There is a story of his meeting with the poet Goethe. As we shall see, Goethe had made his way by conforming to the customs of a court; he was now sixty-three years of age, stiff to the rest of the world, but pliable to the nobility. Beethoven was forty-two, willing to be humble to a poet of genius, but not to rank and arrogance. They met in the open air, in a park where there were many people; and suddenly came word that the duke and the empress were coming. The people formed two lines, and stood, hats in hand, to do homage; and Goethe took his place among them. Beethoven was furious; he remonstrated with the poet in vain, then he jammed his hat down over his head and strode toward the duke and empress, and they were the ones who did homage to him. Goethe never forgot this scene, and he did not care to listen to Beethoven’s music, because he said he found it “disturbing.” We are told by our “art for art’s sake” dilettanti that art has nothing to do with moral questions. Let them take their answer from the father of modern music, the greatest genius who has used that lofty art. No higher authority could be found; and his words were these: “I recognize no sign of superiority in mankind other than goodness.” By that principle he lived, and by it he wrote; his art is overwhelmingly ethical, and if we were to tear up every record of his life, every word in the way of title or dedication or inscription upon his compositions, if we had nothing but the musical notes of his sonatas and symphonies, we should get precisely the same impressions; we should know that we were in the presence of a titanic conflict of the human will against the forces of fate, the blind cruelties of nature and the deliberate cruelties of class. We might not know that this man became deaf at the height of his powers; we might have no definite image to attach to the terrible hammer strokes of the Fifth Symphony; but we should know that here is torture, here is defeat and despair crying out, here is loveliness broken to pieces, trampled, crushed out of life; here also is man, clenching his hands and setting his teeth in grim resolve, proclaiming the supremacy of his own spirit, and rising to heights of power, in which he makes his joy out of the very materials of his torment. Some friend in Beethoven’s presence called upon God; and the composer answered with the motto of his life: “O man, help thyself!” CHAPTER LI POLITICS IS FATE We come now to one of the great intellects of modern times, a genius who made the culture of Germany known to the rest of the world. He is cited, along with Shakespeare, as an illustration of how great art holds itself aloof from propaganda; so it will be worth our while to study him carefully, and see how he lived and voiced the aristocratic ideals of his age.