FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES.
Mephisto and Mephitis--The Raven Book--Papal sorcery--Magic
seals--Mephistopheles as dog--George Sabellicus alias Faustus--The
Faust myth--Marlowe's Faust--Good and evil angels--El Magico
Prodigioso--Cyprian and Justina--Klinger's Faust--Satan's
sermon--Goethe's Mephistopheles--His German characters--Moral
scepticism--Devil's gifts--Helena--Redemption through Art--Defeat
of Mephistopheles.
The name Mephistopheles has in it, I think, the priest's shudder at
the fumes of the laboratory. Duntzer [176] finds that the original
form of the word was 'Mephostophiles,' and conjectures that it was a
bungling effort to put together three Greek words, to mean 'not loving
the light.' In this he has the support of Bayard Taylor, who also
thinks that it was so understood by Goethe. The transformation of it
was probably amid the dreaded gases with which the primitive chemist
surrounded himself. He who began by 'not loving the light' became the
familiar of men seeking light, and lover of their mephitic gases. The
ancient Romans had a mysterious divinity called Mephitis, whose grove
and temple were in the Esquiliæ, near a place it was thought fatal
to enter. She is thought to have been invoked against the mephitic
exhalations of the earth in the grove of Albunea. Sulphur springs also
were of old regarded as ebullitions from hell, and both Schwarz and
Roger Bacon particularly dealt in that kind of smell. Considering how
largely Asmodeus, as 'fine gentleman,' entered into the composition
of Mephistopheles, and how he flew from Nineveh to Egypt (Tobit)
to avoid a bad smell, it seems the irony of mythology that he should
turn up in Europe as a mephitic spirit.
Mephistopheles is the embodiment of all that has been said in preceding
chapters of the ascetic's horror of nature and the pride of life,
and of the mediæval priest's curse on all learning he could not
monopolise. The Faust myth is merely his shadow cast on the earth,
the tracery of his terrible power as the Church would have the
people dread it. The early Raven Book at Dresden has the title:--'
† † † D. J. Fausti † † † Dreifacher Höllen-Zwung und Magische
(Geister-Commando) nebst den schwarzen Raaben. Romæ ad Arcanum
Pontificatus unter Papst Alexander VI. gedruckt. Anno (Christi)
MDI.' In proof of which claim there is a Preface purporting to be
a proclamation signed by the said Pope and Cardinal Piccolomini
concerning the secrets which the celebrated Dr. Faust had scattered
throughout Germany, commanding ut ad Arcanum Pontificatus mandentur et
sicut pupilla oculi in archivio Nostro serventur et custodiantur, atque
extra Valvas Vaticanas non imprimantur neque inde transportentur. Si
vero quiscunque temere contra agere ausus fuerit, Divinam maledictionem
latæ sententiæ ipso facto servatis Nobis Solis reservandis se
incursurum sciat. Ita mandamus et constituemus Virtute Apostolicæ
Ecclesiæ Jesu Christi sub poena Excommunicationis ut supra. Anno
secundo Vicariatus Nostri. Romæ Verbi incarnati Anno M.D.I.
This is an impudent forgery, but it is an invention which, more than
anything actually issued from Rome, indicates the popular understanding
that the contention of the Church was not against the validity of
magic arts, but against their exercise by persons not authorised
by itself. It was, indeed, a tradition not combated by the priests,
that various ecclesiastics had possessed such powers, even Popes, as
John XXII., Gregory VII., and Clement V. The first Sylvester was said
to have a dragon at his command; John XXII. denounced his physicians
and courtiers for necromancy; and the whispers connecting the Vatican
with sorcery lasted long enough to attribute to the late Pius IX. a
power of the evil eye. Such awful potencies the Church wished to be
ascribed to itself alone. Faust is a legend invented to impress on
the popular mind the fate of all who sought knowledge in unauthorised
ways and for non-ecclesiastical ends.
