takes himself to
magic.

I've studied now philosophy,
Jurisprudence and medicine,
And e'en, alas, theology
From end to end with toil and teen,
And here I stand with all my lore,
Poor fool, no wiser than before.
No dog would live thus any more!
Therefore to magic I have turned,
If that through spirit-word and power
Many a secret may be learned
That I may find the inner force
Which binds the world and guides its course,
Its germs and vital powers explore
And peddle with worthless words no more.

Disgusted with the useless quest after that science which deals only
with phenomena and their material causes, he turns to magic, as he does
in the old legend; but it is here no diabolic medieval wizardry which
shall enable him to summon the devil, for, as we shall see, Faust does
not summon the devil; Mephistopheles comes to him uncalled. Goethe has
merely used this motive of magic to intimate attainment of perfect
knowledge of Nature through the might of genius--that revelation of the
inner secrets of the universe which he himself, in what he calls the
'Titanic, heaven-storming' period of his life, believed to be attainable
by human genius in communion with Nature.

'Nature and Genius' was the watchword of the followers of Rousseau and
the apostles of the Sturm und Drang gospel--a return to and communion
with Nature, such as Wordsworth preached and practised, and such as
Byron also preached but did not practise. Only to the human spirit in
full communion with the spirit of Nature, of which it is a part, are
revealed her mysteries. All other means, as Faust tells us, are useless.

Mysterious even in the open day
Nature within her veil withdraws from view.
What to thy spirit she will not display
Cannot be wrenched from her with crowbar or with screw.

Faust turns from his dreary little world of books and charts and retorts
and skeletons. He opens the window and gazes at the moon floating in her
full glory through the heaven. His heart is filled with a yearning to be
'made one with Nature,' and in words which remind one of certain lines
of Wordsworth he exclaims:

O might I on some mountain height,
Encircled in thy holy light,
With spirits hover round crags and caves,
O'er the meadows float on the moonlight's waves.

Then, turning from Nature, he casts once more a look around his dreary
cell:

Ah me, this dungeon still I se