“Divested of its robes of metaphysical terminology, it is this: When the human mind rises from the study of the location, period, causes, and tendencies of things to the undivided examination of their essence, and when, further, this consideration takes place, not through the medium of abstract thought, but in calm contemplation of the immediately present natural object, then the mind is brought face to face with eternal ideas. Art, the work of genius, repeats these eternal ideas, which are the essential and permanent things in the phenomena of the world. In other words, art endeavors to exhibit to us the eternal essence of things by means of prototypes.”[17] [Illustration: RICHARD WAGNER. From a family group, photographed shortly before his death. ] Of course, Wagner could not find prototypes embodying “the eternal essence of things” in the small and shallow stories to which the librettists of the majority of the popular operas of his time had turned. He must seek for material which had its roots in the great heart of the people; which was not the fancy of a single mind, but the formulation of a people’s ideal. To the myth, then, he turned, impelled by his own reasoning, by the arguments of divine philosophy, as he read them, and by the equally eloquent example of revered antiquity. And, indeed, we must all admit that the true myth is the individualization of an abstract ideal, and if we accept the Wagnerian theory, that abstract ideal should be embodied in the personages of the drama, we must also accept the myth. Even if we refuse to believe that ideals, or even types, should be the actors in a drama, we shall probably have no hesitation in admitting that for _musical exposition_ only the broad, elementary emotions of humanity are well suited; and these are always found most freely and powerfully displayed in the great world-thoughts of mythology. Thus Wagner’s Tristan and his Isolde are plainly intended to be embodiments of the elementary man and woman, standing in primeval barbarian grandeur at gaze one upon the other, and overwhelmed by the tragic power of mastering passion. The history of the Tristan legend, which has found its way in different forms into the literature of several languages, is proof that the world has so regarded it. For six hundred years poets have accepted Tristan and Isolde as the most convincing representatives of the mastery and the misery of love. In this they stand sharply distinguished from the hero and heroine of Wagner’s comedy, “Die Meistersinger.” Walther and Eva, moving in a story whose design is to touch the manners of a time with the gentle reproof of satire, are not the embodiments of elementary thoughts, but are circumscribed by the manifest environments of locality and period. But Tristan and Siegfried are the unfettered, unconventioned man of all times and places; while Brünnhilde and Isolde are visible forms of the highest of Wagner’s ideals, the eternal womanhood. It is a significant