[1] The _fault-plane_ is not a plane surface in the mathematical
sense; it may curve irregularly in more than one direction.
FAUNA, the name, in Roman mythology, of a country goddess of the fields
and cattle, known sometimes as the sister, sometimes as the wife of the
god Faunus; hence the term is used collectively for all the animals in
any given geographical area or geological period, or for an enumeration
of the same. It thus corresponds to the term "flora" in respect to plant
life.
FAUNTLEROY, HENRY (1785-1824), English banker and forger, was born in
1785. After seven years as a clerk in the London bank of Marsh, Sibbald
& Co., of which his father was one of the founders, he was taken into
partnership, and the whole business of the firm was left in his hands.
In 1824 the bank suspended payment. Fauntleroy was arrested on the
charge of appropriating trust funds by forging the trustees' signatures,
and was committed for trial, it being freely rumoured that he had
appropriated L250,000, which he had squandered in debauchery. He was
tried at the Old Bailey, and, the case against him having been proved,
he admitted his guilt, but pleaded that he had used the misappropriated
funds to pay his firm's debts. He was found guilty and sentenced to be
hanged. Seventeen merchants and bankers gave evidence as to his general
integrity at the trial, and after his conviction powerful influence was
brought to bear on his behalf, and his case was twice argued before
judges on points of law. An Italian named Angelini even offered to take
Fauntleroy's place on the scaffold. The efforts of his many friends
were, however, unavailing, and he was executed on the 30th of November
1824. A wholly unfounded rumour was widely credited for some time
subsequently to the effect that he had escaped strangulation by
inserting a silver tube in his throat, and was living comfortably
abroad.
See A. Griffith's _Chronicles of Newgate_, ii. 294-300, and Pierce
Egan's _Account of the Trial of Mr Fauntleroy_.
FAUNUS (i.e. the "kindly," from Lat. _favere_, or the "speaker," from
_fari_), an old Italian rural deity, the bestower of fruitfulness on
fields and cattle. As such he is akin to or identical with Inuus
("fructifier") and Lupercus (see LUPERCALIA). Faunus also revealed the
secrets of the future by strange sounds from the woods, or by visions
communicated to those who slept within his precincts in the skin of
sacrificed lambs; he was then called Fatuus, and with him was associated
his wife or daughter Fatua. Under Greek influence he was identified with
Pan, and just as there was supposed to be a number of Panisci, so the
existence of many Fauni was assumed--misshapen and mischievous goblins
of the forest, with pointed ears, tails and goat's feet, who loved to
torment sleepers with hideous nightmares. In poetical tradition Faunus
is an old king of Latium, the son of Picus (Mars) and father of Latinus,
the teacher of agriculture and cattle-breeding, and the introducer of
the religious system of the country, honoured after death as a tutelary
divinity. Two festivals called Faunalia were celebrated in honour of
Faunus, one on the 13th of February in his temple on the island in the
Tiber, the other in the country on the 5th of December (Ovid, _Fasti_,
ii. 193; Horace, _Odes_, iii. 18. 10). At these goats were sacrificed to
him with libations of wine and milk, and he was implored to be
propitious to fields and flocks. The peasants and slaves at the same
time amused themselves with dancing in the meadows.
FAURE, FRANCOIS FELIX (1841-1899), President of the French Republic, was
born in Paris on the 30th of January 1841, being the son of a small
furniture maker. Having started as a tanner and merchant at Havre, he
acquired considerable wealth, was elected to the National Assembly on
the 21st of August 1881, and took his seat as a member of the Left,
interesting himself chiefly in matters concerning economics, railways
and the navy. In November 1882 he became under-secretary for the
colonies in M. Ferry's ministry, and retained the post till 1885. He
held the same post in M. Tirard's ministry in 1888, and in 1893 was made
vice-president of the chamber. In 1894 he obtained cabinet rank as
minister of marine in the administration of M. Dupuy. In the January
following he was unexpectedly elected president of the Republic upon the
resignation of M. Casimir-Perier. The principal cause of his elevation
was the determination of the various sections of the moderate republican
party to exclude M. Brisson, who had had a majority of votes on the
first ballot, but had failed to obtain an absolute majority. To
accomplish this end it was necessary to unite among themselves, and
union could only be secured by the nomination of some one who offended
nobody. M. Faure answered perfectly to this description. His fine
presence and his tact on ceremonial occasions rendered the state some
service when in 1896 he received the Tsar of Russia at Paris, and in
1897 returned his visit, after which meeting the momentous
Franco-Russian alliance was publicly announced. The latter days of M.
