Later that night Schiller and his friends rejoiced, by singing the poem to the tune of a tavern ditty.

A number of years later, another German, Ludwig Van Beethoven, a pianist and composer, a man familiar to depression, battling the loss of his hearing, read the account of that evening in Leipzig, and copied on to a slip of paper the words that had been written by Schiller. Beethoven, many years Schiller's junior, kept the poem in his pocket for decades, waiting for the right source of inspiration, to give honour to that event. On a number of occasions in 1792, 1808 and 1811, Beethoven attempted to set the poem to music, but each time he sensed failure.

Ode to Joy Facsimile of Beethoven's original score

Then in 1824, some 19 years after Schiller's death, Beethoven now a man completely deaf, conducted the premiere of his Symphony Number Nine, which included in its finale, Schiller's 'Ode to Joy'. Schiller's bravery and mercy had inspired Beethoven, and Beethoven's subsequent inspiration has since affected billions of people. What began as the rescue of a student priest who has sunk into anonymity; led to the creation of music which has touched all corners of the globe, all peoples, irrespective of language barriers and political divides. Schiller's words penned from a single act of mercy, reverberate to the present day, long after his bones and thus of Beethoven have disintegrated over time. The act is timeless, even though the actor succumbs to mortality, or as Thomas Carlyle wrote in his biography of Schiller, what is spoken in beauty "speak(s) to the immortal part of man". (Carlyle, 1825, pp. 200-201)

Altruism…

Zoologists teach us that the only species of animal which is able to show altruism, mercy to those outside their kinship group, is the human being. Since the dissemination of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, there has been enormous conjecture and debate on the nature of humanity. Yet more than the position of the mandible, upright posture, opposable thumbs, or any suggestion of 'missing links', what separates us from every other living creature is not something physical, but something spiritual, an exact indication from which separate template we were first struck, and Whose Image we bear.

When in the 1990's the Chaos theory was postulated in which scientists now described how the energy expended by a butterfly's wings flying through the air echoes throughout the far reaches of the universe; what was being said, was in no way novel. Ireneus of Lyon had said the same 1800 years earlier in his discussion of the effect good and evil works have on humanity. According to Ireneus a flow-on effect occurs each time one person does good or evil. We pass the effect from generation-to-generation, from age-to-age, until, someone who is knowing, deliberately decides to put an end to the evil (or good) being perpetrated. Acts of mercy are the single atypical forces of energy which human beings produce; they are our gift, and without us, the world will eventually force its way into despair and Darwinism. Each time we fail to act mercifully, we betray our natures and our Creator, and associate with the beasts of the jungle. Any injustice, any crime, any missed opportunity to serve, flows on, like the butterfly's wings to eternity, but in yet a more powerful fashion. Any goodness that we carry out, has the complete opposite effect, and participates in the salvation of humanity.

This being said, that one act of mercy which took place seemingly so long ago on Golgotha, enacted by a man who was guiltless, but who took on to himself the sin, the ills, and frustrations of humanity, still echoes as powerfully as it did when it was caught in time in Roman occupied Palestine. It is this act of mercy which underpinned the lives of Schiller and of Beethoven, and has provided a rationale for billions of people, who have either heard of Christ, or felt him in their hearts or met him through the words and lives of a third, fourth, or fifth party. He echoes through humanity.

By looking at humanity in such a light, the imperative to be merciful, to live altruistically, we come to realise the poignancy of words offered to humanity by John Donne (1572 -1631). The Irish poet tells us in his Meditation XVII to always consider the other: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee".

Image Credits:
The background image for today's headline is adapted from an image of a buterfly we found at: www.geocities.com/kishan_nie/photos/photos.html. The code and trailing image butterfly comes from: www.geocities.com/butterfly3ss/ButterflyBlueLaceAnima.gif. Click on the other images for the original source.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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