gony of Faust's final doom.

The German popular Faust drama of the seventeenth century and its
outgrowth the puppet plays, are a reflex both of Marlowe's tragedy and
the Faust Book of 1587, although they contain a number of original
scenes, notably the Council of the Devils at the beginning. Here
again, the underlying sentiment is the abhorrence of human
recklessness and extravagance. In some of these plays, the vanity of
bold ambition is brought out with particular emphasis through the
contrast between the daring and dissatisfied Faust and his farcical
counterpart, the jolly and contented Casperle. In the last scene,
while Faust in despair and contrition is waiting for the sound of the
midnight bell which is to be the signal of his destruction, Casperle,
as night watchman, patrols the streets of the town, calling out the
hours and singing the traditional verses of admonition to quiet and
orderly conduct.

To the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then, Faust appeared as a
criminal who sins against the eternal laws of life, as a rebel against
holiness who ruins his better self and finally earns the merited
reward of his misdeeds. He could not appear thus to the eighteenth
century. The eighteenth century is the age of Rationalism and of
Romanticism. The eighteenth century glorifies human reason and human
feeling. The right of man and the dignity of man are its principal
watchwords. Such an age was bound to see in Faust a champion of
freedom, nature, truth. Such an age was bound to see in Faust a symbol
of human striving for completeness of life.

It is Lessing who has given to the Faust legend this turn. His
_Faust_, unfortunately consisting only of a few fragmentary sketches,
is a defense of Rationalism. The most important of these fragments,
preserved to us in copies by some friends of Lessing's, is the
prelude, a council of devils. Satan is receiving reports from his
subordinates as to what they have done to bring harm to the realm of
God. The first devil who speaks has set the hut of some pious poor on
fire; the second has buried a fleet of usurers in the waves. Both
excite Satan's disgust. "For," he says, "to make the pious poor still
poorer means only to chain him all the more firmly to God"; and the
usurers, if, instead of being buried in the waves, they had been
allowed to reach the goal of their voyage, would have wrought new evil
on distant shores. Much more satisfied is Satan with the report of a
third d