on enlists our sympathies
even with his Satan, and it is perhaps because we cannot sympathize in
any way with Dante's Lucifer that many feel repelled by the terrible
creation. But even in the oldest of the Faust-legends, and far more of
course in Goethe's _Faust_, we are attracted by a 'pathetic' element,
viz., the unsatisfied and insatiable longing of a human soul for
Knowledge--for Truth--and its still intenser yearnings after ideal
Beauty.

Thus, even the Faust of the older sixteenth-century legend, although he
ultimately falls a victim to the devil, has noble and high impulses by
which we feel strongly attracted. He is lost, not through these
impulses, these yearnings for knowledge, but through his magic, and his
sensual life. In spite of more than one fit of remorse he is unable to
free himself from the lusts of the flesh; he is obliged to sign a second
bond with Mephisto and is dragged down ever lower into the abyss, until
the jaws of hell open and swallow him up--while the Faust of Goethe's
poem gains strength through many an error and many a grievous fall,
gradually shakes off the diabolic influence and rising on the
stepping-stones of his dead self is finally rescued by God's mercy and
reaches the higher spheres of another life.

How infinitely grander--how illimitable in its vistas--the subject
becomes when thus treated by a great poet we all must feel. And even if
we cannot with a whole heart accept as a true Gospel what (in spite of
Goethe's admission that God's mercy was a necessary factor) seems to be
a gospel of _self-salvation_, we should not forget that this picture of
a man pressing on in his own strength amidst the lusts of the flesh and
the errors of the mind is perhaps the noblest and grandest kind of
picture that dramatic art can offer us--that of the human will in its
struggle against destiny. In any case, I think, we cannot refuse our
sympathy for these yearnings and searchings for truth amidst error. Do
you remember what Lessing said about such longings? 'If God'--he
said--'should hold Truth itself in His right hand, and in His left the
longing for Truth, and should say to me _Choose!_ I would humbly fall
down before His left hand and say: _Father, pure Truth is for Thee
alone. Give me the longing for Truth, though it be attended with
never-ending error._'

There seems no doubt that a man named Johann Faust, renowned for his
learning and credited with magical powers, actually did exist--proba