the Abbot Tritheim, and (perhaps best known of all, at least to all
readers of Browning) Bombastes Paracelsus, the contemporary of Faust,
born at Einsiedeln, between Brunnen and the lake of Zuerich, in the year
1493.

Thus the sixteenth-century form of our legend is of the most tragic
character. In the oldest Faust-legend, which first took shape in this
century, there is no hint of his being saved. And another of its
characteristics is its strong anti-papal tendency. The devil appears in
the guise of a monk, and even as Mahomet or Antichrist in the guise of
the Pope himself.

But the Renaissance (if not the Reformation) introduced another,
entirely new and most important, element into the legend--one which
enabled Goethe to use the sulphurous old myth as the subject for a great
poem. Not only was there a renaissance of learning, but also of art--an
intense longing for both Knowledge and Beauty. To _know_ everything--to
learn the inner secret of Nature--to understand, as Faust longed to
understand,

The inmost force
That binds the world and guides its course--

this yearning after perfection by Knowledge was one of the fruits of the
Renaissance. The other was the yearning to gain perfection by means of
_feeling_, by the ecstatic contemplation of and communion with perfect
Beauty--'to love infinitely and be loved,' as Aprile says in Browning's
_Paracelsus_. These two impulses, the one toward Knowledge and the other
toward Love, were doubtless awakened by the study of Aristotle, that
'master of those who know,' and of Plato's doctrine of the soul's
love-inspired yearnings for Truth and Beauty and for communion with the
Perfect and the Eternal.

I have called them _two_ impulses, and to the mind they must ever appear
distinct, nay sometimes contrary; but I need not remind you how
Christianity teaches us to reconcile the ancient feud between the mind
and the heart--between Knowledge and Love. You may perhaps remember how
Dante, to intimate to us that there can be no true knowledge without
love and no true love without knowledge, speaks of the Cherubim and the
Seraphim as ideally the same, and tells us that the Seraphs, who love
most, also know most.

Both these impulses are noble and awaken our sympathy.

Now, in order that _tragic_ art may have its effect it must possess what
Aristotle calls [Greek: pathos], so that we may be able to sympathize
with the sufferer. Thus, for instance, Milt