168 HUMANISM x 



Komm, gib mir deinen Rock und Miitze, 

 Die Maske muss mir kostlich stehn. 



and again 



Mein Mdskchen da weissagt geheimen Sinn ; 

 Sie fiihlt, dass ich ganz sicher ein Genie, 

 Vielleicht sogar der Teufel, bin. 



But after all the subtlest of his disguises, his most habitual 

 mask, is one which deceives all the other characters in 

 Faust, except the Lord, and has, so far as I know, utterly 

 deceived all Goethe s readers except myself. I mean his 

 disguise as a mediaeval devil. That of course is his great 

 part, and he plays it very well, with an exquisitely 

 humorous perception of its absurdity. For of course he 

 knows quite well that he is nothing of the sort. Indeed, 

 he is often telling us so, either because he wearies of the 

 grotesqueness of the disguise imposed on him by universal 

 prejudice, or because he knows that he will warn in vain 

 a besotted audience which insists that he shall appear in 

 horns and hoofs and full regimentals as a devil. 



And yet the success of this mask constitutes the real 

 tragedy of his situation. To have to play the part of an 

 obscene and silly mediaeval fiend, even in jest, renders him 

 ridiculous. It impedes the expression of his genius, it 

 obscures the spiritual grandeur of his attitude, and in 

 the end conducts him to what seems a most grotesque 

 conclusion. For, like Job, he is ignominiously smitten 

 with boils, and leaves the scene as the vanquished victim 

 of an overpowering literary tradition. 



To appreciate therefore the real subtlety and depth of 

 his spirit we must strip off this mask also and recognise 

 his real genius. For Mephisto is a genius, as even 

 Gretchen, a highly prejudiced witness, must admit. 



And what is rare in a genius, he is also a wit and a 

 philosopher, of the profoundest, and this combination 

 renders the Faust the finest study of philosophic Pessimism 

 in any language. Not one of the professed pessimists, 

 not even the Buddha, not even Schopenhauer, not even 

 James Thomson, has succeeded in expressing the dire 

 philosophy of negation more effectively and consistently 



