Most honoured Sir and friend,
I am writing to you today immediately after finishing your “Federalism”, six copies of which I had already ordered as soon as I received the first copy, in order to present them as gifts to discerning friends of my acquaintance. - You could probably have anticipated my profound admiration for this most outstanding of all your works: with this new gift of yours you have surpassed all that could possibly have been hoped for as a source of salvation. University chairs ought to be established solely for the purpose of studying your book, and - if it were possible to feel any hope - one might indeed hope and expect that your ideas succeed in pervading the minds of all right-thinking persons. - But how similar to my own position I find yours to be! Each in his own sphere, neither of us tires of presenting his ideas to his fellow men in new arrangements, without ever being deterred by the total failure of all our efforts. One ought, no doubt, to be able to identify some higher agency here, except that I fear it is not the agency that makes “history”. And this brings me to the one aspect of your theory which causes me misgivings. You locate the realm of history in the sphere of man’s “free will”, whereas I can see the freedom of the will only in the act of denying the world, i.e. in the advent of the “kingdom of grace”. If the realm of history were to offer us anything other than the workings of an arbitrary despotism — which certainly does not mean freedom of the will, but rather the will’s subjection to blind self-interest - , it would be most surprising if, for ex., ideas like yours had no influence whatsoever on the course of history. This had already become clear to me as a result of the profound doubt which I harboured as to the success of those of your writings which appeared before 1866: that you should ever win over a powerful and capable individual to your cause — one of our princes, ministers or deputies, say, — was bound to strike me as quite out of the question. And how do things stand now? Everything rolls on as though into the pit of madness, and - if this happens of one’s own free will - one must at least admit that it is an heroic will which is at work, since it urges the destruction of all that at present exists.
- I believe very definitely that this is the only outcome that now remains open to us; and historical analogies enable me to foresee our return to a state of barbarism around the middle of the next millennium. The man of peace whom you hold out to us presupposes too much reason on the part of the human race; unfortunately, moreover, there is no religion that can guide us along the right path, since - in my own estimation - this must first be revealed to us, and Jesus Christ must first be recognized and imitated by us.
What will give rise to misconceptions in your book is the fact that, among the factors which have contributed to the downfall of the Germans, you really number only feudalism but say nothing of the Catholic Church which has exploited that feudalism. I believe you could have spoken with greater warmth of the German nation’s fight for survival at the time of the Reformation. The reasons for the Reformation’s lack of achievement and its frailty could be found, with a greater feeling of regret, in Austrian politics, for ex., just as the decline or decay of Spain, Italy and, in a certain sense, even France could have been shown to derive quite clearly from the fact that the Inquisition and other forms of persecuting heretics completely wiped out the country’s most talented and capable individuals (as the Huguenots certainly were in France). There is nothing I would say about the Church except that, if Christianity had already been a living part of it, the Church has utterly ruined it. As a result it seems to me dangerous and open to the greatest possible misinterpretation to speak in general of “Christianity” today as the supreme authority in life, and I am afraid that you will not escape the - silent or open - reproach that, for reasons that remain unclear, you have held back on this point, showing a reserve into which you could easily have been misled - do not take this amiss! - by the eccentric decision to quote Biblical texts in the Latin translation of the Vulgate. The fact that you are thinking of the Christian religion only in the popular guise of God the Creator and His first revelation to the Jews seems to me the result of your overall plan, which, I admit, appears to be designed to make your ideas more easily accessible; nevertheless, I believe that it is in this area that the most critical point is to be found, when it becomes a question of further developing popular awareness. If the common people were made to forget about God in the “burning bush” and shown instead only the “sacred head sore wounded” they would understand what Christianity is all about, and perhaps this “head” will one day rise up, as the true creator of religion, out of the chaos towards which we are all inexorably hastening.
Let us leave Darwinism alone: I believe little can be achieved here on the basis of feeling. Man evidently begins to exist with the entry of lying (cunning, dissimulation) into the powerful series of the development of beings; God will have revealed Himself with the entry of the most unshakeable truth into every domain of existence: the way from man to Him is compassion, and its everlasting name is Jesus.
My honoured friend, you see in what an agitated frame of mind you have put me - but it is by no means the worst possible effect that your book could have had! - However, this ought to suffice for today. I shall stop now and repeat only one thing, which I said at the outset, namely that I consider your book the greatest benefit to have been bestowed upon the human race today; let us not ask what use it may be to them, although I can see the “sacred head sore wounded” smiling upon you.
With the most respectful good wishes, I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 471