Faure's presidency were embittered by the Dreyfus affair, which he was
determined to regard as _chose jugee_. But at a critical moment in the
proceedings his death occurred suddenly, from apoplexy, on the 16th of
February 1899. With all his faults, and in spite of no slight amount of
personal vanity, President Faure was a shrewd political observer and a
good man of business. After his death, some alleged extracts from his
private journals, dealing with French policy, were published in the
Paris press.
See E. Maillard, _Le President F. Faure_ (Paris, 1897); P. Bluysen,
_Felix Faure intime_ (1898); and F. Martin-Ginouvier, _F. Faure devant
l'histoire_ (1895).
FAURE, GABRIEL (1845- ), French musical composer, was born at Pamiers
on the 13th of May 1845. He studied at the school of sacred music
directed by Niedermeyer, first under Dietsch, and subsequently under
Saint-Saens. He became "maitre de chapelle" at the church of the
Madeleine in 1877, and organist in 1896. His works include a symphony in
D minor (Op. 40), two quartets for piano and strings (Opp. 15 and 45), a
suite for orchestra (Op. 12), sonata for violin and piano (Op. 13),
concerto for violin (Op. 14), berceuse for violin, elegie for
violoncello, pavane for orchestra, incidental music for Alexandre Dumas'
_Caligula_ and De Haraucourt's _Shylock_, a requiem, a cantata, _The
Birth of Venus_, produced at the Leeds festival in 1898, a quantity of
piano music, and a large number of songs. Faure occupies a place by
himself among modern French composers. He delights in the _imprevu_, and
loves to wander through labyrinthine harmonies. There can be no denying
the intense fascination and remarkable originality of his music. His
muse is essentially aristocratic, and suggests the surroundings of the
boudoir and the perfume of the hot-house.
FAURIEL, CLAUDE CHARLES (1772-1844), French historian, philologist and
critic, was born at St Etienne on the 21st of October 1772. Though the
son of a poor joiner, he received a good education in the Oratorian
colleges of Tournon and Lyons. He was twice in the army--at Perpignan in
1793, and in 1796-1797 at Briancon, as private secretary to General J.
Servan de Gerbey (1741-1808); but he preferred the civil service and the
companionship of his friends and his books. In 1794 he returned to St
Etienne, where, but only for a short period, he filled a municipal
office; and from 1797 to 1799 he devoted himself to strenuous study,
more especially of the literature and history, both ancient and modern,
of Greece and Italy. Having paid a visit to Paris in 1799, he was
introduced to Fouche, minister of police, who induced him to become his
private secretary. Though he discharged the duties of this office to
Fouche's satisfaction, his strength was overtasked by his continued
application to study, and he found it necessary in 1801 to recruit his
health by a three months' trip in the south. In resigning his office in
the following year he was actuated as much by these considerations as by
the scruples he put forward in serving longer under Napoleon, when the
latter, in violation of strict republican principles, became consul for
life. This is clearly shown by the fragments of Memoirs discovered by
Ludovic Lalanne and published in 1886.
Some articles which Fauriel published in the _Decade philosophique_
(1800) on a work of Madame de Stael's--_De la litterature consideree
dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales_--led to an intimate
friendship with her. About 1802 he contracted with Madame de Condorcet a
liaison which lasted till her death (1822). It was said of him at the
time that he gave up all his energies to love, friendship and learning.