In the Raven Book just mentioned, there are provisions for calling up
spirits which, in their blending of christian with pagan formulas,
oddly resemble the solemn proceedings sometimes affected by our
spiritual mediums. The magician (Magister) had best be alone, but if
others are present, their number must be odd; he should deliberate
beforehand what business he wishes to transact with the spirits; he
must observe God's commandment; trust the Almighty's help; continue
his conjuration, though the spirits do not appear quickly, with
unwavering faith; mark a circle on parchment with a dove's blood;
within this circle write in Latin the names of the four quarters
of heaven; write around it the Hebrew letters of God's name, and
beneath it write Sadan; and standing in this circle he must repeat
the ninety-first Psalm. In addition there are seals in red and black,
various Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words, chiefly such as contain the
letters Q, W, X, Y, Z,--e.g., Yschyros, Theos, Zebaoth, Adonay. The
specimen (Fig. 22), which I copied from the book in Dresden, is there
called 'Sigillum Telschunhab.' The 'Black Raven' is pictured in the
book, and explained as the form in which the angel Raphael taught
Tobias to summon spirits. It is said also that the Magician must in
certain cases write with blood of a fish (Tobit again) or bat on
'maiden-parchment,'--this being explained as the skin of a goat,
but unpleasantly suggestive of a different origin.
In this book, poorly printed, and apparently on a private press,
Mephistopheles is mentioned as one of the chief Princes of Hell. He
is described as a youth, adept in all arts and services, who brings
spirit-servants or familiars, and brings treasures from earth and
sea with speed. In the Frankfort Faust Book (1587), Mephistopheles
says, 'I am a spirit, and a flying spirit, potently ruling under
the heavens.' In the oldest legends he appears as a dog, that, as we
have seen, being the normal form of tutelary divinities, the symbol
of the Scribe in Egypt, guard of Hades, and psychopomp of various
mythologies. A dog appears following the family of Tobias. Manlius
reports Melancthon as saying, 'He (Faust) had a dog with him, which
was the Devil.' Johann Gast ('Sermones Conviviales') says he was
present at a dinner at Basle given by Faust, and adds: 'He had also
a dog and a horse with him, both of which, I believe, were devils,
for they were able to do everything. Some persons told me that the
dog frequently took the shape of a servant, and brought him food.' In
the old legends this dog is named Praestigiar. [177]
As for the man Faust, he seems to have been personally the very
figure which the Church required, and had the friar, in whose guise
Mephistopheles appears, been his actual familiar, he could hardly
have done more to bring learning into disgrace. Born at the latter
part of the fifteenth century at Knittlingen, Wurtemberg, of poor
parents, the bequest of an uncle enabled him to study medicine at
Cracow University, and it seems plain that he devoted his learning and
abilities to the work of deluding the public. That he made money by his
'mediumship,' one can only infer from the activity with which he went
about Germany and advertised his 'powers.' It was at a time when high
prices were paid for charms, philtres, mandrake mannikins; and the
witchcraft excitement was not yet advanced enough to render dealing
in such things perilous. It seems that the Catholic clergy made haste
to use this impostor to point their moral against learning, and to
identify him as first-fruit of the Reformation; while the Reformers,
with equal zeal, hurled him back upon the papists as outcome of their
idolatries. Melancthon calls him 'an abominable beast, a sewer of
many devils.' The first mention of him is by Trithemius in a letter
of August 20, 1507, who speaks of him as 'a pretender to magic'
('Magister Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus Junior'), whom he met at
Gelnhaussen; and in another letter of the same year as at Kreuznach,
Conrad Mudt, friend of Luther and Melancthon, mentions (Oct. 3, 1513)
the visit to Erfurth of Georgius Faustus Hemitheus Hedebeyensis, 'a
braggart and a fool who affects magic,' whom he had 'heard talking in
a tavern,' and who had 'raised theologians against him.' In Vogel's
Annals of Leipzig (1714), kept in Auerbach's Cellar, is recorded
under date 1525 Dr. Johann Faust's visit to the Cellar. He appears
therefore to have already had aliases. The first clear account of him
is in the 'Index Sanitatis' of Dr. Philip Begardi (1539), who says:
'Since several years he has gone through all regions, provinces, and
kingdoms, made his name known to everybody, and is highly renowned
for his great skill, not alone in medicine, but also in chiromancy,
necromancy, physiognomy, visions in crystal, and the like other
arts. And also not only renowned, but written down and known as
an experienced master. Himself admitted, nor denied that it was
so, and that his name was Faustus, and called himself philosophum
philosophorum. But how many have complained to me that they were
deceived by him--verily a great number! But what matter?--hin ist hin.'
