tempt to explain the revolutionary doctrines which he found inherent in Wagner's Ring, Bernard Shaw ran across many snags. He swam through the Rheingold, rode triumphantly through Die Walküre, even clambered gaily through Siegfried, by making the hero a protestant, but when he reached Götterdämmerung, his hobby-horse bucked and threw him. Shaw was forced to admit that Götterdämmerung was pure opera, and he attempted to evade the difficulty by explaining that Wagner wrote the book for this work before he wrote the other three, quite forgetting that, if Wagner's intention had been the creation of a revolutionary cycle, it would have been entirely possible for him to rewrite the last drama to fit the thesis. The fact is that the work is inconsistent from any point of view except the point of view of art. Any critic who is an artist will be equally inconsistent.
Truth! Truth! Peter cried in scorn. Forsooth, what is truth? Voltaire was right: error also has its merits.
And yet . . . I began.
And yet! he interrupted, still more scornfully. No, there is no such thing as truth. Truth is impossible. Truth is incredible. The most impossible and incredible physical, spiritual, or mental form or idea or conception in the cosmos is the cult of truth. Truth implies permanence and nothing is permanent. Truth implies omniscience and no one is omniscient. Truth implies community of feeling and no two hu-
