174 HUMANISM x 



altogether at her valuation. Indeed, there is a pre 

 posterous incongruity in the thought of judging the 

 cosmic spirit of negation by the feminine intuitions of a 

 little grisette, who is madly in love and furiously jealous 

 of the ascendency which a more powerful mind has over 

 her lover. We must allow a large discount for a woman s 

 instinctive mischief-making when she intervenes between 

 man and man. 



Es tut mir lang schon weh, 



Das ich dich in der Gesellschaft seh . 



Gretchen fears and hates him because she suspects in 

 him, and rightly, a danger to her love, an obstacle to a 

 mesalliance which would have domesticated Faust and 

 unfitted him for further ventures. And so she insinuates 

 all she can, and has apparently succeeded in getting her 

 view accepted by the public. 



Wo er nur mag zu uns treten, 



Mein ich sogar, ich liebte dich nicht mehr 



is her last and unfairest appeal. 



That too is an old, old story, as old as the way of a 

 man with a maid. 



Still in a way Gretchen is right despite the defects 

 of her grammar 



Man sieht, dass er an nichts keinen Anteil nimmt ; 

 Es steht ihm an der Stirn geschrieben, 

 Dass er nicht mag eine Seele lieben. 



Only that is Mephisto s intellectualism. He himself sees 

 clearly that the struggle is for the control of Faust, 

 and that if the liaison with Gretchen is to come to a 

 respectable conclusion there is an end of his designs on 

 Faust (or rather of the Lord s designs whereof he is the 

 instrument). And so he takes ruthlessly effective steps 

 to bring about a separation. Gretchen is an obstacle in 

 his path, and so she is removed. But he never expresses 

 the least hatred for her : the expression of her hate he 

 interprets as a tribute to his intellectual eminence, and 

 takes quite coolly 



