mi |jii| A — A = ^= CO ^ r lliil!].i!iRit'*4!P!!!lll!ifi!i![ii' ,KV'W'<\f'l\'v''' ,llf'';, ''ti'lK' !': 5 3 5 6 1 § rfl ■ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GOETHE'S FAUST A Fragment of Socialist Criticism BY MARCUS HITCH 9J9 CHICAGO CHARLES H, KERR & COMPANY 1908 Copyright 1908 By Charles H. Kerr & Company ,-The "Divinity that shapes our ends" is Mankind itself, which is both the author and actor of its own Mrama (Marx). But in the class society called.-. "Civilization" what is comedy for the rich is tragedy j foFThe poor. The class character of this civilization i' is reflected in its poetry, as well as in its other in- j tellectual creations, and a clear understanding of this fact is useful, both to curb the insolent pretensions of the oppressors, who assume to portray "uni- versal" human nature, and to arouse the spirits of the oppressed who are destined to recast the great Human Drama and usher in a different kind of "Civilization" and Literature. GERMAJi CONTENTS Chapter Page I. AN OUTLINE OF PART 1 7 II. OUTLINE OF PART II 16 III. COMMENTS 36 IV. THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM 87 V. THE GRETCHEN TRAGEDY 105 VL GOETHE AND MILTON 116 GOETHE'S FAUST. CHAPTER I. AN OUTLINE OF PART I. N / Goethe's Faust is the story of a man in \ (' the pursuit of happiness and the satisfac- ] tion of his impulses, which pursuit in a , broad sense is the chief occupation of all of us. It is in dramatic form and is labeled a tragedy, with as little propriety as Dan- te's Vision is called a comedy. The only tragedy about it is contained in the first part, and this, though it is the shorter and less important part, is the ony part that is ever acted on the stage or that is widely known. Taking both parts together from first to last it will not be denied that a most inter- esting series of questions is presented by this work and that it furnishes abundant food for reflection. There is the longing of the human soul for freedom, knowledge and GOETHE'S FAUST satisfaction, which when allowed to run wild leads to the contract with the devil (so-called) ; the question of personal re- sponsibility, of free-will and necessity, and their reconciliation; the "perseverance of the saints," or the victory of good over evil in the individual, because the individual is a unit; the reverse of this law in societary life because society is not a unit, and the_ social institutions prevailing at any partic- ular time are contemplated by the domi- nant part of society as supernatural instead of having only a local and temporary valid- ity, and hence every material modification thereof which is forced by the march of history appears a victory of the bad; the tragedy based on the efifect of one individ- hial's acts upon another under certain social (conditions; the question of the direct deal- ings of supernatural powers with men ; the idea of the conquest of nature ; of the moral i influence of the beautiful ; the idea of a perfect or relatively perfect social State based on benevolence ; the idea of the salva- tion of unrepentant men by repentant wo- men; the future life of the soul apart from AN OUTLINE OF PART I 9 the material universe ; these are some of the matters which occupied Goethe's mind dur- ing the fifty-seven years, ofif and on, while he was writing Faust and which are re- flected in the work. We shall comment on some of these matters later. For the pres- ent we give a brief outline of Faust's chase after happiness. Dr. Heinrich Faust, a medieval German professor, is sitting in his dingy study room the Saturday night before Easter. It is late and the moon shines in at the window. He reflects that he has studied philosophy, law, medicine, and alas, also theology. Though he has become a learned doctor in all these branches, he finds himself no wiser and no happier than before. In fact he has lost all pleasure in existence. Much learning hath made him mad. Not only has he failed to gain true knowledge, but he has also failed to gain either wealth or honor among men. In despair he turns to magic, hoping to dis- cover the secret forces of nature, the germs of all power. In brooding over this subject he becomes despondent and is finally on the point of committing suicide by poison when 10 GOETHE'S FAUST he is startled by the chiming bells of paster morning and by a chorus of angels' voices which recall the happiness of his youthful days and cause him to put down the cup and desist from his intention. The Easter chorus is certainly beautiful enough to lift even the hardened sinner clean ofif the earth. As Dante, following Christ, descends into hell on the night of Good Friday to rise into the earthly paradise on Easter morn- ing; so Faust on the Saturday night before Easter descends into the mental hell of de- spair and is aroused to new hope on Easter morning by a chorus of angels. After one has read the Divine Comedy and Faust every recurring Easter calls up to his mind the powerful emotions produced by the opening pages of these great works. A charming picture of Easter holiday in Germany is then given, which, to be fully appreciated, must have been experienced. Faust takes a walk about the suburbs with i one Wagner whose dull philistinism con- trasts sharply with Faust's dreaminess. They witness the various classes of people^ amusing themselves in dififerent ways, care-J AN