i;8 HUMANISM x 



which cannot be read up in books. Before they start 

 together Faust has recovered the use of the imperative, 

 and demands to be initiated into every form of human 

 experience. Mephisto laughs at the psychological im 

 possibility involved, and has difficulty in dissuading 

 Faust from reverting to his old hankering after the 

 infinite. But he slowly makes a man of him. Faust 

 scorns the animal pleasures of the coarsest debauchery. 

 He escapes lightly from the snares of the affections 

 in the brief tragedy of Gretchen, which scars his soul 

 with mingled memories of ecstasy and guilt. He pays 

 his homage to the aesthetic ideal by his descent into 

 the fairyland of Art. But even Helen cannot paralyse a 

 spirit 1 so astutely guided : he returns, to be initiated into 

 the realities of politics. Thus in the end Mephistopheles 

 bridges for him the gulf twixt word and deed which he 

 had once imagined could be traversed by a trick of 

 mistranslation. 2 And so Faust finds his real life s work 

 in action. It is working and ruling that mature him and 

 make him ripe for the life eternal. But to what, I should 

 like to know, does he owe this whole career, if not to the 

 unwearying aid of Mephistopheles ? How else could the 

 philosopher have become king, the obscure pedant a 

 prince of the Empire ? 



Not that on this account we need ascribe to Mephisto 

 any special merit, or suppose that his motives will bear 

 scrutiny. Mephisto knows no doubt that he is redeeming 

 Faust ; but he does not help him in order to save him, 

 any more than he attends him, in order to tempt him. 

 The truth is that tempting is not seriously in his line : 

 amusing is, and indeed I suspect that if the tradition be 

 true that cards are a diabolic invention, it must have 

 been to Mephisto that we owe them, but rather to his 

 ingenuity in amusing himself than to his desire to 

 ruin others. He seems to make his one solitary 

 attempt at tempting in the excursion into Auerbach s 

 cellar, but even there a doubt remains. If Mephisto 



1 Wen Helena paralysirt, 



Der kommt so leicht nicht zu Verstande. 

 2 Cp. Scene in the Study. 