These latter words may mean that Faust had just died. He must have
died about that time, and with little notice. The rapidity with which
a mythology began to grow around him is worthy of more attention than
the subject has received. In 1543 the protestant theologian Johann
Gast has ('Sermones Convivialium') stories of his diabolical dog and
horse, and of the Devil's taking him off, when his body turns itself
five times face downward. In 1587 Philip Camerarius speaks of him as
'a well-known magician who lived in the time of our fathers.' April
18, 1587, two students of the University of Tübingen were imprisoned
for writing a Comedy of Dr. Faustus: though it was not permitted to
make light of the story, it was thought a very proper one to utilise
for pious purposes, and in the autumn of the same year (1587) the
original form of the legend was published by Spiess in Frankfort. It
describes Faust as summoning the Devil at night, in a forest near
Wittenberg. The evil spirit visits him on three occasions in his
study, where on the third he gives his name as 'Mephostophiles,'
and the compact to serve him for twenty-four years for his soul is
signed. When Faust pierces his hand, the blood flows into the form
of the words O homo fuge! Mephistopheles first serves him as a monk,
and brings him fine garments, wine, and food. Many of the luxuries are
brought from the mansions of prelates, which shows the protestant bias
of the book; which is also shown in the objection the Devil makes to
Faust's marrying, because marriage is pleasing to God. Mephistopheles
changes himself to a winged horse, on which Faust is borne through
many countries, arriving at last at Rome. Faust passes three days,
invisible, in the Vatican, which supplies the author with another
opportunity to display papal luxury, as well as the impotence of
the Pope and his cardinals to exorcise the evil powers which take
their food and goblets when they are about to feast. On his further
aerial voyages Faust gets a glimpse of the garden of Eden; lives in
state in the Sultan's palace in the form of Mohammed; and at length
becomes a favourite in the Court of Charles V. at Innsbruck. Here he
evokes Alexander the Great and his wife. In roaming about Germany,
Faust diverts himself by swallowing a load of hay and horses, cutting
off heads and replacing them, making flowers bloom at Christmas,
drawing wine from a table, and calling Helen of Troy to appear to
some students. Helen becomes his mistress; by her he has a son,
Justus Faustus; but these disappear simultaneously with the dreadful
end of Dr. Faustus, who after a midnight storm is found only in the
fragments with which his room is strewn.
Several of these legends are modifications of those current before
Faust's time. The book had such an immense success that new volumes
and versions on the same subject appeared not only in Germany but
in other parts of Europe,--a rhymed version in England, 1588; a
translation from the German in France, 1589; a Dutch translation,
1592; Christopher Marlowe's drama in 1604.
In Marlowe's 'Tragical History of Doctor Faustus,' the mass of
legends of occult arts that had crystallised around a man thoroughly
representative of them was treated with the dignity due to a subject
amid whose moral and historic grandeur Faust is no longer the petty
personality he really was. He is precisely the character which the
Church had been creating for a thousand years, only suddenly changed
from other-worldly to worldly desires and aims. What he seeks is what
all the energy of civilisation seeks.
EVIL ANGEL. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art
Wherein all Nature's treasure is contained:
Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,
Lord and commander of these elements.
FAUST. How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I'll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
I'll have them read me strange philosophy,
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg;
I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad.
