grain of sand countless millions of molecules whose atoms (or
electrons), it is said, are in perpetual motion, revolving like the
stars. Are then (we ask) the stars themselves nothing but molecules? Is
the whole material universe nothing but some grain of sand on the shore
of the ocean of eternity?
We turn away dazzled, and we rest our eyes, as Socrates was wont to say,
on images, on reflexions. We try to make the mystery intelligible, or
at least to pacify the reason by throwing it some such sop as the theory
that 'Size is only relative,' or that 'Space is only a mode of
consciousness' and therefore nothing real in itself. Or we lull the mind
to sleep with imaginative metaphors and speak (as Plato did) of the
Central Fire of Hestia, the Hearth and Home of the Universe, or we call
that mysterious unmoved centre of all motion the Throne of God. Thus we
try to lay the spectre of infinite Space.
Or consider Time instead of Space. In a single second how many waves of
light are supposed to enter the eye? About 500 billions I believe. And
of these waves some 500 would not exceed the breadth of a hair. Now any
being to whom these tiny waves were as slow as the ripples on a pond are
to us would live our human life of three score years and ten in the
hundredth part of _his_ second, while a being on one of those great
worlds of space revolving but once in long aeons around its centre would
live--if his life were measured as ours--millions of our years. Here
again, in our dazzlement, we have recourse to metaphor and theory: we
lay the spectre of Time by explaining it away as merely a 'mode' and as
therefore of no objective reality. In other words, dazed and outworn by
the incomprehensible infinities of Time and Space we console ourselves
with the theory that it is all a mere phenomenon, a projection of our
own mind, and with Faust we exclaim
What wondrous vision! yet a vision only!
and in the words of a still greater master of magic than Faust himself
we despairingly add that
like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all that it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of.
From the cipher of the vast material universe, the Macrocosm, we turn
away, as Faust did, with unsatisfied yearnings. Whither then shall we
turn? Where shall we grasp Nature--not the empty vision, but the warm
living form? It is in our own heart that we find a refuge from the
infinities of Space and Time--in that human heart by which we live, in
its tenderness, its joys, its fears. Here, and here alone, we find those
ultimate facts of existence which need no explanation, and which we
accept just as they are, without any questionings. Here we find an
infinite universe--no less infinite than that of Space and Time--the
universe of feeling.
From the cipher of the Macrocosm Faust turns to that of the
Earth-spirit, the spirit of human life and feeling. He is filled with a
sudden, passionate yearning to share in the joys and the sorrows and the
aspirations and the strivings of humanity:
Thou, Spirit of the Earth, art nearer.
I feel my powers loftier, clearer,
I glow, as drunk with new-made wine;
New strength I feel out in the world to dare,
The woes of earth, the bliss of earth to bear,
To fight my way, though storms around me lash,
Nor know dismay amid the shipwreck's crash.
He calls upon this Earth-spirit, the Spirit of human life. He bends all
the might of his human will to draw him down from his sphere. 'Come!' he
exclaims. 'Thou must! Thou must!--e'en should it cost my life!'
Enveloped in blinding flame the Spirit of life appears. At the
apparition Faust cowers back terrified and turns his face away. But it
is only for the moment. Stung by the contemptuous words of the phantom
he answers: 'Shall I yield to _thee_, Spectre of flame? 'Tis I, 'tis
Faust, thine equal!' The human Mind claims equality with the Spirit of
earthly life. But the phantom exclaims: 'Thou art akin to the spirit
that thou comprehendest--not to me!'--and disappears. Faust has yet to
learn a lesson that the mind of man can never learn of itself, the real
nature and meaning of human life. But he has beheld the vision of life,
he has received the baptism of fire. Henceforth he is to fight his way
through the storms of life and passion--to pass onward and upward and at
last to rise to 'higher spheres'; and amidst the fierce and insidious
assaults of flesh and devil we shall see that he looks for strength and
guidance to this Spirit that appeared to him in the blinding vision of
living empyreal flame.