The salon of Mme de Condorcet was throughout the Consulate and the first
Empire a rallying point for the dissentient republicans. Fauriel was
introduced by Madame de Stael to the literary circle of Auteuil, which
gathered round Destutt de Tracy. Those who enjoyed his closest intimacy
were the physiologist Cabanis (Madame de Condorcet's brother-in-law),
the poet Manzoni, the publicist Benjamin Constant, and Guizot. Later
Tracy introduced to him Aug. Thierry (1821) and perhaps Thiers and
Mignet. During his connexion with Auteuil, Fauriel's attention was
naturally turned to philosophy, and for some years he was engaged on a
history of Stoicism, which was never completed, all the papers connected
with it having accidentally perished in 1814. He also studied Arabic,
Sanskrit and the old South French dialects. He published in 1810 a
translation of the _Parthenais_ of the Danish poet Baggesen, with a
preface on the various kinds of poetry; in 1823 translations of two
tragedies of Manzoni, with a preface "_Sur la theorie de l'art
dramatique_"; and in 1824-1825 his translation of the popular songs of
modern Greece, with a "_Discours preliminaire_" on popular poetry.
The Revolution of July, which put his friends in power, opened to him
the career of higher education. In 1830 he became professor of foreign
literature at the Sorbonne. The _Histoire de la Gaule meridionale sous
la domination des conquerants germains_ (4 vols., 1836) was the only
completed section of a general history of southern Gaul which he had
projected. In 1836 he was elected a member of the Academy of
Inscriptions, and in 1837 he published (with an introduction the
conclusions of which would not now all be endorsed) a translation of a
Provencal poem on the Albigensian war. He died on the 15th of July 1844.
After his death his friend Mary Clarke (afterwards Madame J. Mohl)
published his _Histoire de la litterature provencale_ (3 vols.,
1846)--his lectures for 1831-1832. Fauriel was biased in this work by
his preconceived and somewhat fanciful theory that Provence was the
cradle of the _chansons de geste_ and even of the Round Table romances;
but he gave a great stimulus to the scientific study of Old French and
Provencal. _Dante et les origines de la langue et de la litterature
italiennes_ (2 vols.) was published in 1854.
Fauriel's _Memoires_, found with Condorcet's papers, are in the
Institute library. They were written at latest in 1804, and include
some interesting fragments on the close of the consulate, Moreau, &c.
Though anonymous, Lalanne, who published them (_Les Derniers Jours du
Consulat_, 1886), proved them to be in the same handwriting as a
letter of Fauriel's in 1803. The same library has Fauriel's
correspondence, catalogued by Ad. Regnier (1900). Benjamin Constant's
letters (1802-1823) were published by Victor Glachant in 1906. For
Fauriel's correspondence with Guizot see _Nouvelle Rev._ (Dec. 1,
1901, by V. Glachant), and for his love-letters to Miss Clarke
(1822-1844) the _Revue des deux mondes_ (1908-1909) by E. Rod. See
further Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits contemporains_, ii.; Antoine
Guillois, _Le Salon de Mme Helvetius_ (1894) and _La Marquise de
Condorcet_ (1897); O'Meara, _Un Salon a Paris: Mme Mohl_ (undated);
and J.B. Galley, _Claude Fauriel_ (1909).
