The present and real returns; we no longer dwell on the past; “We must separate; only this is left.” In this movement we awake from the dream, and we feel the importance of the situation. Its content is “Farewell, then;” the phrase expressing this, lingers in its striving to shake off the grasp and get free. The hands will not let go each other. The phrase runs into the next and back to itself, and will not be cut off. In the trio there seems to be the echoing of sobs that come from the depth of the soul as the sorrowful words are repeated. The buried past still comes back and holds up its happy hours, while the shadows of the gloomy future hover before the two renunciants! This movement is very short, and is followed by the _Finale_ (_Presto agitato_). “No grief of the soul that can be conquered except through action,” says Goethe—and Beethoven expresses the same conviction in the somewhat sentimental correspondence with the fair countess. This third movement depicts the soul endeavoring to escape from itself; to cancel its individualism through contact with the real. The first movement found the being of the soul involved with another—having, as it were, lost its essence. If the being upon which it depends reflects it back by a reciprocal dependence, it again becomes integral and independent. This cannot be; hence death or renunciation. But renunciation leaves the soul recoiling upon its finitude, and devoid of the universality it would have obtained by receiving its being through another which reciprocally depended upon it. Hence the necessity of Goethe’s and Beethoven’s solution—the soul must find surcease of sorrow through action, through will, or practical self-determination. _Man becomes universal in his deed._ How fiercely the soul rushes into the world of action in this _Finale!_ In its impetuosity it storms through life, and ever and anon falls down breathless before the collision which it encounters in leaping the chasms between the different spheres. In its swoon of exhaustion there comes up from the memory of the past the ghost of the lost love that has all the while accompanied him, though unnoticed, in his frantic race. Its hollow tones reverberate through his being, and he starts from his dream and drowns his memory anew in the storm of action. At times we are elevated to the creative moment of the artist, and feel its inspiration and lofty enthusiasm, but again and again the exhausted soul collapses, and the same abysmal crash comes in at the bass each time. The grimmest loneliness, that touches to the core, comes intruding itself upon our rapture. Only in the contest with the “last enemy” we feel at length that the soul has proved itself valid in a region where distinctions of rank sunder and divide no more. This solution is not quite so satisfactory as could be desired. If we would realize the highest solution, we must study the Fifth Symphony, especially its second movement.