Scarcely has the Earth-spirit vanished when, with a timid knock, there
enters Faust's _famulus_, or assistant, Wagner. He has heard Faust's
voice and from its excited tones has concluded that he is practising
declamation--reciting perhaps a Greek play. The poor amiable dryasdust
literary and scientific worm-grubber, whose maxim of life is _Zwar weiss
ich viel, doch moecht' ich Alles wissen_ (I know indeed a good deal, but
I want to know _Everything_), wishes to profit from a lesson in
elocution. A scene follows in which the contrast is graphically depicted
between this half lovable, half contemptible scientific bookworm and
Faust's Titanic heaven-storming aspirations after absolute truth. When
he is once more left alone, longing to face the mystery of life but
crushed by the contempt of the Earth-spirit, Faust is seized by despair.
He shrinks from encountering life, with its delusive joys, its pitiless
injustice and its arbitrary fate. He resolves to seek certainty--to
solve the riddle of life by death. As he moves the cup of poison to his
lips there comes floating through the air the chime of bells and,
perhaps from some near chapel, the hymn of Easter morn:
Joy unto mortals! Christ is arisen!
He pauses. Memories of childhood sweep over him, and he yields to the
sweet voices that call him back from the threshold of the unseen.
Sound on sweet hymns of heaven! As gentle rain
My tears are falling. Earth hath me again.
Thus Faust escapes the cowardly act of suicide and gains new strength
through the awakening, for a time at least, of the consciousness, which
had slumbered within him since the unreasoning days of childhood, that
there is that beyond life which alone makes life worth having.
The next scene shows us Faust already in contact with human nature, as
represented by holiday crowds flocking out of the town into the woods
and adjacent villages at Eastertide. Those who know Germany well will
feel the art with which Goethe at once transports us into the midst of a
Germanic Feiertag in spring-time, with its bright sunlight, its throngs
of townspeople streaming into the country--happy and merry without
vulgar rowdyism; the smugly dressed apprentice and the servant-girl in
her Sonntagsputz; the pert student and the demure Buergermaedchen with her
new Easter hat and her voluminous-waisted Frau Mama; the sedate
school-master or shopkeeper, leading his toddling child; sour-faced
officials; grey-locked and spectacled professors and 'town-fathers'
discussing the world's news or some local grievance--all flocking
countryward, with some Waldhaus or Forsthaus Restaurant as their
ultimate goal. And those who know Frankfurt will recognize the scene at
once: up there above Sachsenhausen, on the road to the pine-woods and
the Jaegerhaus, from which one sees the whole city lying below one, with
its great Dom and its medieval gates--the river Main gliding through its
midst and glittering away westward toward the Rhine; and in the far
background the Taunus range and the dark Feldberg.
Amidst this scene, externally still the more than middle-aged German
professor (he must be fifty-seven or so) but with a heart full of newly
wakened yearnings for human life with all its joys and passions, Faust
wanders, trying to feel sympathy with all these multitudinous human
beings, attracted perhaps here and there, but evidently for the most
part repelled and discouraged. He has yet to learn that a love for and a
knowledge of humanity, such as he finally reaches, must begin with love
for and knowledge of _one_ human heart.
As he and Wagner return toward the city Faust gives vent to his pent-up
feelings--pours contempt on his own book-learning and wasted life and
expresses his yearnings for Nature, and the longing of his spirit for
wings to fly away into the infinite:
For in each soul is born the rapture
Of yearning upward, and away,
When o'er our heads, lost in the azure,
The lark sends down her thrilling lay,
When over crags and pine-clad highlands
The poising eagle slowly soars,
And over plains and lakes and islands
The crane sails by to other shores.
Whereat Wagner exclaims:
I've had myself at times an odd caprice,
But never yet such impulses as these.
The woods and fields soon get intensely flat,
And as for flight--I never longed for that!
Poor dear Wagner, how well one seems to know thee, with thy purblind
spectacled eyes peering into fusty books and parchments, or bending over
thy crucibles and retorts! Truly a novel and interesting sight it would
be to see _thee_ assuming wings. In thy philosophy there is naught but
dreams of elixirs of life or homunculi. Thy highest aspiration nowadays
would be to find the mechanical equivalent of thought--to prove that
Shakespeare's and Dante's imagination was due only to a slightly
abnormal movement of brain-molecules--to find some method of measuring
faith, hope and charity in foot-pounds and thine own genius in electric
volts. Thou wouldst live and die, as other eminent scientists of these
latter days have done, in the certain hope and faith of demonstrating
irrefutably that this curious phenomenon which we call 'life' is nothing
but the chemical action set up by the carbonic acid and ammonia of the
protoplasm.
