as one of the
factors which helped him achieve his wondrous result. His work on the
Mass was a good preparation for the psychological problems expounded in
the Symphony.

Here is a work so interwoven into Beethoven's very life and spirit, that
the mention of his name at once calls to mind the Ninth Symphony. It is
the work of the seer approaching the end of his life-drama, giving with
photographic clearness a resume of it. Here are revelations of the inner
nature of a man who had delved deeply into the mysteries surrounding
life, learning this lesson in its fullest significance, that no great
spiritual height is ever attained without renunciation. The world must
be left behind. Asking and getting but little from it, giving it of his
best, counting as nothing its material advantages, realizing always that
contact with it had for him but little joy, the separation from it was
nevertheless a hard task. This mystery constantly confronted Beethoven,
that, even when obeying the finer behests of his nature, peace was not
readily attained thereby; often there was instead, an accession of
unhappiness for the time being. Paradoxically peace was made the
occasion for a struggle; it had to be wrested from life. No victory is
such unless well fought for and dearly bought.

This eternal struggle with fate, this conflict forever raging in the
heart, runs through all the Symphonies, but nowhere is it so strongly
depicted as in this, his last. We have here in new picturing, humanity
at bay, as in the recently completed Kyrie of the grand mass. The
apparently uneven battle of the individual with fate,--the plight of the
human being who finds himself a denizen of a world with which he is
entirely out of harmony, who, wrought up to despair, finds life
impossible yet fears to die,--is here portrayed in dramatic language. To
Wagner the first movement pictured to him "the idea of the world in its
most terrible of lights," something to recoil from. "Beethoven in the
Ninth Symphony," he says, "leads us through the torment of the world
relentlessly until the ode to joy is reached."

Great souls have always taught that the only relief for this
_Weltschmerz_ is through the power of love; that universal love alone
can transform and redeem the world. This is the central teaching of
Jesus, of Buddha, of all who have the welfare of humanity at heart. It
was Beethoven's solution of the problem of existence. Through this magic
power, sorrows are tran