For this he is willing to pay his soul, which Theology has so long
declared to be the price of mastering the world.
This word damnation terrifies not him,
For he confounds hell in Elysium:
His ghost be with the old philosophers!
The 'Good Angel' warns him:
O Faustus, lay that damned book aside,
And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul,
And heap God's heavy wrath upon thy head!
Read, read the Scriptures:--that is blasphemy.
So, dying away amid the thunders of the Reformation, were heard the
echoes of the early christian voices which exulted in the eternal
tortures of the Greek poets and philosophers: the anathemas on Roger
Bacon, Socinus, Galileo; the outcries with which every great invention
has been met. We need only retouch the above extracts here and there
to make Faust's aspirations those of a saint. Let the gold be sought
in New Jerusalem, the pearl in its gates, the fruits in paradise,
the philosophy that of Athanasius, and no amount of selfish hunger
and thirst for them would grieve any 'Good Angel' he had ever heard of.
The 'Good Angel' has not yet gained his wings who will tell him that
all he seeks is included in the task of humanity, but warn him that
the method by which he would gain it is just that by which he has
been instructed to seek gold and jasper of the New Jerusalem,--not
by fulfilling the conditions of them, but as the object of some
favouritism. Every human being who ever sought to obtain benefit
by prayers or praises that might win the good graces of a supposed
bestower of benefits, instead of by working for them, is but the Faust
of his side--be it supernal or infernal. Hocus-pocus and invocation,
blood-compacts and sacraments,--they are all the same in origin;
they are all mean attempts to obtain advantages beyond other people
without serving up to them or deserving them. To Beelzebub Faust will
'build an altar and a church;' but he had probably never entered a
church or knelt before an altar with any less selfishness.
A strong Nemesis follows Self to see that its bounds are not overpassed
without retribution. Its satisfactions must be weighed in the balance
with its renunciations. And the inflexible law applies to intellect and
self-culture as much as to any other power of man. Mephistopheles is
'the kernel of the brute;' he is the intellect with mere canine hunger
for knowledge because of the power it brings. Or, falling on another
part of human nature, it is pride making itself abject for ostentation;
or it is passion selling love for lust. Re-enter Mephistopheles with
Devils, who give crowns and rich apparel to Faustus, dance, and then
depart. To the man who has received his intellectual and moral liberty
only to so spend it, Lucifer may well say, in Marlowe's words--
Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just:
There's none but I have interest in the same.
Perhaps he might even better have suggested to Faust that his soul
was not of sufficient significance to warrant much anxiety.
Something was gained when it was brought before the people in popular
dramas of Faust how little the Devil cared for the cross which had so
long been regarded as the all-sufficient weapon against him. [178]
Faust and Mephistopheles flourish in the Vatican despite all the
crosses raised to exorcise them. The confession of the cross which
once meant martyrdom of the confessor had now come to mean martyrdom
of the denier. Protestantism put its faith in Theology, Creeds, and
Orthodoxy. But Calderon de la Barca blended the legend of Faust with
the legendary temptation of St. Cyprian, and in 'El Magico Prodigioso'
we have, in impressive contrast, the powerlessness of the evil powers
over the heart of a pure woman, and its easy entrance into a mind fully
furnished with the soundest sentiments of theology. St. Cyprian had
been a worshipper of pagan deities [179] before his conversion, and
even after this he had once saved himself while other christians were
suffering martyrdom. It is possible that out of this may have grown the
legend of his having called his earlier deities--theoretically changed
to devils--to his aid; a trace of the legend being that magical 'Book
of Cyprianus' mentioned in another chapter. In his tract 'De Gratia
Dei' Cyprian says concerning his spiritual condition before conversion,
'I lay in darkness, and floating on the world's boisterous sea,
with no resting-place for my feet, ignorant of my proper life, and
estranged from truth and light.' Here is a metaphorical 'vasty deep'
from which the centuries could hardly fail to conjure up spirits,
one of them being the devil of Calderon's drama, who from a wrecked
ship walks Christ-like over the boisterous sea to find Cyprian on
the sea-shore. The drama opens with a scene which recalls the most
perilous of St. Anthony's temptations. According to Athanasius, the
Devil having utterly failed to conquer Anthony's virtue by charming
images, came to him in his proper black and ugly shape, and, candidly
confessing that he was the Devil, said he had been vanquished by
the saint's extraordinary sanctity. Anthony prevailed against the
spirit of pride thus awakened; but Calderon's Cyprian, though he
does not similarly recognise the Devil, becomes complacent at the
dialectical victory which the tempter concedes him. Cyprian having
argued the existence and supremacy of God, the Devil says, 'How can
I impugn so clear a consequence?' 'Do you regret my victory?' 'Who
but regrets a check in rivalry of wit?' He leaves, and Cyprian says,
'I never met a more learned person.' The Devil is equally satisfied,
knowing, no doubt, that gods worked out by the wits alone remain in
their abode of abstraction and do not interfere with the world of
sense. Calderon is artful enough to throw the trial of Cyprian back
into his pagan period, but the mirror is no less true in reflecting
for those who had eyes to see in it the weakness of theology.