As they walk and talk there appears a black dog ranging to and fro
through a field, as if on the track of game. Ever nearer and nearer he
circles, and in his wake, as it appears to Faust, trails a flickering
phosphorescent gleam. But Wagner ridicules the idea as an optical
delusion. _He_ sees nothing but an ordinary black poodle. 'Call him,' he
says, 'and he'll come fawning on you, or sit up and do his tricks, or
jump into the water after sticks.' The poodle follows them--and makes
himself at home by the stove in Faust's study.
Faust has thus, after his first contact with the outer world of
humanity, returned once more to his cell--to the little world of his own
thoughts and feelings. He finds himself once more amidst his piled-up
books, his crucibles and retorts, his bones and skulls. He lights his
lamp and feels the old familiar glow of intellectual satisfaction. _But
the poodle is there._ Faust has brought home with him something that
will now haunt him to the last moment of his life. There has been
awakened in his nature the germ of that acorn (to use Goethe's metaphor
with regard to Hamlet) that will soon strike root and shatter the vase
in which it is planted.
At present he is almost unconscious of this new presence. He is buried
in thought, and his thoughts lead him toward the question of Revelation.
He is drawn to take up a Bible and turns, with a mind full of
metaphysical curiosity, to the passage 'In the beginning was the [Greek:
logos]--the Word.' More than once there comes from the poodle a growl of
disapprobation. Faust threatens to turn him out, and proceeds with his
biblical criticism.... 'In the beginning was the [Greek: logos].' How
shall he translate [Greek: logos]? It cannot mean merely a 'word.' ... A
word must have meaning, _thought_--and thought is nothing without
_act_.... So this 'Word,' this 'Logos,' must be translated as Act or
Deed.
These speculations are interrupted by horrible growlings, barks, and
howlings. As Faust looks towards the poodle he sees it rapidly swelling
up into a monstrous form--huger than an elephant or hippopotamus, with
fiery eyes and enormous tusks in its gaping mouth. He tries to exorcise
the phantom with 'Solomon's key' and other magic formulae, and at length,
when he threatens it with the mystic formula of the Trinity, it
dissolves into mist, and out of the mist steps forth Mephistopheles,
dressed as a 'travelling scholar'--an itinerant professor, or quack
doctor.
I find that some commentators accuse Goethe of dramatic inconsistency
and of interrupting the sequence of the action, because he makes Faust
for a time return to his old speculations, and because Mephistopheles
does not at once appear in the shape with which we are so familiar--with
his 'red gold-trimmed dress and mantle of stiff silk and the
cock-feathers in his hat,' the type of the dissolute man-about-town of
the period. To me it seems very natural that, dispirited by his first
contact with the outer world--unable to feel any real sympathy with the
rollicking and sleek self-sufficiency of that holiday crowd, Faust
should turn again to reflexion and speculation, and that when he is in
this depressed and metaphysical mood the demonic element in his nature
should first present itself--and that too in the disguise of an
itinerant professor. For is it not the case that to many of us the devil
_has_ come first just at such a time and in just such disguise?
Questioned as to his name and personality, Mephisto defines himself (he
too being in a metaphysical mood) as 'the spirit of negation,' and as 'a
part of that power which always wills evil and always works good'--'a
part of that darkness which alone existed before the creation of
light'--and he expresses the hope that, as light is dependent for its
existence on the material world, both it and the world will ere long
return to chaos and darkness. I have already touched upon this question
of Evil as merely negative--merely a part of the whole--and will not
detain you further over it.
Mephistopheles now wishes to take his leave, promising to visit Faust
again. 'Visit me as you like,' says Faust, 'and now--there is the
window! there's the door! or the chimney is at your service.' But the
devil must go out by the same way as he has entered, and on the
threshold to keep out evil spirits Faust has painted a mystic pentagram,
a figure with five points, the outer angle of which, being inaccurately
drawn, had left a gap through which Mephisto had slipped in; but being
once in, as in a mouse-trap, he cannot get out again.
As Faust now seems inclined to keep him prisoner, Mephistopheles summons
spirits, who sing Faust to sleep. Then he calls a rat to gnaw a gap in
the pentagram, and escapes.
