There, to pay for his freedom, he has to summon his slaves from the
depths to place all the treasure they have heaped up for him at the feet
of Wotan. Then he demands his liberty; but Wotan must have the ring
as well. And here the dwarf, like the giant before him, feels the very
foundations of the world shake beneath him at the discovery of his
own base cupidity in a higher power. That evil should, in its loveless
desperation, create malign powers which Godhead could not create, seems
but natural justice to him. But that Godhead should steal those malign
powers from evil, and wield them itself, is a monstrous perversion; and
his appeal to Wotan to forego it is almost terrible in its conviction
of wrong. It is of no avail. Wotan falls back again on virtuous
indignation. He reminds Alberic that he stole the gold from the
Rhine maidens, and takes the attitude of the just judge compelling a
restitution of stolen goods. Alberic knowing perfectly well that the
judge is taking the goods to put them in his own pocket, has the ring
torn from his finger, and is once more as poor as he was when he came
slipping and stumbling among the slimy rocks in the bed of the Rhine.
This is the way of the world. In older times, when the Christian laborer
was drained dry by the knightly spendthrift, and the spendthrift was
drained by the Jewish usurer, Church and State, religion and law, seized
on the Jew and drained him as a Christian duty. When the forces of
lovelessness and greed had built up our own sordid capitalist systems,
driven by invisible proprietorship, robbing the poor, defacing the
earth, and forcing themselves as a universal curse even on the generous
and humane, then religion and law and intellect, which would never
themselves have discovered such systems, their natural bent being
towards welfare, economy, and life instead of towards corruption, waste,
and death, nevertheless did not scruple to seize by fraud and force
these powers of evil on presence of using them for good. And it
inevitably happens that when the Church, the Law, and all the Talents
have made common cause to rob the people, the Church is far more
vitally harmed by that unfaithfulness to itself than its more mechanical
confederates; so that finally they turn on their discredited ally and
rob the Church, with the cheerful co-operation of Loki, as in France and
Italy for instance.
The twin giants come back with their hostage, in whose presence Godhead
blooms again. The gold is ready for them; but now that the moment has
come for parting with Freia the gold does not seem so tempting; and
they are sorely loth to let her go. Not unless there is gold enough to
utterly hide her from them--not until the heap has grown so that they
can see nothing but gold--until money has come between them and every
human feeling, will they part with her. There is not gold enough to
accomplish this: however cunningly Loki spreads it, the glint of Freia's
hair is still visible to Giant Fafnir, and the magic helmet must go on
the heap to shut it out. Even then Fafnir's brother, Fasolt, can catch a
beam from her eye through a chink, and is rendered incapable thereby of
forswearing her. There is nothing to stop that chink but the ring; and
Wotan is as greedily bent on keeping that as Alberic himself was; nor
can the other gods persuade him that Freia is worth it, since for
the highest god, love is not the highest good, but only the universal
delight that bribes all living things to travail with renewed life. Life
itself, with its accomplished marvels and its infinite potentialities,
is the only force that Godhead can worship. Wotan does not yield until
he is reached by the voice of the fruitful earth that before he or the
dwarfs or the giants or the Law or the Lie or any of these things were,
had the seed of them all in her bosom, and the seed perhaps of something
higher even than himself, that shall one day supersede him and cut the
tangles and alliances and compromises that already have cost him one
of his eyes. When Erda, the First Mother of life, rises from her
sleeping-place in the heart of the earth, and warns him to yield the
ring, he obeys her; the ring is added to the heap of gold; and all sense
of Freia is cut off from the giants.
But now what Law is left to these two poor stupid laborers whereby one
shall yield to the other any of the treasure for which they have each
paid the whole price in surrendering Freia? They look by mere habit
to the god to judge for them; but he, with his heart stirring towards
higher forces than himself, turns with disgust from these lower forces.
They settle it as two wolves might; and Fafnir batters his brother dead
with his staff. It is a horrible thing to see and hear, to anyone who
knows how much blood has been shed in the world in just that way by its
brutalized toilers, honest fellows enough until their betters betrayed
them. Fafnir goes off with his booty. It is quite useless to him. He has
neither the cunning nor the ambition to establish the Plutonic empire
with it. Merely to prevent others from getting it is the only purpose it
brings him. He piles it in a cave; transforms himself into a dragon by
the helmet; and devotes his life to guarding it, as much a slave to it
as a jailor is to his prisoner. He had much better have thrown it all
back into the Rhine and transformed himself into the shortest-lived
animal that enjoys at least a brief run in the sunshine. His case,
however, is far too common to be surprising. The world is overstocked
with persons who sacrifice all their affections, and madly trample and
batter down their fellows to obtain riches of which, when they get them,
they are unable to make the smallest use, and to which they become the
most miserable slaves.
The gods soon forget Fafnir in their rejoicing over Freia. Donner,
the Thunder god, springs to a rocky summit and calls the clouds as a
shepherd calls his flocks. They come at his summons; and he and the
castle are hidden by their black legions. Froh, the Rainbow god, hastens
to his side. At the stroke of Donner's hammer the black murk is riven in
all directions by darting ribbons of lightning; and as the air clears,
the castle is seen in its fullest splendor, accessible now by the
rainbow bridge which Froh has cast across the ravine. In the glory
of this moment Wotan has a great thought. With all his aspirations
to establish a reign of noble thought, of righteousness, order, and
justice, he has found that day that there is no race yet in the world
that quite spontaneously, naturally, and unconsciously realizes his
ideal. He himself has found how far short Godhead falls of the thing
it conceives. He, the greatest of gods, has been unable to control his
fate: he has been forced against his will to choose between evils, to
make disgraceful bargains, to break them still more disgracefully, and
even then to see the price of his disgrace slip through his fingers.
His consort has cost him half his vision; his castle has cost him his
affections; and the attempt to retain both has cost him his honor. On
every side he is shackled and bound, dependent on the laws of Fricka and
on the lies of Loki, forced to traffic with dwarfs for handicraft and
with giants for strength, and to pay them both in false coin. After all,
a god is a pitiful thing. But the fertility of the First Mother is not
yet exhausted. The life that came from her has ever climbed up to a
higher and higher organization. From toad and serpent to dwarf, from
bear and elephant to giant, from dwarf and giant to a god with thoughts,
with comprehension of the world, with ideals. Why should it stop there?
Why should it not rise from the god to the Hero? to the creature in whom
the god's unavailing thought shall have become effective will and life,
who shall make his way straight to truth and reality over the laws of
Fricka and the lies of Loki with a strength that overcomes giants and a
cunning that outwits dwarfs? Yes: Erda, the First Mother, must travail
again, and breed him a race of heroes to deliver the world and himself
from his limited powers and disgraceful bargains. This is the vision
that flashes on him as he turns to the rainbow bridge and calls his wife
to come and dwell with him in Valhalla, the home of the gods.
They are all overcome with Valhalla's glory except Loki. He is behind
the scenes of this joint reign of the Divine and the Legal. He despises
these gods with their ideals and their golden apples. "I am ashamed," he
says, "to have dealings with these futile creatures." And so he follows
them to the rainbow bridge. But as they set foot on it, from the river
below rises the wailing of the Rhine maidens for their lost gold. "You
down there in the water," cries Loki with brutal irony: "you used to
bask in the glitter of your gold: henceforth you shall bask in the
splendor of the gods." And they reply that the truth is in the depths
and the darkness, and that what blazes on high there is falsehood. And
with that the gods pass into their glorious stronghold.