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 πάθοσ, so that we may be able to sympathize with the sufferer. Thus, for instance, Milton 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—probably about 1490 to 1540. (He was therefore a contemporary of Paracelsus, and also of Luther, Charles V., Henry VIII. and Raphael.) Several notices of this Dr. Johann Faust occur in writers of the period. One of the most circumstantial is by the friend and biographer of Melanchthon, who himself seems to have met Faust. But the various myths that gathered round the magician were, it seems, first published in a continuous narrative in 1587, that is about fifty years after his death. This is the old Frankfurter Faustbuch, of which only one perfect specimen is now known to exist. It is, I believe, in Leipzig. A mutilated copy is in the Vienna Library.

One day, when to escape for a time from the German commentators above mentioned I had gone out for a walk, I found my way to the old Wasserkirche—now the Free Library of the city of Zürich, and here I discovered a facsimile reprint of this old Frankfurt Faust-book. As this is the oldest and most authentic basis of all later forms of the story and is doubtless the one which (as well as the puppet-play on the subject) Goethe used as the ground-plan for his poem, I perhaps cannot do better than give a brief abstract of its contents.

It is written in quaint old German and is interspersed with many pious comments, biblical quotations and Latin words and phrases, and now and then it breaks out into doggerel verse. The editor (Spiess by name) tells us that he publishes the book 'as a warning to all Christians and sensible people to avoid the terrible example of Doctor Faustus.' He evidently takes the thing very seriously and has purposely (as he says) omitted all 'magic formulæ,' lest 'any should by this Historia be incited to inquisitiveness and imitation.' Johann Faust, according to this version, was born at Roda, a village near Weimar. (Other versions say at Knittlingen in Würtemberg.) His parents were honest God-fearing peasants. His great abilities induced a rich relation in Wittenberg to adopt and educate him. He studied theology at Wittenberg (known to us all through Hamlet and Luther) and also at Cracow, outrivalling all competitors and gaining the title of Doctor of Theology. But he had not only a 'teachable and quick' but also a 'foolish, silly, inquisitive' head, and neglecting the Bible became a 'Speculator' and prided himself more on being an Astrologus and a Mathematicus than a Theologus. As the old chronicler expresses it, he 'took to himself eagle's wings and desired to search out the reasons of all in heaven and on earth.'

He now takes to 'Zauberei'—magic. Where four roads meet in the Spessart Wald, a forest near Wittenberg, he inscribes mystic circles and performs incantations for the purpose of summoning the devil. After all kinds of fearful apparitions and noises, by which Faust is almost terrified to death, a demon appears in the shape of a 'grey monk.' Faust invites him to visit him at his house in Wittenberg. The demon visits him there and tells him of all the horrors of hell. But Faust persists in his plan and makes a second rendezvous with the demon, who has now procured leave from his lord and master Lucifer to offer his services and attendance. The compact is made. The demon is to serve him for twenty-four years. Faust is to renounce Christianity and to hate all Christians, and at the end of twenty-four years he is to belong to the demon 'to have power, rule and dominion over his soul, body, flesh, blood, and possessions, and that for all eternity.' This compact has to be signed with blood. Faust pierces his hand, and the blood flows out and forms the words 'O homo fuge!'—'O man, escape!'—but Faust, though alarmed, is not deterred. It is now agreed that the demon shall appear, whenever summoned, in the form of a Franciscan monk. He then reveals his name: Mephistopheles, or, as the old legend gives it, Mephostophiles—the meaning of which is probably 'not loving the light'—μὴ ϕῶϛ φιλῶν—a compound which you may rightly remark must have been concocted by a rather second-rate Greek scholar.

After a season of dissipation, during which Faust is supplied with all the luxuries that he desires—wine stolen from ducal, electoral, and episcopal cellars, soft and costly raiment from the draperies and naperies of Nürnberg and Frankfurt and so on (he had, for instance, only to open his window and call any bird, goose, turkey, or capon, and it would at once fly in, ready roasted)—getting tired of this kind of thing he falls in love and wishes to marry. But Mephisto angrily tells him that marriage is a thing pleasing to God and against the terms of the compact. You will notice here the Lutheran and