FAUST, or FAUSTUS, the name of a magician and charlatan of the 16th
century, famous in legend and in literature. The historical Faust forms
little more than the nucleus round which a great mass of legendary and
imaginative material gradually accumulated. That such a person existed
there is, however, sufficient proof.[1] He is first mentioned in a
letter, dated August 20, 1507, of the learned Benedictine Johann
Tritheim or Trithemius (1462-1516), abbot of Spanheim, to the
mathematician and astrologer Johann Windung, at Hasfurt, who had
apparently written about him. Trithemius, himself reputed a magician,
and the author of a mystical work (published at Darmstadt in 1621 under
the title of _Steganographica_ and burnt by order of the Spanish
Inquisition), speaks contemptuously of Faust, who called himself
Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior, as a fool rather than a
philosopher (_fatuum non philosophum_), a vain babbler, vagabond and
mountebank who ought to be whipped, and who had fled from the city
rather than confront him. The insane conceit of the man was proved by
his boast that, were all the works of Aristotle and Plato blotted from
the memory of men, he could restore them with greater elegance, and that
Christ's miracles were nothing to marvel at, since he could do the like
whenever and as often as he pleased; his debased character by the fact
that he had been forced to flee from the school of which he had been
appointed master by the discovery of his unnatural crimes. The same
unflattering estimate is contained in the second extant notice of Faust,
in a letter of the jurist and canon Konrad Mudt (Mutianus Rufus), of the
3rd of October 1513, to Heinrich Urbanus. Mudt, like Trithemius, simply
regards Faust as a charlatan. Similar is the judgment of another
contemporary, Philipp Begardi, who in the fourth chapter of his _Index
sanitatis_ (Worms, 1539) ranks Faust, with Theophrastus Paracelsus,
among the "wicked, cheating, useless and unlearned doctors."
It was Johann Gast (d. 1572), a worthy Protestant pastor of Basel, who
like Mudt claims to have come into personal contact with Faust, who in
his _Sermones convivales_ (Basel, 1543) first credited the magician with
genuine supernatural qualities. Gast, a man of some learning and much
superstition, believed Faust to be in league with the devil, by whom
about 1525 he was ultimately carried off, and declared the performing
horse and dog by which the necromancer was accompanied to be familiar
and evil spirits. Further information was given to the world by Johann
Mannel or Manlius (d. 1560), councillor and historian to the emperor
Maximilian II., in his _Locorum communium collectanea_ (Basel, undated).
Manlius reports a conversation of Melanchthon, which there is no reason
to suspect of being other than genuine, in which the Reformer speaks of
Faust as "a disgraceful beast and sewer of many devils," as having been
born at Kundling (Kundlingen or Knittlingen), a little town near his own
native town (of Bretten), and as having studied magic at Cracow. The
rest of the information given can hardly be regarded as historical,
though Melanchthon, who, like Luther, was no whit less superstitious
than most people of his time, evidently believed it to be so. According
to him, among other marvels, Faust was killed by the devil wringing his
neck. While he lived he had taken about with him a dog, which was really
a devil. A similar opinion would seem to have been held of Faust by
Luther also, who in Widmann's Faust-book is mentioned as having declared
that, by God's help, he had been able to ward off the evils which Faust
with his sorceries had sought to put upon him. The passage, with the
omission of Faust's name, occurs word for word in Luther's Table-talk
(ed. C.E. Forstemann, vol. i. p. 50). It is not improbable, then, that
Widmann, in supplying the name of the necromancer omitted in the
Table-talk, may be giving a fuller account of the conversation.
Bullinger also, in his _Theatrum de beneficiis_ (Frankf., 1569) mentions
Faust as one of those "of whom the Scriptures speak, in various places,
calling them _magi_." Lastly Johann Weiher, Wierus or Piscinarius
(1515-1588)--a pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, body physician to the duke of
Cleves and a man of enlightenment, who opposed the persecution of
witches--in his _De praestigiis daemonum_ (Basel, 1563, &c.), speaks of
Faust as a drunken vagabond who had studied magic at Cracow, and before
1540 had practised "this beautiful art shamelessly up and down Germany,
with unspeakable deceit, many lies and great effect." He goes on to tell
how the magician had revenged himself on an unhappy parish priest, who
had refused to supply him any longer with drink, by giving him a
depilatory which removed not only the beard but the skin, and further,
how he had insulted a poor wretch, for no better reason than that he had
a black beard, by greeting him as his cousin the devil. Of his
superhuman powers Weiher evidently believes nothing, but he tells the
tale of his being found dead with his neck wrung, after the whole house
had been shaken by a terrific din.
