x CONCERNING MEPHISTOPHELES 181 



the inaction of despair, he is the stimulus to progress in 

 a world which, but for him, would grow inert. Says 

 the Lord 



Des Menschen Tatigkeit kann allzuleicht erschlaffen ; 



Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh ; 



Drum geb ich gern ihm den Gesellen zu, 



Der reizt und wirkt, und muss, als Teufel, schaffen. 



There is activity enough about Mephisto and to spare; 

 but it is of the wrong kind. It is frivolous, for all the 

 pessimism out of which it grew. It has no serious 

 purpose of its own, and now aims only at an intellectual 

 play with a scheme of things it confronts without 

 approving. And this is just the reason why it is impotent, 

 why it becomes subservient to an alien end. Aiming at 

 nothing, Mephistopheles, the unbelieving scoffer, cannot 

 but become a servant of the Lord. But he is a bad servant 

 and an unwilling, and remains a blot upon a universe 

 which condones such service, and so reveals its imperfection 

 and its impotence. Impotent though he seems, his mere 

 existence indicates the limitation of what we fondly 

 deemed Omnipotence. 



The redemption, therefore, of Mephisto is the postulate 

 of a complete Theodicy, on grounds both metaphysical 

 and moral. Our moral sensibility demands that there 

 shall be no hopeless evil. And our reason enforces this 

 demand by showing that we cannot call good a world of 

 which any part is evil, without destroying the whole 

 meaning of good. For metaphysics the ultimate solidarity 

 of things is such as to demand universal salvation. No 

 universe is perfect in which any part is imperfect ; forj 

 the suffering of any part that is imperfect must produce a \ 

 sympathetic tremor in the whole. But these are topics I 

 which perhaps transcend the bounds of literary criticism ; &quot; 

 though they might well provide food for thought for the i 

 theologians who have prided themselves on the popularity , 

 of their hells, and for the philosophers who have too easily \ 

 proved the perfection of the world by excluding from its ] 

 notion all that makes perfection worth the having. 1 



1 c p . P. 3 . 





