Man's development forseen in Goethe's Faust

in fact reached. But just before his death, his mind filled with the great ideas from which the new human society could be built, Faust comes within sight of this experience. Looking ahead at the fulfilment of his aims, he says ‘Now, if I would, I could see the time coming when I could say to a moment of time “Stop!”.’ He uses the subjunctive mood, not the indicative, and thereby in fact the condition is not fulfilled.

Quite recently a contrasting motto has been produced: ‘Stop the world I want to get off’. The temptation to give up instead of going on is helped today by all those who wish to opt out, in whatever manner they try to do so. If the history of mankind were in fact to stop in the condition in which itnow is, man would be a failure. Our true purpose of the present time is hidden in that which we should become if we strive onwards. Such unremitting courage is the quality in the life of Faust which in the end could let him be led by the angels away from Mephistopheles. This hardworking devil is deprived of his reward because Faust has refused to stop, and through his own effort has developed beyond himself. What is the source of Faust’s courage to go on? Near the beginning of the second part of the drama, Faust was shown taking the journey through the Unknown to the Realm of the Great Mothers. Just for once in their history together, he left Mephistopheles behind. From that time on, he was connected with the source of spiritual inspiration, the sphere of the WorldIdeas. He could receive the inflow of thought from the sphere of their existence. Nothing that he achieved could ever be enough. Every plan would be followed by a new idea for further action. Mephistopheles, bound to the pact, was condemned to continually find means of realising aim after aim. He was unable to foresee that his job would never be finished, because the realm which Faust had entered alone seemed to him only the great Nothing.

Another drive from within had also kept Faust striving onwards until his end. He is represented throughout the play as the one who knows himself, who has reached a higher degree of self-consciousness than those around him. In the first scenes he had become an onlooker. This attitude is transformed in the course of events into its opposite. He becomes very eager to experience himself

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