the conditions of human life, and of that honour which is its very
breath. And so at the end, as the lovers pass through their
death-agony clasped in each other's embrace, the love-motive soars
triumphant and joyous above the surging billows of the orchestra, and
they are united in the more glorious love beyond, in the "love that is
stronger than death."

I have now to speak of Wagner's much discussed "pessimism." At first
sight it might seem a strange contradiction to speak of pessimism in a
man who composed _Die Meistersinger_, whose love of all things
beautiful was a passion, whose faith in human nature, unshaken by
every disillusionment, would almost seem like madness, did we not know
that it was that very faith which finally carried him through to
victory. Wagner's pessimism was not borrowed from Schopenhauer, but
was his own, as it is, in one form or another, the creed of every
thinking man, the foundation of every satisfying philosophy and art.
Pessimism does not consist in looking only at the dark side of things,
and closing the eyes to all that is beautiful; that is blindness and
ignorance, not philosophy. Pessimism is on the contrary the outcome of
an intense love, of a passionate delight in the harmony, the fitness,
and beauty of nature, inspiring a keenly sympathetic soul. He cannot
close his eyes to the fact that all this lovely world is made to
perish; that its individuals are engaged in a fierce warfare upon one
another; each preys upon its fellows with a savagery which shuns no
cruelty and recks of no crime. Love itself in its mortal embodiment
withers and turns to evil. His moral sense tells him that this ought
not to be; there must be some delusion; is it in nature or is it in
his own understanding? As a rule we put this darker aspect of nature
out of sight; we exclude the poor, the vicious, the unhappy from our
company, because they would hinder us in our mad pursuit of pleasure,