Man's development forseen in Goethe's Faust

stressed in one of the final speeches, which speaks of the Eternal Feminine as the power lifting the human soul upwards. What did Goethe mean by these words? Perhaps he was thinking of a picture which lived powerfully in the hearts of the earliest Fathers of the Christian Church. They lived in a period of human consciousness when they thought, not in the abstract principles common today, but in terms of living beings, of gods and goddesses. Wisdom was not for them a vague idea, but a Great Being in the universe, the ‘Sophia’. The wisdom of God appeared to them in the form of a goddess just as the wisdom in Nature was seen as the Being ‘Natura’. In the sphere of the soul, they felt themselves standing between two feminine influences, both divine, Sophia from above and Natura from below. It is part of the Christian mystery of the Madonna that both of these divine influences are represented in herself. Goethe was sensitive to such realities and they can be seen reflected in the two characters of Gretchen and Helen reconciled at the end in the Madonna who appears at the Gateway to Heaven.

Faust within Goethe’s drama can fairly be described as a picture of Mansoul, as he has become today, because the dangers he encounters can be recognised as rightly represented. Have we then to accept the solution to the dilemma of Faust as also true for our time? Such a question can only be left for each one to answer for himself. If Goethe, when he created the figure of Faust, was in fact inspired by a wisdom beyond his own comprehension as one might well believe, then he has sent the most important message to our later generation. He has said: “Your greatest temptation is to stop where you are. If you refuse to stop, if you continually receive the inspiration of new spiritual ideas, if you are determined to put them into action, if you refuse to be weary or to be satisfied, then you will transcend your dilemma. Like Faust, when the darkness presses on you from outside, you will see the light of the Spirit from within and you will know that you cannot stop’.