Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

On his desk, framed under glass, Beethoven had a sheet of paper on which he had copied three sentences from Schiller's essay [on the legation of Moses] to remind himself constantly of this most elevated expression of the divine:

I am what is.
I am all that is, that was, that shall be; no mortal has ever lifted my veil.
He alone is of himself, and to this One all things owe their being.

These lines, accepted as ancient Egyptian wisdom in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, expressed a creed of tolerance and concensus that embraced all religions and philosophical persuasions.