When, in the next scene, Mephistopheles again appears, Faust is in a
very different state of mind, and Mephistopheles is also in a different
shape. He is decked out with silken mantle and with cock-feathers in his
hat, ready for any devilry. Faust is in the depths of morbid despair and
bitterness at the thought of life:
'What from the world have I to gain?--
_Thou must renounce! renounce! refrain!_
Such is the everlasting song
That fills our ears our whole life long ...
With horror day by day I wake
And weeping watch the morning break
To think that each returning sun
Shall see fulfilled no wish of mine--not one.'
He vows he would rather die. 'And yet,' sarcastically remarks Mephisto,
'some one a night or two ago did not drink a certain brown liquid.'
Stung by the sarcasm, Faust breaks out into curses against life, against
love and hope, and faith ... and 'cursed be patience most of all!'
Here is the devil's opportunity. 'Life is yours yet, and all its
pleasures. Of what's beyond you nothing know. Give up all this morbid
thinking, these dreams and self-delusions! Be a man! Enjoy life! Plunge
into pleasures of the senses! I will be your guide and show you the life
worth living!'
In an ecstasy of embitterment and despair, though fully conscious that
such a life can never bring him satisfaction and happiness, Faust
exclaims: 'What wilt _thou_, poor devil, give me? Was the human spirit,
in its aspirations, ever understood by such as _thou_?... And yet--hast
thou the food that never satiates--hast thou red gold--hast thou love,
passionate faithless love--hast thou the fruits that rot before one
plucks them--hast thou the fruits of that tree of sensual pleasure which
daily puts forth new blossoms--then done! I accept.' 'But if,' he adds
(and, alas, I must give merely the sense of these noble verses--for all
translation is so unutterably flat)--'if I ever lay myself on the bed of
idle self-content, if ever thou canst fool me with these phantoms of the
senses, if ever I say to the passing moment, _Stay; thou art so
fair!_--then let my life be ended. This wager I offer thee.' 'Topp!'
('Done!') exclaims Mephistopheles; and, as you know, the compact is
signed by Faust with his own blood.
You will observe that here there is no mention, as in the old legend, of
any term of years--the compact is _for life_. Of what may come after
this life Faust makes no mention in his wager. He expressly says that
all he cares about, all he can know, is _this_ life, and that he will
hear nothing about any future life. This may be agnosticism or whatever
else we like to call it, but it is not formally selling one's soul, with
or without one's body, for a _future_ life and for all eternity.
Moreover Faust has _not_ summoned the devil. The devil has come to
him--is indeed a part of him. He does _not_ league himself with a
hell-fiend for the sake of worldly power or fame or sensual enjoyment,
of which he speaks with contempt. He only offers to come forward into
the battle of life and of passions to test the nobler powers and the
deeper beliefs and the yet dim aspirations of his better nature against
the powers of evil, against what he calls the 'cold devil's-fist' of
negation and cynicism and disbelief, against the brute within the man.
Thou hearest me! I do not speak of joy--
I dedicate myself to passion--pleasure--pain--
Enamour'd hate, and rapture of disdain.
What's highest or what's lowest I will know,
And heap upon my bosom weal and woe.
Footsteps are now heard approaching. It is one of Faust's scholars.
Faust 'has no heart to meet him'--and no wonder. He goes; and
Mephistopheles, throwing around him Faust's professorial mantle and
placing the professorial cap upon his head, awaits the scholar. The
scene which ensues, in which Mephisto gives the young aspirant for
knowledge his diabolic advice and his diabolic views on Science, Logic,
Metaphysics, Medicine and even Theology--would offer ample material for
a very long course of lectures; but as it is one which is not closely
connected with the main action of the play it will have to be omitted.
The scholar retires--his poor young head whirling round like a
mill-wheel with the advice he has received and carrying away his album,
in which the devil has inscribed his favourite text 'Ye shall be as
gods, knowing good and evil.' Then Faust re-enters, Mephistopheles
spreads out his silken cape, and on it the two fly away through the air
on their adventures--first through the small and then the greater
world--first the world of personal feelings and passions, then the
greater world (is it really greater?) of art and politics and Humanity.