OUTLINE OF PART I H less and happy. As evening approaches they return. A queer-acting black poodle dog circles round them and finally follows them home to Faust's study and lies down be-_ hind the stove. The peace of mind brought on by Easter does not last long. Faust soon finds himself yearning again for something more than earth affords and seeks the light of divine revelation. He takes the New Testament and proposes to translate it from the orig- inal into German. Starting with the Gospel of St. John he writes: "In the beginning was the word." He stops to consider. No, not the "word," the "sense"; no, the "power." Still it does not suit him. Fin- ally he hits it; the "deed." He writes again: "In the beginning was the deed." The black poodle dog interrupts him so much that he has to stop and watch his actions. He tries to control him by magic and is astonished to sec him swell up and undergo a transformation until finally Me- phistopheles in the garb of a travelling scholastic steps from behind the stove with„ 13 GOETHE'S FAUST a chipper salutation. This was the 'poodle's kernel. Mephistopheles is an Evil Spirit, who is described as one who "wills the bad and works the good," and had previously ob- tained leave of the Lord to tempt Faust in a manner recalling the story of Job in the Bible. The Lord gives him a free hand, having confidence that Faust's innate tend- ency towards the good will prevail in spite of his errors. "Man will err as long as he ^triyes." Mephistopheles is not so much a direct tempter as the spirit of rebelliousness and self-indulgence. He merely procures for Faust everything he wishes and lets him take the consequences. After Gretchen's imprisonment, when Faust is wild with re- morse and is cursing Mephistopheles, he silences Faust by asking, "Did I thrust my- self upon you or did you thrust yourself upon me?" Who was it that ruined her, I or you?" Such is the spirit that emanated from the black poodle dog and confronted Faust after he turned to the study of magic. Faust is so determined to have happiness and satisfaction at any price that he con- AN OUTLINE OF PART I 13 sents to sell his soul to Mephistopheles if ever he shall realize happiness so as to be able to say to the passing moment, "Stay, thou art fair." The bargain is made and signed with Faust's blood. They are about to leave the old study den. While Faust is getting himself ready and changing his clothes for a :Mephisto suit, Mephistopheles dons the Doctor's robe, assumes his place and entertains one of Faust's pupils with much wise counsel, delivered with a mock- • gravity that could hardly be surpassed by a^ University professor. In fact, no one but a bourgeois political economist could equal it. A fitting climax is given to this inimitable piece of irony when Mephistopheles in dis- missing his pupil finally (with a sardonic grin we imagine) discloses his own identity by writing in the young man's album a quotation from Gen. III. 5: "And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Being now ready, they sally forth, a no- ble pair of brothers in deviltry, ready for) anything that comes along. They are to see the world; first, the little world of the in- dividual.^ (Part I), and then the greater 14 GOETHE'S PAUST world of social life (Part II.) Faust, who has spent his life over books, feels his lack of manners and knowledge of life. Mephis- topheles reassures him by the assertion that self-confidence is the only art of life. In Auerbach's Wine Cellar in Leipzig they meet with a roomful of students whose idea of happiness is to get roaring drunk. Mephistopheles lends a helping hand and this kind of happiness soon reaches its cli- max in the words of one of the company: ; "Happy as the cannibals, Like five hundred swine we swill." This does not satisfy Faust; After being rejuvenated in the witch's kitchen, he is next drawn into a love affair with Gretchen. i It is the old, old story of seduction, aban- | donment, incidental murder of the mother and brother of the girl, infanticide, impris- onment, conviction, insanity and death of the innocent of the two and the escape of the guilty. /After killing Gretchen's brother, Faust /and Mephistopheles betake themselves to / the Harz mountains to take part in the ■ witches' dance on Walpurgis night. This AN OUTLINE OF PART I 15 and other matters furnish a diversion until /they hear that Gretchen after wandering \about as an outcast for a year is now in prison awaiting execution for infanticide. This brings Faust to his senses for the time being and he tries to rescue her. But she refuses to leave the jail, trusting herself rather to the judgment of God than to any human aid. The curtain falls on Part I. Faust has gone through the experience of sensual pleasures. Still he is nojt happy.