The sources above mentioned, which were but the first of numerous works
on Faust, of more or less value, appearing throughout the next two
centuries, give a sufficient picture of the man as he appeared to his
contemporaries: a wandering charlatan who lived by his wits,
cheiromantist, astrologer, diviner, spiritualist medium, alchemist, or,
to the more credulous, a necromancer whose supernatural gifts were the
outcome of a foul pact with the enemy of mankind. Whatever his
character, his efforts to secure a widespread notoriety had, by the time
of his death, certainly succeeded. By the latter part of the 16th
century he had become the necromancer _par excellence_, and all that
legend had to tell about the great wizards of the middle ages, Virgil,
Pope Silvester, Roger Bacon, Michael Scot, or the mythic Klingsor, had
become for ever associated with his name. When in 1587, the oldest
Faust-book was published, the Faust legend was, in all essential
particulars, already complete.
The origin of the main elements of the legend must be sought far back in
the middle ages and beyond. The idea of a compact with the devil, for
the purpose of obtaining superhuman power or knowledge, is of Jewish
origin, dating from the centuries immediately before and after the
Christian era which produced the Talmud, the Kabbalah and such magical
books as that of Enoch. In the mystical rites--in which blood, as the
seat of life, played a great part--that accompanied the incantations
with which the Jewish magicians evoked the Satanim--the lowest grade of
those elemental spirits (shedim) who have their existence beyond the
dimensions of time and space--we have the prototypes and originals of
all the ceremonies which occupy the books of magic down to the various
versions of the _Hollenzwang_ ascribed to Faust. The other principle
underlying the Faust legend, the belief in the essentially evil
character of purely human learning, has existed ever since the triumph
of Christianity set divine revelation above human science. The legend of
Theophilus--a Cilician archdeacon of the 6th century, who sold his soul
to Satan for no better reason than to clear himself of a false charge
brought against him by his bishop--was immensely popular throughout the
middle ages, and in the 8th century formed the theme of a poem in Latin
hexameters by the nun Hroswitha of Gandersheim, who, especially in her
description of the ritual of Satan's court, displays a sufficiently
lively and original imagination. Equally widespread were the legends
which gathered round the great name of Gerbert (Pope Silvester II.).
Gerbert's vast erudition, like Roger Bacon's so far in advance of his
age, naturally cast upon him the suspicion of traffic with the infernal
powers; and in due course the suspicion developed into the tale,
embellished with circumstantial and harrowing details, of a compact with
the arch-fiend, by which the scholar had obtained the summit of earthly
ambition at the cost of his immortal soul. These are but the two most
notable of many similar stories,[2] and, in an age when the belief in
witchcraft and the ubiquitous activity of devils was still universal, it
is natural that they should have been retold in all good faith of a
notorious wizard who was himself at no pains to deny their essential
truth. The Faust legend, however, owes something of its peculiar
significance also to the special conditions of the age which gave it
birth: the age of the Renaissance and the Reformation. The opinion that
the religious reformers were the champions of liberty of thought against
the obscurantism of Rome is the outgrowth of later experience. To
themselves they were the protagonists of "the pure Word of God" against
the corruptions of a church defiled by the world and the devil, and the
sceptical spirit of Italian humanism was as abhorrent to them as to the
Catholic reactionaries by whom it was again trampled under foot. If
then, in Goethe's drama, Faust ultimately develops into the type of the
unsatisfied yearning of the human intellect for "more than earthly meat
and drink," this was because the great German humanist deliberately
infused into the old story a spirit absolutely opposed to that by which
it had originally been inspired. The Faust of the early Faust-books, of
the ballads, the dramas and the puppet-plays innumerable which grew out
of them, is irrevocably damned because he deliberately prefers human to
"divine" knowledge; "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and
under the bench, refused to be called doctor of Theology, but preferred
to be styled doctor of Medicine." The orthodox moral of the earliest
versions is preserved to the last in the puppet-plays. The Voice to the
right cries: "Faust! Faust! desist from this proposal! Go on with the
study of Theology, and you will be the happiest of mortals." The Voice
to the left answers: "Faust! Faust! leave the study of Theology. Betake
you to Necromancy, and you will be the happiest of mortals!" The Faust
legend was, in fact, the creation of orthodox Protestantism; its moral,
the inevitable doom which follows the wilful revolt of the intellect
against divine authority as represented by the Holy Scriptures and its
accredited interpreters. Faust, the contemner of Holy Writ, is set up as
a foil to Luther, the champion of the new orthodoxy, who with
well-directed inkpot worsted the devil when he sought to interrupt the
sacred work of rendering the Bible into the vulgar tongue.