Faust had said, as you remember,
What wilt thou, poor devil, give me?
Was the human spirit, in its aspirations
Ever understood by such as thou?
This is the leading motive of all that follows. With ever-deepening
disgust and contempt Faust, in his quest for truth through the jungles
and quagmires of human passions, follows his guide. If ever Faust seems
to catch sight of any far-off vision of eternal truth and beauty--as he
does at times in his love for Gretchen, and again in his passion for
ideal beauty in Helen, and once again in that devotion to the cause of
Humanity which finally allows him to express a satisfaction in life, and
thus causes his life to end--if ever Faust shows any sign of real
interest or satisfaction, it is just _then_ that Mephistopheles displays
most clearly his utter inability to understand the 'human spirit in its
aspirations'; and it is _then_ that he shows most plainly his own
diabolic nature, pouring out his cynical contempt and gnashing his teeth
at what he deems Faust's irrational disgust for all those bestialities
that seem to him (Mephistopheles) the sweetest joys of existence.
His very first attempt is a dead failure. He has carried Faust off
through the air to Leipzig, and here he brings him into what to the
Mephisto-nature doubtless seems highly desirable and entertaining
company--to the 'sing-song' (as I believe it is called in England) of
tippling brawling students. The scene is Auerbach's Cellar, a well-known
Leipzig 'Kneipe'--a kind of Wine taproom or Bodega. Among these brawling
comic-songsters Mephistopheles is in his element, and he treats them to
a comic ditty:
Of old there lived a king,
Who had a great big flea
As dear as any thing,
Or any son, could be ...
and so on. We need not linger over the repulsive scene--so graphically
described.
Finally Mephistopheles bores holes in the table and draws wine from
them.
The students come to handicuffs over it; they spill the wine, and it
turns into flame.
Amidst their drunken uproar Faust and Mephistopheles disappear.
During the whole of this scene Faust _speaks no single word_, except a
curt but polite greeting on entering the Cellar and an appeal to
Mephistopheles to take him away from this 'scene of swinish bestiality.'
How different from the part that Faust plays in the old story where he
himself, not Mephistopheles, joins in the revelry and buffoonery!
Auerbach's Cellar existed till lately, though the house above it had
been rebuilt. It was the original 'Keller' that is mentioned in the old
legend. In it were to be seen two old pictures (with the date 1525). One
represented Faust sitting at table with students; in the other he is
flying off through the door astride on a wine cask.
A weird scene now ensues: the Witches' Kitchen.
Faust had asked how it was possible for him, the thought-worn
grey-haired professor, to care for, or take part in, what Mephistopheles
looked upon as 'life.' Mephistopheles therefore takes him to a witch,
from whom he is to receive a magic draught that will 'strip off some
thirty years from his body,' so that he becomes a young, man of, say,
about twenty-seven. This scene in the Witches' Kitchen is sometimes said
to represent allegorically a long course of dissipation through which
Mephistopheles takes Faust, and which of course could not be represented
otherwise without extending the action of the play beyond all reasonable
limits. It is true that, after the draught Faust's character seems
considerably changed for the worse. He develops a recklessness and a
licentiousness which scandalize even Mephistopheles himself, who tells
him that he is 'almost as bad as a Frenchman.'
Whether we should understand it thus, or not, I do not feel quite sure,
but anyhow we have in future--to the end of the first Part--to take into
account the fact that, although loathing all such swinish sensuality as
that of tippling students, and hating all forms of mean selfishness and
cunning and hypocrisy, Faust is (as so often is the case with otherwise
noble and lovable men) open to assault at that point where, as nowhere
else, the sensuous and ideal in our human nature seem to touch and
coalesce.
When they enter the Witch is not at home. In the midst of the kitchen is
a large cauldron, and at its side, skimming it and seeing that it does
not run over is a Meerkatze--a kind of female ape. The Meerkater, or
male ape, squats by the fire, warming himself, and near by are several
young apes. Mephistopheles is enraptured at the sight of the 'tender
pretty beasts,' but Faust finds them more disgusting than anything he
has ever seen.
The apes perform all kinds of antics and chatter a weird medley of half
sense, half nonsense, in which one can dimly discern satirical allusions
to various forms of the literary, political, and religious cant of
Goethe's generation.