The Jewish renaissance has happened almost entirely since his day, and he did not foresee it,...
{yet Wagner's Das Judentum in der Musik -1850 argues that }
A really great creative artist is one who, freely expressing his own fantasies, needs, aspirations and conflicts, articulates those of a whole society, This is made possible by the fact that, through his earliest relationships, mother tongue, upbringing and all his first experience of life, the cultural heritage on which he has entered at birth is woven into the whole fabric of his personality, He has a thousand roots in it of which he is unaware, nourishing him below the level of consciousness, so that when he speaks for himself he quite unconsciously speaks for others.

In Wagner's time Jewish artists could not possibly in this position. ...