Man's development forseen in Goethe's Faust

devil is still at hand, but he has to work as he never did before to keep up with Faust. Though he started by being the tempter, he is now taking orders. He is kept hard at work supplying Faust with the means of carrying out his ideas. He works with a will, but being after all the devil, there is always a nasty streak in what he performs. It turns out that the last bit of land required for the new scheme has on it already a modest cottage in which an old couple live who do not wish to move. Faust provides an excellent old people’s home elsewhere but somehow, before they can be taken there against their will, the cottage goes up in flames and they are destroyed with it. Mephistopheles ae had a hand in the matter. Faust, burdened with care, grows old and blind working away at his scheme. Mephistopheles of course neither ages nor wearies. Faust is so filled with inspiration that he lives from its light and takes little account of age or infirmity, but a new idea enters his plans. He has begun by wishing to establish an ideal order of society. Then he realises that the citizens will be human and that it is human nature to become corrupt in a state of constant wellbeing. People cannot live rightly when they are provided from outside with all that is good. It is essential that they should have the opportunity to use their creative powers. It is therefore decided that the citizens of the new society shall make for themselves the conditions under which they will live. The very fact that the new country is to consist of reclaimed land, which will be flooded if the dyke is not kept in order, is now seen by Faust to be an advantage. Under the threat of danger, the citizens will be constantly aware of the need to remain awake and active.

At this point, very near the end of the drama, when Faust is about to die, the meaning of his pact with the devil is resolved. Goethe started to compose his drama from the old legend in which a simple bargain was made for the soul of Faust, but he introduced into the scene in which the pact was signed a new concept of his own. Faust was allowed to add a condition. That is to say, he promised to the devil his soul at death, provided that Mephistopheles could bring him to the point of satisfaction, when he would say of one moment of time ‘Stop! you are too beautiful to let go.’ Through all the many scenes in which Goethe showed Faust and Mephistopheles as companions, such a moment was not

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