The only faith which any reasonable disciple can gain from The Ring is
not in love, but in life itself as a tireless power which is continually
driving onward and upward--not, please observe, being beckoned or drawn
by Das Ewig Weibliche or any other external sentimentality, but growing
from within, by its own inexplicable energy, into ever higher and
higher forms of organization, the strengths and the needs of which are
continually superseding the institutions which were made to fit our
former requirements. When your Bakoonins call out for the demolition of
all these venerable institutions, there is no need to fly into a panic
and lock them up in prison whilst your parliament is bit by bit doing
exactly what they advised you to do. When your Siegfrieds melt down the
old weapons into new ones, and with disrespectful words chop in twain
the antiquated constable's staves in the hands of their elders, the end
of the world is no nearer than it was before. If human nature, which
is the highest organization of life reached on this planet, is really
degenerating, then human society will decay; and no panic-begotten penal
measures can possibly save it: we must, like Prometheus, set to work to
make new men instead of vainly torturing old ones. On the other hand, if
the energy of life is still carrying human nature to higher and higher
levels, then the more young people shock their elders and deride and
discard their pet institutions the better for the hopes of the world,
since the apparent growth of anarchy is only the measure of the rate of
improvement. History, as far as we are capable of history (which is
not saying much as yet), shows that all changes from crudity of social
organization to complexity, and from mechanical agencies in government
to living ones, seem anarchic at first sight. No doubt it is natural
to a snail to think that any evolution which threatens to do away with
shells will result in general death from exposure. Nevertheless, the
most elaborately housed beings today are born not only without houses on
their backs but without even fur or feathers to clothe them.