h the revelations of music--this is the
isolating principle of art. To be dissolved by its revelation--that is
the surrender to the divine, which quietly exercises its mastery over
the delirium of unbridled forces and thus imparts the greatest efficacy
to the imagination. Thus art always represents divinity, and the human
relationship to art constitutes religion. Whatever we acquire through
art comes from God; it is a divine inspiration, which sets up an
attainable goal for human capacities.

"We do not know whence our knowledge comes; the firmly inclosed seed
requires the warm, moist, electric soil to sprout, to think, to express
itself. Music is the electric soil in which the soul lives, thinks,
invents. Philosophy is a precipitation of its electric spirit, and the
need that philosophy feels of basing everything on an ultimate principle
is in turn relieved by music. Although the spirit is not master of what
it creates through the mediation of music, yet it experiences ecstasy in
this creation. In this way every genuine creation of art is independent,
mightier than the artist himself, and through its expression it returns
to its divine source; it is concerned with man only insomuch as it bears
witness to divine mediation in him.

"Music gives the spirit its relation to harmony. A thought, even when
isolated, still senses the totality of relationship in the spirit; thus
every thought in music is most intimately and inseparably related to the
totality of harmony, which is unity. Everything electric stimulates the
spirit to fluent, precipitous, musical creation. I myself am of an
electrical nature." * * *

He took me to a grand rehearsal with full orchestra, and I sat back in a
box all alone in the large, unlighted hall, and saw this mighty spirit
wield his authority. Oh, Goethe I No emperor, no king, is so conscious
of his power, so conscious that all power radiates from him, as this
same Beethoven is, who only now in the garden was searching for the
source of his inspiration. If I understood him as I feel him, I should
be omniscient. There he stood, so firmly resolved, his gestures and
features expressing the perfection of his creation, anticipating every
error, every misconception; every breath obeyed his will, and everything
was set into the most rational activity by the superb presence of his
spirit. One might well prophesy that such a spirit will reappear in a
later reincarnation as ruler of the universe!

Nove