It was doubtless this orthodox and Protestant character of the Faust
story which contributed to its immense and immediate popularity in the
Protestant countries. The first edition of the _Historia von D. Johann
Fausten_, by an unknown compiler, published by Johann Spies at Frankfort
in 1587, sold out at once. Though only placed on the market in the
autumn, before the year was out it had been reprinted in four pirated
editions. In the following year a rhymed version was printed at
Tubingen, a second edition was published by Spies at Frankfort and a
version in low German by J.J. Balhorn at Lubeck. Reprints and amended
versions continued to appear in Germany every year, till they culminated
in the pedantic compilation of Georg Rudolf Widmann, who obscured the
dramatic interest of the story by an excessive display of erudition and
by his well-meant efforts to elaborate the orthodox moral. Widmann's
version of 1599 formed the basis of that of Johann Nicholaus Pfitzer,
published at Nuremberg in 1674, which passed through six editions, the
last appearing in 1726. Like Widmann, Pfitzer was more zealous for
imparting information than for perfecting a work of art, though he had
the good taste to restore the episode of the evocation of Helen, which
Widmann had expunged as unfit for Christian readers. Lastly there
appeared, about 1712, what was to prove the most popular of all the
Faust-books: _The League with the Devil established by the world-famous
Arch-necromancer and Wizard Dr Johann Faust_. By a Christian Believer
(_Christlich Meynenden_). This version, which bore the obviously false
date of 1525, passed through many editions, and was circulated at all
the fairs in Germany. Abroad the success of the story was scarcely less
striking. A Danish version appeared in 1588; in England the _History of
the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr John Faustus_ was published
some time between 1588 and 1594; in France the translation of Victor
Palma Cayet was published at Paris in 1592 and, in the course of the
next two hundred years, went through fifteen editions; the oldest Dutch
and Flemish versions are dated 1592; and in 1612 a Czech translation was
published at Prague.
Besides the popular histories of Faust, all more or less founded on the
original edition of Spies, numerous ballads on the same subject were
also soon in circulation. Of these the most interesting for the English
reader is A _Ballad of the life and death of Dr Faustus the great
congerer_, published in 1588 with the imprimatur of the learned Aylmer,
bishop of London. This ballad is supposed to have preceded the English
version of Spies's Faust-book, mentioned above, on which Marlowe's drama
was founded.
To Christopher Marlowe, it would appear, belongs the honour of first
realizing the great dramatic possibilities of the Faust legend. _The
Tragicall History of D. Faustus as it hath bene acted by the Right
Honourable the Earle of Nottingham his servants_ was first published by
Thomas Bushall at London in 1604. As Marlowe died in 1593, the play must
have been written shortly after the appearance of the English version of
the Faust story on which it was based. The first recorded performance
was on the 30th of September 1594.
