's life. The _Prelude_ consists of a scene between a poet, a
theatrical director and a 'comic person.' It is merely a clever skit in
which Goethe has a hit at the public and those who supply it with
so-called drama. It has no organic connexion with the play. The
_Prologue in Heaven_ begins with the songs of the three
Archangels--sonorous verses of majestic harmony, like some grand
overture by Bach or Handel. These verses are, I think, meant to intimate
the great harmonious order and procession of the natural and moral
universe, as Pythagoras intimated them by his 'Music of the
Spheres'--those eternal laws against which man, that tiny microcosm, so
vainly strives.

Mephistopheles now enters, as in the Book of Job Satan is described
entering God's presence, and, just as it happens in the Bible, the Lord
asks him if he knows Faust, and, as in the case of Job, it is God
himself who not only allows but seems even to challenge the demon to try
his powers, foretelling his failure although promising no help to Faust.
'It is left to thee,' says the Lord to Mephistopheles. 'Draw this
aspiring spirit from his fountain-head and lead him downward on thy
path, if thou canst gain a hold upon him, and stand ashamed when thou
shalt have to confess that a good man amidst his dim impulses is well
conscious of the right way.'

That which distinguishes this scene from the similar scene in _Job_ is
its irreverence. Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, and few
would deny that at times this flippancy is painful to them. The only
excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly or wrongly, Goethe meant
us to be pained. I believe that here Mephistopheles represents
especially that element in human nature which is perhaps the meanest and
most disgusting of all, namely flippant and vulgar irreverence, and
although we may not agree with John Wesley's definition of man as 'half
brute, half devil,' most of us will probably allow that a certain part
of our nature (that part which Mephistopheles seems to represent) is
capable of an irreverence and a vulgarity of which the devil himself
might almost be ashamed.

The monologue with which the action of the play begins strikes at once
the new chord and gives us the leading motive--one so entirely different
from that of the old legend--so indescribably nobler than that which is
given in the opening monologue of Marlowe's play. But the old framework
is still there. Faust renounces book-learning and be