[...] You see, my friend, I too am bitterly scorned by our politicians and jurists for my faith: for I believe in the future of the human race, and I derive this faith quite simply from my own essential need; I have succeeded in viewing natural and historical phenomena with love and with total impartiality as regards their true essence, and I have noticed nothing amiss except for - lovelessness. - But even this lovelessness I was able to explain as an aberration, an aberration which must inevitably lead us away from our state of natural unawareness towards a knowledge of the uniquely beautiful necessity of love; to acquire this knowledge by active striving is the task of world history; but the stage on which this knowledge will one day act out its role is none other than the earth and nature herself, which is the seed-bed of all that will lead us to this blissful knowledge. The state of lovelessness is the state of suffering for the human race: an abundance of suffering now envelops us, and torments your friend, as well, with a thousand smarting wounds; but you see, it is precisely here that we recognize the glorious necessity of love, we call upon it and welcome each other with a force of love which would not be possible were it not for this painful recognition; and so, in this way, we acquire a strength of which natural man had no inkling, and this strength - increased to embrace the whole of humanity - will one day lay the foundations for a state on earth where no one need yearn for the other world (a world which will then have become wholly unnecessary), for they will be happy - to live and to love. For where is the man who yearns to escape from life when he is in love?
- Well then! Now we suffer, now we must lose heart and go mad without any faith in the hereafter: I too believe in a hereafter: - I have just shown you this hereafter: though it lies beyond my life, it does not lie beyond the limits of all that I can feel, think, grasp and comprehend, for I believe in humanity and - have need of naught else! -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 161