As Marlowe's _Faustus_ is the first, so it is imcomparably the finest of
the Faust dramas which preceded Goethe's masterpiece. Like most of
Marlowe's work it is, indeed, very unequal. At certain moments the poet
seems to realize the great possibilities of the story, only to sacrifice
them to the necessity for humouring the prevailing public taste of the
age. Faustus, who in one scene turns disillusioned from the ordinary
fountains of knowledge, or flies in a dragon-drawn chariot through the
Empyrean to search out the mysteries of the heavens, in another is made
to use his superhuman powers to satisfy the taste of the groundlings for
senseless buffoonery, to swindle a horse-dealer, or cheat an ale-wife of
her score; while Protestant orthodoxy is conciliated by irrelevant
insults to the Roman Church and by the final catastrophe, when Faustus
pays for his revolt against the Word of God by the forfeit of his soul.
This conception, which followed that of the popular Faust histories,
underlay all further developments of the Faust drama for nearly two
hundred years. Of the serious stage plays founded on this theme,
Marlowe's _Faustus_ remains the sole authentic example until near the
end of the 18th century; but there is plenty of evidence to prove that
in Germany the _Comedy of Dr Faust_, in one form or another, was and
continued to be a popular item in the repertories of theatrical
companies until far into the 18th century. It is supposed, with good
reason, that the German versions were based on those introduced into the
country by English strolling players early in the 17th century. However
this may be, the dramatic versions of the Faust legend followed much the
same course as the prose histories. Just as these gradually degenerated
into chap-books hawked at fairs, so the dramas were replaced by
puppet-plays, handed down by tradition through generations of showmen,
retaining their original broad characteristics, but subject to infinite
modification in detail. In this way, in the puppet-shows, the
traditional Faust story retained its popularity until far into the 19th
century, long after, in the sphere of literature, Goethe had for ever
raised it to quite another plane.
It was natural that during the literary revival in Germany in the 18th
century, when German writers were eagerly on the look-out for subjects
to form the material of a truly national literature, the Faust legend
should have attracted their attention. Lessing was the first to point
out its great possibilities;[3] and he himself wrote a Faust drama, of
which unfortunately only a fragment remains, the MS. of the completed
work having been lost in the author's lifetime. None the less, to
Lessing, not to Goethe, is due the new point of view from which the
story was approached by most of those who, after about the year 1770,
attempted to tell it. The traditional Faust legend represented the
sternly orthodox attitude of the Protestant reformers. Even the
mitigating elements which the middle ages had permitted had been
banished by the stern logic of the theologians of the New Religion.
Theophilus had been saved in the end by the intervention of the Blessed
Virgin; Pope Silvester, according to one version of the legend, had
likewise been snatched from the jaws of hell at the last moment. Faust
was irrevocably damned, since the attractions of the _studium
theologicum_ proved insufficient to counteract the fascinations of the
classic Helen. But if he was to become, in the 18th century, the type of
the human intellect face to face with the deep problems of human life,
it was intolerable that his struggles should issue in eternal
reprobation. Error and heresy had ceased to be regarded as crimes; and
stereotyped orthodoxy, to the age of the Encyclopaedists, represented
nothing more than the atrophy of the human intellect. _Es irrt der
Mensch so lang er strebt_, which sums up in one pregnant line the spirit
of Goethe's _Faust_, sums up also the spirit of the age which killed
with ridicule the last efforts of persecuting piety, and saw the birth
of modern science. Lessing, in short, proclaimed that the final end of
Faust must be, not his damnation, but his salvation. This revolutionary
conception is the measure of Goethe's debt to Lessing. The essential
change which Goethe himself introduced into the story is in the nature
of the pact between Faust and Mephistopheles, and in the character of
Mephistopheles himself. The Mephistopheles of Marlowe, as of the old
Faust-books, for all his brave buffoonery, is a melancholy devil, with a
soul above the unsavoury hell in which he is forced to pass a hopeless
existence. "Tell me," says Faust, in the puppet-play, to Mephistopheles,
"what would you do if you could attain to everlasting salvation?" And
the devil answers, "Hear and despair! Were I able to attain everlasting
salvation, I would mount to heaven on a ladder, though every rung were a
razor edge!" Goethe's Mephistopheles would have made no such reply.