'Enter the Devil as a fine gentleman,' is the first sign of the
temptation in Calderon's drama--it is Asmodeus [180] again, and the
'pride of life' he first brings is the conceit of a clever theological
victory. So sufficient is the doorway so made for all other pride
to enter, that next time the devil needs no disguise, but has only
to offer him a painless victory over nature and the world, including
Justina, the object of his passion.
Wouldst thou that I work
A charm over this waste and savage wood,
This Babylon of crags and aged trees,
Filling its coverts with a horror
Thrilling and strange?...
I offer thee the fruit
Of years of toil in recompense; whate'er
Thy wildest dream presented to thy thought
As object of desire, shall be thine. [181]
Justina knows less about the philosophical god of Cyprian, and more
of the might of a chaste heart. To the Devil she says--
Thought is not in my power, but action is:
I will not move my foot to follow thee.
The Devil is compelled to say at last--
Woman, thou hast subdued me,
Only by not owning thyself subdued.
He is only able to bring a counterfeit of Justina to her lover.
Like Goethe's Mephistopheles, Cyprian's devil is unable to perform
his exact engagements, and consequently does not win in the game. He
enables Cyprian to move mountains and conquer beasts, until he boasts
that he can excel his infernal teacher, but the Devil cannot bring
Justina. She has told Cyprian that she will love him in death. Cyprian
and she together abjure their paganism at Antioch, and meet in a
cell just before their martyrdom. Over their bodies lying dead on
the scaffold the Devil appears as a winged serpent, and says he is
compelled to announce that they have both ascended to heaven. He
descends into the earth.
What the story of Faust and Mephistopheles had become in the popular
mind of Germany, when Goethe was raising it to be an immortal type of
the conditions under which genius and art can alone fulfil their task,
is well shown in the sensational tragedy written by his contemporary,
the playwright Klinger. The following extract from Klinger's 'Faust'
is not without a certain impressiveness.
'Night covered the earth with its raven wing. Faust stood before
the awful spectacle of the body of his son suspended upon the
gallows. Madness parched his brain, and he exclaimed in the wild
tones of dispair:
'Satan, let me but bury this unfortunate being, and then you may take
this life of mine, and I will descend into your infernal abode, where
I shall no more behold men in the flesh. I have learned to know them,
and I am disgusted with them, with their destiny, with the world,
and with life. My good action has drawn down unutterable woe upon my
head; I hope that my evil ones may have been productive of good. Thus
should it be in the mad confusion of earth. Take me hence; I wish
to become an inhabitant of thy dreary abode; I am tired of light,
compared with which the darkness in the infernal regions must be the
brightness of mid-day.'