^ CHAPTER II. OUTLINE OF PART II. Part I is not divided into regular acts. Part II is divided into five acts, and deals with social and political rather than indi- vidual life. It is largely allegorical and is not adapted for production on the stage ; but an acquaintance with it is absolutely necessary in order to come to a fair judg- ment of Goethe and his work. The opening scene describes the beauty of nature and its healing powers in restor- ing Faust, after his hard experiences, to a normal mental and moral condition. The wonderful description of a sunrise in the Alps indicates that Faust has made a new start in life. He applies the precept of Mar- cus Aurelius : — "Consider thyself to be dead and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder 16 -^ i OUTLINE OF PART II 17 which is allowed thee," or in the words of Faust to Helena : — "Let the past be put behind us." Faust next appears at the Imperial Court, where Mephistopheles assumes the role oi clown or court jester. Since all branches of the government are in a bad way for lack of money Faust with the aid of Mephisto- pheles supplies the deficiency by the issue of paper money, based, as Mephistopheles explains, on the accumulated treasures of the past which lie hidden in the ground ready to be digged up as needed. Faust now enjoys honor and fame as a court favorite. This unlimited supply of money enables the Emperor to donate to each one money enough to procure what he wants. One wants a mistress; one a finer grade of wine ; one a castle ; the miser simply adds his new money to his hoards of old. It does not appear here what Faust would do with his share, but this is brought out in the sequel. As Ash Wednesday is approaching the Court witnesses the celebration of the Car- 18 GOETHE'S FAUST nival. A beautiful Italian masquerade is here given, full of ingenious allegories. The Emperor and his Court are desirous of see- ing the play of Helena and Paris, the model forms of male and female beauty. Faust with the help of Mephistopheles, brings them up from the world of spirits and Faust experiences a new sensation of happiness in the contemplation of ideal classical beauty. The play being over, as Helena is about to leave the stage, Faust, unable to restrain himself, reaches out his hands to grasp her. An explosion follows which hurls Faust to the ground, leaving him unconscious, and the spirits of Helena and Paris go off in smoke. We shall meet Helena again in the third act. Act H. After these fairy scenes at court, they return to Faust's dingy old study den. While Faust is still in a trance from the effect of the explosion, Mephistopheles looks around. The room and surroundings are unchanged, but the traveling scholar v^ho formerly received Mephistopheles' counsel so meekly, has blossomed out into a conceited Bachelor of Arts who imagines OUTLINE OF PART II ]9 that the earth, sun, moon and stars all leaped into being merely at his behest. He out-trumps Mephistopheles himself by de- claring that no devil dare exist except by his (Baccalaureus') permission; that it is youth only which accomplishes anything; that "Man is at thirty dead, or all the same." Whereupon IMephistopheles remarks that there is nothing left here for the devil to say; but adds that the devil is quite an old gentleman and that Baccalaureus after growing older and more experienced will understand him better. Meanwhile Wagner, the dull, plodding Philistine, has been delving into the deep- est secrets of nature and thinks he has fin- ally succeeded in solving the mystery of life by making a homunculus or living manikin in a glass bottle. He declares that he has abolished the love passion and the old way of generation and has discovered the art of making men as one makes crystals. "Well," says IVIephistopheles, "there is nothing new about that; I have met crystalized men my- self." [Ah, Goethe, did you realize that in hold- 20 GOETHE'S FAUST incr up to ridicule Wagner's Homunculiis or little crystalized man in a glass bottle, you were only picturing yourself, the crystalized man of the Property Epoch, corked up in a Property Bottle. "Essentially distinct, the Natural Finds in the Universe no resting place ; The Artificial needs restricted space." Your artificial and crystalized Property, artificial Military State, artificial Contract and Court system, artificial Family and Bastardy system, artificial War and Trade system, are the glass bottle in which the property homunculus lives, moves and has his being. He knows no other at- mosphere and denies that any other ever existed or ever can exist. The property homunculus is the true product of the grov- eling Philistine. Wagner with his homun- culus solves the mystery of individual life, but does not attempt the mystery of social organization.] The homunculus proposes a visit to the fields of Pharsalus to witness a classical Walpurgis night. So leaving Wagner to plod along at science and discover perhaps OUTLINE OF PART II 21 the dot over the letter "i," Homunculus and Mephistopheles take Faust up in the air and head for Thessaly. In Part I Goethe had introduced a Witch- es' Dance in the Harz Mountains on Wal- purgis Night. As a counterpart to this we have in Part II a classical Walpurgis Night on "Sit. Olympus in Thessaly, which occu- pies the greater part of the second Act. Here, in sight of the world-historic battle- fields of Pydna and Pharsalia the poet takes an opportunity to go over almost the entire field of Grecian mythology, particularly that part relating to the ocean and the watery element. For the average reader it is a piece of hard sledding to go through this. Faust has been in a trance ever since the explosion at the close of the play of Helena and Paris when he tried to grasp Helena with his hands. As his feet are placed upon the ground after his winged voyage to Thessaly, he recovers consciousness and his first words are, "Where is SHE?" He is told that perhaps