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 transmuted into gifts of peace and happiness.  Beethoven loved his kind.  Love for humanity, pity for its misfortunes, hope for its final deliverance, largely occupied his mind.  With scarcely an exception Beethoven’s works end happily.  Among the sketches of the last movement of the Mass in D, he makes the memorandum, “Staerke der Gesinnungen des innern Friedens.  Ueber alles ...  Sieg.” (Strengthen the conviction of inward peace.  Above all—­Victory).  The effect of the Choral Finale is that of an outburst of joy at deliverance, a celebration of victory.  It is as if Beethoven, with prophetic eye, had been able to pierce the future and foresee a golden age for humanity, an age where altruism was to bring about cessation from strife, and where happiness was to be general.  Such happiness as is here celebrated in the Ode to Joy, can indeed, only exist in the world through altruism.  Pity,[B] that sentiment which allies man to the divine, comes first.  From this proceeds love, and through these and by these only is happiness possible.  This was the gist of Beethoven’s thought.  He had occupied himself much with sociological questions all his life, always taking the part of the oppressed.

[B] The German rendering Mitleid has a higher significance than its English equivalent.  Literally it means sharing the sorrow of the afflicted one.  It may be said in passing that this sentiment is the central idea in Parsifal.

Schindler, who was almost constantly with Beethoven at this time, tells of the difficulty the master experienced in finding a suitable way of introducing the choral part.  He finally hit upon the naive device of adding words of his own in the form of a recitative, which first appears in the sketch-book as, “Let us sing the immortal Schiller’s Song, ‘Freude schoener Goetterfunken.’” This was afterward changed to the much better form as now appears, “O Freunde, nicht diese Toene! sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere.” (O friends, not these tones.  Let us sing a strain more cheerful, more joyous.)