But Satan replied: 'Hold! not so fast--Faust; once I told thee that
thou alone shouldst be the arbiter of thy life, that thou alone
shouldst have power to break the hour-glass of thy existence; thou
hast done so, and the hour of my vengeance has come, the hour for
which I have sighed so long. Here now do I tear from thee thy mighty
wizard-wand, and chain thee within the narrow bounds which I draw
around thee. Here shalt thou stand and listen to me, and tremble;
I will draw forth the terrors of the dark past, and kill thee with
slow despair.
'Thus will I exult over thee, and rejoice in my victory. Fool! thou
hast said that thou hast learned to know man! Where? How and when? Hast
thou ever considered his nature? Hast thou ever examined it, and
separated from it its foreign elements? Hast thou distinguished
between that which is offspring of the pure impulses of his heart,
and that which flows from an imagination corrupted by art? Hast thou
compared the wants and the vices of his nature with those which he
owes to society and prevailing corruption? Hast thou observed him in
his natural state, where each of his undisguised expressions mirrors
forth his inmost soul? No--thou hast looked upon the mask that society
wears, and hast mistaken it for the true lineaments of man; thou hast
only become acquainted with men who have consecrated their condition,
wealth, power, and talents to the service of corruption; who have
sacrificed their pure nature to your Idol--Illusion. Thou didst at
one time presume to show me the moral worth of man! and how didst
thou set about it! By leading me upon the broad highways of vice,
by bringing me to the courts of the mighty wholesale butchers of men,
to that of the coward tyrant of France, of the Usurper in England! Why
did we pass by the mansions of the good and the just? Was it for me,
Satan, to whom thou hast chosen to become a mentor, to point them out
to thee? No; thou wert led to the places thou didst haunt by the fame
of princes, by thy pride, by thy longing after dissipation. And what
hast thou seen there? The soul-seared tyrants of mankind, with their
satellites, wicked women and mercenary priests, who make religion a
tool by which to gain the object of their base passions.
'Hast thou ever deigned to cast a glance at the oppressed, who, sighing
under his burden, consoles himself with the hope of an hereafter? Hast
thou ever sought for the dwelling of the virtuous friend of humanity,
for that of the noble sage, for that of the active and upright father
of a family?
'But how would that have been possible? How couldst thou, the most
corrupt of thy race, have discovered the pure one, since thou hadst
not even the capacity to suspect his existence?
'Proudly didst thou pass by the cottages of the pure and humble,
who live unacquainted with even the names of your artificial vices,
who earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, and who rejoice at
their last hour that they are permitted to exchange the mortal for the
immortal. It is true, hadst thou entered their abode, thou mightst
not have found thy foolish ideal of an heroic, extravagant virtue,
which is only the fanciful creation of your vices and your pride;
but thou wouldst have seen the man of a retiring modesty and noble
resignation, who in his obscurity excels in virtue and true grandeur
of soul your boasted heroes of field and cabinet. Thou sayest that
thou knowest man! Dost thou know thyself? Nay, deeper yet will I
enter into the secret places of thy heart, and fan with fierce blast
the flames which thou hast kindled there for thee.
'Had I a thousand human tongues, and as many years to speak to thee,
they would be all insufficient to develop the consequences of thy
deeds and thy recklessness. The germ of wretchedness which thou
hast sown will continue its growth through centuries yet to come;
and future generations will curse thee as the author of their misery.
'Behold, then, daring and reckless man, the importance of actions
that appear circumscribed to your mole vision! Who of you can say,
Time will obliterate the trace of my existence! Thou who knowest not
what beginning, what middle, and end are, hast dared to seize with
a bold hand the chain of fate, and hast attempted to gnaw its links,
notwithstanding that they were forged for eternity!
'But now will I withdraw the veil from before thy eyes, and then--cast
the spectre despair into thy soul.'
'Faust pressed his hands upon his face; the worm that never dieth
gnawed already on his heart.'
The essence and sum of every devil are in the Mephistopheles of
Goethe. He is culture.
Culture, which smooth the whole world licks,
Also unto the Devil sticks.
