming that might is right.  Bismarck acted on this belief; our own Carlyle, Tennyson and Ruskin preached it; and Wagner, being a feeble creature physically, fell naturally, inevitably, a victim to the old delusion, and set to work to glorify the strong man.  There is a further explanation.  I need not do more than refer to an idea which took definite form during the eighteenth century, that as many of the defects and problems of modern life spring from the very conditions under which our civilisation alone is possible, a return to a state of nature, without government, clothes, or even houses to live in, would be a return to the garden of Eden before the Fall.  We see this notion working in Wagner’s mind continually in the prose writings, and in his last opera we see Parsifal, the “pure fool,” “redeeming” an over-civilised world.  To glorify the idiot absolute in this fashion was to out-Rousseau Rousseau—­though Wagner would have scorned the suggestion.  In Siegfried he goes by no means so far; but he goes quite far enough.  Siegfried is no idiot; but he certainly is an unamiable, truculent savage.  He has been reared by a dwarf and cripple, Mime, and the first we see of him is on his entry with a wild bear in leash, which beast he drives at his terrified foster-father.  The justification is that he feels instinctively that Mime is bad, low and cunning—­and it does not justify him:  Mime, with an ulterior purpose, it is true, has saved him from death by starvation in his infancy, and nurtured him, and the least Siegfried could do was to leave the abject creature in peace.  It is true also that he is mending Siegfried’s sword—­but this is to anticipate.  I cannot accept Siegfried as a specimen of the highest heroic humanity.  The boldness of a man who because of his dull wits cannot realise danger is of no use in this world under any imaginable conditions.  Siegfried knows no fear.  There is a story of two officers conversing during a battle.  One