A ' FAUST PROBLEM. 1 59 



necessary. A correct prose translation free from the trammels 

 of rhyme and rythm will then suffice : — 



So ist denn alios was ihr Si'inde, 

 Zerstorung. kurz das Bose nennt, 

 Mein eigentliches element- 



I.e., " Ergo : all that yon people call sin, destructicMi — in 

 short, ' Evil ' — is my element " ; that is to say, "What you call 

 evil is what I approve of and consider good." 



If this conception of this second saying of Mephisto's is 

 correct, and if you agree with me that we must take this reply 

 as an elucidation of the initial paradox, " I always will the Bad, 

 but always work the Good," I can find no other solution for the 

 difficulty than this : Mephisto says : " I always am trying to do 

 what you people call wickedness, sin, evil, but what really is 

 good." In Mephisto's declaration Evil and (iood are not, 

 as all commentators take for granted, the names of two dia- 

 metrically opposite principles, but two names for one and the 

 same thing viewed from two diametrically opposite standpoints. 

 I imagine the words " stets das Bose will " spoken by a good 

 actor, if he adopt my interpretation, with just a faint sarcastic 

 smile. That same actor would then lay a noticeable stress on the 

 " ihr " in " was ihr Sunde nennt." 



I think I rniay claim for this interpretation, firstly, that it 

 saves us from the necessity of believing that Goethe has been 

 guilty of an artistic blunder, a theory to which, as we have seen, 

 some commentators find themselves driven. There is no im- 

 prudent frankness, there is no confession of impotence, there is 

 no absurd inconsistency and self-contradiction in Mephisto's 

 words; he does not call destruction evil, nor does he call creation 

 good. Secondly, that it assigns to Mephisto's utterance a sense 

 admirably adapted to Eaust's character and mood. 



Faust, the scholar who has studied all sciences and found 

 none that satisfied his thirst for full and complete truth, and for 

 that knowledge which would make him understand " the inmost 

 force which binds the world, and guides its course," — Eaust, 

 who has a few moments before Mephisto's appearance confessed 

 to himself that he " does not pretend to aught worth knowing," 

 is so thoroughly disgusted with the world in which he lives that 

 " no dog would endure such a curst existence." Even magic has 

 failed him when he sought its aid, and the Earth-spirit 

 ("Erdgeist") whom he calls up has crushed him and taken 

 away all his self-confidence, which the sight of the sign of the 

 macrocosm had momentarily inspired. " A thunderword hath 

 swept me from my stand," he says, and, thoroughly disheartened, 

 he thinks of committing suicide. True, a reminiscence of child- 

 hood has made him put down the poison, but even this milder 

 mood soon passes away once more, when the gratitude of the 

 peasants on Easter morning reminds him how his father and he 

 himself vainly strove against disease and plague, and he re- 

 proaches himself with pretentious ignorance and sighs: "I must 



