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In describing how he proceeded in the composition of "The Flying Dutchman," Wagner says that when a mental mood recurred for which he had once found thematic expression, that expression was repeated. He speaks here only of moods, but he extended the principle involved to the whole apparatus of the drama—its secret impulses as well as its external agencies. These agencies, in their physical manifestation, moreover, are sometimes anticipated by the appearance in the music of the melodic phrases which typify them; but this never happens unless they are spiritually present in the drama. This is what I have called the use of the themes for prophecy, and to me it seems one of the most beautiful features of Wagner's constructive scheme. Let me illustrate: the sword, which is the instrument designed by Wotan for the working-out of his plot for the return of the baneful ring to its original owners, for itself and as a symbol of the race of demi-gods who were to be endowed with it; Siegfried, the hero who is to be the vessel chosen, not by Wotan but by fate in the prevision of Brünnhilde, to execute the purposes of the god; Brünnhilde herself, not as a goddess but in the character of loving woman willing and able to make the redeeming sacrifice; all these are prefigured in the drama by the entrance of their typical phrases long before the action permits their physical appearance. They are seen by the prophetic vision of certain personages of the play and manifested to us through the music. Thus: the sword phrase appears in the orchestral postlude of "Das Rheingold" at the moment when Wotan, crossing the Rainbow-bridge with the members of his divine household, stops in thought and conceives the plot which is worked out in the tragedy proper; the phrase typical of the heroic character of Siegfried accompanies Brünnhilde's prediction to Sieglinde that she shall give birth to "the loftiest hero in the world," in the drama "Die Walküre;" in giving voice to her gratitude, Sieglinde, in turn, hails Brünnhilde as the representative of the redeeming principle of the tragedy, Goethe's "Ewig-Weibliche," by using a melody which examination shows to be an augmentation of the melodic symbol of Brünnhilde when she appears as mere woman in the last drama of the trilogy.