'Logos,' must be translated as Act or
Deed.

These speculations are interrupted by horrible growlings, barks, and
howlings. As Faust looks towards the poodle he sees it rapidly swelling
up into a monstrous form--huger than an elephant or hippopotamus, with
fiery eyes and enormous tusks in its gaping mouth. He tries to exorcise
the phantom with 'Solomon's key' and other magic formulae, and at length,
when he threatens it with the mystic formula of the Trinity, it
dissolves into mist, and out of the mist steps forth Mephistopheles,
dressed as a 'travelling scholar'--an itinerant professor, or quack
doctor.

I find that some commentators accuse Goethe of dramatic inconsistency
and of interrupting the sequence of the action, because he makes Faust
for a time return to his old speculations, and because Mephistopheles
does not at once appear in the shape with which we are so familiar--with
his 'red gold-trimmed dress and mantle of stiff silk and the
cock-feathers in his hat,' the type of the dissolute man-about-town of
the period. To me it seems very natural that, dispirited by his first
contact with the outer world--unable to feel any real sympathy with the
rollicking and sleek self-sufficiency of that holiday crowd, Faust
should turn again to reflexion and speculation, and that when he is in
this depressed and metaphysical mood the demonic element in his nature
should first present itself--and that too in the disguise of an
itinerant professor. For is it not the case that to many of us the devil
_has_ come first just at such a time and in just such disguise?

Questioned as to his name and personality, Mephisto defines himself (he
too being in a metaphysical mood) as 'the spirit of negation,' and as 'a
part of that power which always wills evil and always works good'--'a
part of that darkness which alone existed before the creation of
light'--and he expresses the hope that, as light is dependent for its
existence on the material world, both it and the world will ere long
return to chaos and darkness. I have already touched upon this question
of Evil as merely negative--merely a part of the whole--and will not
detain you further over it.

Mephistopheles now wishes to take his leave, promising to visit Faust
again. 'Visit me as you like,' says Faust, 'and now--there is the
window! there's the door! or the chimney is at your service.' But the
devil must go out by the same way as he has entered, and on the
threshold to keep