we bring up genuine people.”  Again, “It is for his soul’s welfare that I am concerned.  Wealth can be achieved, but morality must early in life be inoculated” (eingeimpft).  He saw the necessity of religion; that it has been called forth through the consciousness of utter helplessness in the individual.  Man is encompassed on all sides by inexorable laws, produced and perpetuated by a power beyond and outside the comprehension.  The expression of the religious sentiment is his effort at propitiation, and is his one resource.  This is the point of view on which Beethoven projected the grand mass.  It is what governed his life.

An inner pressure led him to choose a life of self-abnegation and rectitude.  He saw through and over and beyond the illusions and allurements of the senses, and so was enabled to live entirely in harmony with the moral order of the world, in an age, and among a people, largely given over to the pursuit of pleasure.

A long life is generally considered the best gift which the Fates have to bestow.  In the summary of a man’s life it is usually treated of as implying special virtues in the subject.  But a long life in itself is as nothing in comparison to the quality of the life that is lived.  It is by achievement only that its value can be determined.

WAGNER’S INDEBTEDNESS TO BEETHOVEN

FOREWORD

Beethoven, in Wagner’s estimation, is a landmark in music, just as Shakespeare is in literature, as Jesus or Buddha in religion.  He is the central figure; all others are but radii emanating from him.  To Beethoven was it given to express clearly what the others could but dimly perceive.  The relation of men like Bach or Haendel toward Beethoven, Wagner held to be analogous to that of the prophets toward Jesus, namely, one of expectancy.  The art reached its culmination in Beethoven.  This is Wagner’s summary of the significance of Beethoven’s work, and he proclaimed it continually, from the housetops.  It was in some sort a religious exercise to him to make propaganda for the master to whom he felt himself so deeply indebted.  The burden of his utterances on the subject of the musician’s art is, “A greater than I exists.  It is Beethoven.”

Chiefly, perhaps, of the philosopher and the poet must we needs
feel that if any genius reaches out into an interpenetrating
spiritual world, theirs must do so.—­F.W.H.  MYERS,

                                                    Human Personality, Chapter on Genius.

In art the best of all is too spiritual to be given directly to the
senses; it must be born in the imagination of the beholder,
although begotten by the work of art.—­SCHOPENHAUER.

Wagner’s achievement can be attributed, in part, to a certain quality of intellectual receptivity, by virtue of which he was enabled to appropriate to himself the genius of two of his predecessors for whom he had a special affinity.  His epoch-making work was rendered possible through Shakespeare and Beethoven, who served him as models all his life.