Man's development forseen in Goethe's Faust

not by one power of evil but by two. The one attempts to pull our feeling away from a sober sense of responsibility into wishful thinking, illusions and at the last into ecstasies. The other attempts to drag our experience into the sphere of cold calculation and materialistic thought. The human soul can only find itself in right thinking and feeling in the space between, but the very fact that this space exists is the opportunity to overcome the temptations of evil and create what is good. Mansoul can only hope to get upsides with the devilish powers because they pull from opposite directions and in opposite directions. Goethe presented in the Faust drama the old picture of Mansoul faced with the single devil. But in reality he has shown the behaviour of Mephistopheles to change back and forth from one extreme to the other in a way that reflects the double nature of evil.

In the company of the witches, Mephistopheles himself attempts to lead Faust into the ecstasies of the Nature forces. Faust is not able to respond, but after accepting their brew, he is able to follow the devil’s promptings. He develops wishes and seeks the happy dream of a love-affair with the village maiden, Gretchen. This time it is Mephistopheles who cannot follow Faust. His part in the affair takes him in the opposite direction. To bring about the satisfaction of the desires of Faust, he appeals to the greed for wealth of the girl and her neighbour and provides the intrigue in what, by Faust’s intentions, is to be an innocent love-affair. The ecstasy of Faust and Gretchen is turned into a sordid story of murder, guilt and execution. Gretchen bears the brunt. Faust carries the guilt. But when he intends to rescue Gretchen, his moral strength fails him and he becomes completely dominated by Mephistopheles. Gretchen, refusing to be rescued by the devilish companion of her lover, saves her soul though not her life. Faust, helpless in the tragedy which he never intended, is ordered by Mephistopheles to leave her in a form of words that a master might use to a dog. At the end of the first part of the drama, Faust’s soul has collapsed into the power of the devil. Had Goethe left the story at this point, he would have been faithful to the old tradition of the legend which he knew as a puppet play. All that would have been needed was a concluding scene like that which the dramatist Marlowe composed, in which

8