There is nothing of the fallen angel about him; he is perfectly content
with his past, his present and his future; and he appears before the
throne of God with the same easy insolence as he exhibits in Dame
Martha's back-garden. He is, in fact, according to his own definition,
the Spirit of Denial, the impersonation of that utter scepticism which
can see no distinction between high and low, between good and bad, and
is therefore without aspiration because it knows no "divine discontent."
And the compact which Faust makes with this spirit is from the first
doomed to be void. Faustus had bartered away his soul for a definite
period of pleasure and power. The conception that underlies the compact
of Faust with Mephistopheles is far more subtle. He had sought happiness
vainly in the higher intellectual and spiritual pursuits; he is content
to seek it on a lower plane since Mephistopheles gives him the chance;
but he is confident that nothing that "such a poor devil" can offer him
could give him that moment of supreme satisfaction for which he craves.
He goes through the traditional mummery of signing the bond with
scornful submission; for he knows that his damnation will not be the
outcome of any formal compact, but will follow inevitably, and only
then, when his soul has grown to be satisfied with what Mephistopheles
can purvey him.
"Canst thou with lying flattery rule me
Until self-pleased myself I see,
Canst thou with pleasure mock and fool me,
Let that hour be the last for me!
When thus I hail the moment flying:
'Ah, still delay, thou art so fair!'
Then bind me in thy chains undying,
My final ruin then declare!"[4]
It is because Mephistopheles fails to give him this self-satisfaction
or to absorb his being in the pleasures he provides, that the compact
comes to nothing. When, at last, Faust cries to the passing moment to
remain, it is because he has forgotten self in enthusiasm for a great
and beneficent work, in a state of mind the very antithesis of all that
Mephistopheles represents. In the old Faust-books, Faust had been given
plenty of opportunity for repentance, but the inducements had been no
higher than the exhibition of a throne in heaven on the one hand and the
tortures of hell on the other. Goethe's _Faust_, for all its Christian
setting, departs widely from this orthodox standpoint. Faust shows no
signs of "repentance"; he simply emerges by the innate force of his
character from a lower into a higher state. The triumph, foretold by
"the Lord" in the opening scene, was inevitable from the first, since,
though
"'Man errs so long as he is striving,
A good man through obscurest aspiration
Is ever conscious of the one true way.'"
A man, in short, must be judged not by the sins and follies which may be
but accidents of his career, but by the character which is its essential
outcome.
This idea, which inspired also the kindred theme of Browning's
_Paracelsus_, is the main development introduced by Goethe into the
Faust legend. The episode of Gretchen, for all its tragic interest, does
not belong to the legend at all; and it is difficult to deny the
pertinency of Charles Lamb's criticism, "What has Margaret to do with
Faust?" Yet in spite of all that may be said of the irrelevancies, and
of the discussions of themes of merely ephemeral interest, with which
Goethe overloaded especially the second part of the poem, his _Faust_
remains for the modern world the final form of the legend out of which
it grew, the magnificent expression of the broad humanism which, even in
spheres accounted orthodox, has tended to replace the peculiar _studium
theologicum_ which inspired the early Faust-books.
See Karl Engel, _Zusammenstellung der Faust-Schriften vom 16.
Jahrhundert bis Mitte 1884_--a second edition of the _Bibliotheca
Faustiana_ (1874)--(Oldenburg, 1885), a complete bibliography of all
published matter concerned, even somewhat remotely, with Faust;
Goethe's _Faust_, with introduction and notes by K.J. Schroer (2nd
ed., Heilbronn, 1886); Carl Kiesewetter, _Faust in der Geschichte und
Tradition_ (Leipzig, 1893). The last book, besides being a critical
study of the material for the historical and legendary story of Faust,
aims at estimating the relation of the Faust-legend to the whole
subject of occultism, ancient and modern. It is a mine of information
on necromancy and its kindred subjects, as well as on eminent
theurgists, wizards, crystal-gazers and the like of all ages.
(W. A. P.)