Wagner is a declared anarchist. He distinctly develops the teaching of this faction in the _Art-work of the Future_ (p. 217): ‘_All_ men have but _one_ common _need_ ... the need of _living_ and _being happy_. Herein lies the natural bond between all men.... It is only the special needs which, according to time, place, and individuality, make themselves known and increase, which in the rational condition of future humanity can serve as a basis for special associations.... These associations will change, will take another form, dissolve and reconstitute themselves according as those needs change and reappear.’[191] He does not conceal the fact that this ‘rational condition of future humanity’ ‘can be brought about only by force’ (p. 228). ‘Necessity must force us, too, through the Red Sea if we, purged of our shame, are to reach the Promised Land. We shall not be drowned in it; it is destructive only to the _Pharaohs_ of this world, who have once already been swallowed up--man and horse ... the arrogant, proud Pharaohs who then forgot that once a poor shepherd’s son with his shrewd advice had saved their land from starvation.’ Together with this anarchistic acerbity, there is another feeling that controls the entire conscious and unconscious mental life of Wagner, viz., sexual emotion. He has been throughout his life an erotic (in a psychiatric sense), and all his ideas revolve about woman. The most ordinary incitements, even those farthest removed from the province of the sexual instinct, never fail to awaken in his consciousness voluptuous images of an erotic character, and the bent of the automatic association of ideas is in him always directed towards this pole of his thought. In this connection let this passage be read from the _Art-work of the Future_ (p. 44), where he seeks to demonstrate the relation between the art of dancing, music, and poetry: ‘In the contemplation of this ravishing dance of the most genuine and noblest muses, of the artistic man [?], we now see the three arm-in-arm lovingly entwined up to their necks; then this, then that one, detaching herself from the entwinement, as if to display to the others her beautiful form in complete separation, touching the hands of the others only with the extreme tips of her fingers; now the one, entranced by a backward glance at the twin forms of her closely entwined sisters, bending towards them; then two, carried away by the allurements of the one [!] greeting her in homage; finally all, in close embrace, breast to breast, limb to limb, in an ardent kiss of love, coalescing in one blissfully living shape. This is the love and life, the joy and wooing of art,’ etc. (Observe the word-play: _Lieben und Leben, Freuen und Freien_!) Wagner here visibly loses the thread of his argument; he neglects what he really wishes to say, and revels in the picture of the three dancing maidens, who have arisen before his mind’s eye,