He represents the intelligence which has learned the difference
between ideas and words, knows that two and two make four, and also how
convenient may be the dexterity that can neatly write them out five.
Of Metaphysics learn the use and beauty!
See that you most profoundly gain
What does not suit the human brain!
A splendid word to serve, you'll find
For what goes in--or won't go in--your mind.
On words let your attention centre!
Then through the safest gate you'll enter
The temple halls of certainty. [182]
He knows, too, that the existing moment alone is of any advantage;
that theory is grey and life ever green; that he only gathers real
fruit who confides in himself. He is thus the perfectly evolved
intellect of man, fully in possession of all its implements, these
polished till they shine in all grace, subtlety, adequacy. Nature
shows no symbol of such power more complete than the gemmed serpent
with its exquisite adaptations,--freed from cumbersome prosaic feet,
equal to the winged by its flexible spine, every tooth artistic.
From an ancient prison was this Ariel liberated by his Prospero,
whose wand was the Reformation, a spirit finely touched to fine
issues. But his wings cannot fly beyond the atmosphere. The ancient
heaven has faded before the clearer eye, but the starry ideals have
come nearer. The old hells have burnt out, but the animalism of man
couches all the more freely on his path, having broken every chain of
fear. Man still walks between the good and evil, on the hair-drawn
bridge of his moral nature. His faculties seem adapted with equal
precision to either side of his life, upper or under,--to Wisdom
or Cunning, Self-respect or Self-conceit, Prudence or Selfishness,
Lust or Love.
Such is the seeming situation, but is it the reality? Goethe's 'Faust'
is the one clear answer which this question has received.
In one sense Mephistopheles may be called a German devil. The
Christian soul of Germany was from the first a changeling. The ancient
Nature-worship of that race might have had its normal development in
the sciences, and alone with this intellectual evolution there must
have been formed a related religion able to preserve social order
through the honour of man. But the native soul of Germany was cut
out by the sword and replaced with a mongrel Hebrew-Latin soul. The
metaphorical terrors of tropical countries,--the deadly worms, the
burning and suffocating blasts and stenches, with which the mind of
those dwelling near them could familiarise itself when met with in
their scriptures, acquired exaggerated horrors when left to be pictured
by the terrorised imagination of races ignorant of their origin. It
is a long distance from Potsdam and Hyde Park to Zahara. Christianity
therefore blighted nature in the north by apparitions more fearful
than the southern world ever knew, and long after the pious there
could sing and dance, puritanical glooms hung over the Christians
of higher latitudes. When the progress of German culture began the
work of dissipating these idle terrors, the severity of the reaction
was proportioned to the intensity of the delusions. The long-famished
faculties rushed almost madly into their beautiful world, but without
the old reverence which had once knelt before its phenomena. That may
remain with a few, but the cynicism of the noisiest will be reflected
even upon the faces of the best. Goethe first had his attention drawn
to Spinoza by a portrait of him on a tract, in which his really noble
countenance was represented with a diabolical aspect. The orthodox had
made it, but they could only have done so by the careers of Faust,
Paracelsus, and their tribe. These too helped to conventionalise
Voltaire into a Mephistopheles. [183]
Goethe was probably the first European man to carry out this scepticism
to its full results. He was the first who recognised that the moral
edifice based upon monastic theories must follow them; and he had in
his own life already questioned the right of the so-called morality to
its supreme if not tyrannous authority over man. Hereditary conscience,
passing through this fierce crucible, lay levigable before Goethe, to
be swept away into dust-hole or moulded into the image of reason. There
remained around the animal nature of a free man only a thread which
seemed as fine as that which held the monster Fenris. It was made
only of the sentiment of love and that of honour. But as Fenris
found the soft invisible thread stronger than chains, Faust proved
the tremendous sanctions that surround the finer instincts of man.
Emancipated from grey theory, Faust rushes hungrily at the golden
fruit of life. The starved passions will have their satisfaction,
at whatever cost to poor Gretchen. The fruit turns to ashes on
his lips. The pleasure is not that of the thinking man, but of the
accomplished poodle he has taken for his guide. To no moment in that
intrigue can the suffrage of his whole nature say, 'Stay, thou art
fair!' That is the pact--it is the distinctive keynote of Goethe's
'Faust.'
Canst thou by falsehood or by flattery
Make me one moment with myself at peace,
Cheat me into tranquillity?--come then
And welcome life's last day.
Make me to the passing moment plead.
Fly not, O stay, thou art so fair!
Then will I gladly perish.
The pomp and power of the court, luxury and wealth, equally fail
to make the scholar at peace with himself. They are symbolised in
the paper money by which Mephistopheles replenished the imperial
exchequer. The only allusion to the printing-press, whose inventor
Fust had been somewhat associated with Faust, is to show its power
turned to the work of distributing irredeemable promises.
At length one demand made by Faust makes Mephistopheles tremble. As a
mere court amusement he would have him raise Helen of Troy. Reluctant
that Faust should look upon the type of man's harmonious development,
yet bound to obey, Mephistopheles sends him to the Mothers,--the
healthy primal instincts and ideals of man which expressed themselves
in the fair forms of art. Corrupted by superstition of their own
worshippers, cursed by christianity, they 'have a Hades of their own,'
as Mephistopheles says, and he is unwilling to interfere with them. The
image appears, and the sense of Beauty is awakened in Faust. But he
is still a christian as to his method: his idea is that heaven must
be taken by storm, by chance, wish, prayer, any means except patient
fulfilment of the conditions by which it may be reached. Helen is
flower of the history and culture of Greece; and so lightly Faust
would pluck and wear it!
Helen having vanished as he tried to clasp her, Faust has learned
his second lesson. When he next meets Helen it is not to seek
intellectual beauty as, in Gretchen's case, he had sought the sensuous
and sensual. He has fallen under a charm higher than that of either
Church or Mephistopheles; the divorce of ages between flesh and spirit,
the master-crime of superstition, from which all devils sprang, was
over for him from the moment that he sees the soul embodied and body
ensouled in the art-ideal of Greece.
The redemption of Faust through Art is the gospel of the nineteenth
century. This is her vesture which Helen leaves him when she vanishes,
and which bears him as a cloud to the land he is to make beautiful. The
purest Art--Greek Art--is an expression of Humanity: it can as little
be turned to satisfy a self-culture unhumanised as to consist with a
superstition which insults nature. When Faust can meet with Helen,
and part without any more clutching, he is not hurled back to his
Gothic study and mocking devil any more: he is borne away until he
reaches the land where his thought and work are needed. Blindness
falls on him--or what Theology deems such: for it is metaphorical--it
means that he has descended from clouds to the world, and the actual
earth has eclipsed a possible immortality.
The sphere of Earth is known enough to me;
The view beyond is barred immortality:
A fool who there his blinking eyes directeth,
And o'er his clouds of peers a place expecteth!
Firm let him stand and look around him well!
This World means something to the capable;
Why needs he through Eternity to wend?
The eye for a fictitious world lost, leaves the vision for reality
clearer. In every hard chaotic object Faust can now detect a slumbering
beauty. The swamps and pools of the unrestrained sea, the oppressed
people, the barrenness and the flood, they are all paths to Helen--a
nobler Helen than Greece knew. When he has changed one scene of
Chaos into Order, and sees a free people tilling the happy earth,
then, indeed, he has realised the travail of his manhood, and
is satisfied. To a moment which Mephistopheles never brought him,
he cries 'Stay, thou art fair!'
Mephistopheles now, as becomes a creation of the Theology of obtaining
what is not earned, calls up infernal troops to seize Faust's soul,
but the angels pelt them with roses. The roses sting them worse than
flames. The roses which Faust has evoked from briars are his defence:
they are symbols of man completing his nature by a self-culture
which finds its satisfaction in making some outward desert rejoice
and blossom like the rose.