Cheiron may help him find her. As Cheiron comes rushing by on his white horse, Faust is taken up behind 22 GOETHE'S FAUST the rider and learns to his delight that He- lena herself was once carried in that same seat — Helena, the ideal of Beauty and Grace. Faust is beside himself to find her and is left by Cheiron with Manto to de- scend into the lower regions to Persephone and search there. He does not appear on the stage again until the middle of the third act when as lord of a feudal castle near Sparta, he receives Helena as his queen. ,. Mephistopheles makes love to the Phor- ; cyads and is transformed into one himself. I He then makes his exit to appear again in I Act HI as the embodiment of ugliness in \ contrast to the beauty of Helena. The remainder of this act is taken up with scenes in which Anaxagoras and Thales, representing respectively the Plutonic and Neptunian theories of geology, discuss their theories with Homunculus. This part > is said to be illustrative of the gradual growth of intelligence and of the idea of Beauty in Art and Religion, beginning with the animal worship and crude notions of Phoenicia and Egypt, and culminating in the grandeur and perfection of Greek art, in OUTLINE OF PART II 23 which the Gods were represented in human form, and to which Goethe ascribed a purifying and saving power, scarcely less important than that of the beauty of nature. Thales takes Homunculus to Nereus, the sea-god. Homunculus wants to enter upon free life, — wants real Existence. Nereus turns him over to Proteus, who assumes the shape of a dolphin and takes Homunculus on his back out to sea. Charmed by the beauty of Galatea, he seeks to play around her feet, but comes to grief; the glass bottle is broken, the living flames spilled out scattering fire over the waves, and Homun- culus is no more. The classical Walpurgis night in Thessaly prepares the way for the third act, which takes us back to the dreamy days of the Greek heroic age. Act HI. Faust "gets" Helena. She has just been brought back from Troy by Me- nelaus and is directed to go up from the coast to Sparta and make everything read)'' for offering suitable sacrifices to the gods as soon as Menelaus with his companions can follow. She obeys, makes all ready, but is in doubt what is to be the victim for 24 GOETHE'S FAUST sacrifice, half suspecting from Menelaus' sullen demeanor that she herself is doomed to the altar. Mephistopheles in the guise of a Phorcyad warns her that this will surely be her fate. There is, however, one means of escape. During the long absence of Me- nelaus in the Trojan War and since then, his kingly domain has been neglected, a strange, bold folk has come in from the far Cimmerian North and established itself in the mountains above Sparta. It has built there a magnificent castle of Gothic archi- tecture, dififerent from the Cyclopian struc- tures of the Homeric age. Faust is their leader; there is refuge. Helena follows the advice of Mephistopheles to save herself and her attendants by fleeing to this castle, where she is received as Faust's queen. Menelaus and his forces are beaten back and the whole Peloponnesus falls under the sway of Faust who parcels out the prov- inces among his victorious dukes in feudal fashion. Faust now experiences all the pleasures which the possession of the Beautiful can bring. The dream of an Arcadian Kingdom OUTLINE OF PART II 25 and age is realized. He has a stately castle and a complete regal establishment, such as many have wished for and but few obtained. He feels a father's pride in his son and pros- pective heir, Euphorion, the brilliant pro- duct of the union of the Teutonic with the Greek, the Romantic with the Classical. But his pleasure is not unalloyed. The By- ronic Euphorion turns out to be a head- strong youth, heedless of his father's wise admonitions. His career is cut short by an early death, due to his own impetuosity. Faust is once more forced to exclaim that grief follows close upon the heels of pleas- ure. His queen, Helena, also now leaves him to return to the other world. She finds that Beauty and Bliss do not long remain companions. Ideal perfection even if it were attainable would not be permanent and hence would not be perfect. Faust's wealth and control of the social organism put him beyond the reach of moral reproach, but cannot save him from the mistake of deifying and worshiping a part instead of the whole. The loss of his wife and child, in whom alone he saw the 26 GOETHE'S FAUST embodiment of Beauty, undoes him. He cannot see that he still has the entire and imperishable Universe to worship and that if he had made his idea of Beauty coincide with the Universe (Kosmos) instead of only a fraction of it, he would never have been in danger of losing his ideal. Goethe has put into Faust most of his life experiences, but has omitted one im- portant chapter, his ideal love and comrade- ship with Charlotte von Stein. In the story of Gretchen he has shown us what a pas- sionate love is; but this is different from that intellectual and spiritual companion- ship which may exist between a man and woman of similar tastes and equal mental endowment and education, whose mutual understanding creates a confidence between them as great as that arising out of pas- sionate love. Helena is not such a com- panion but is rather the Grecian ideal of physical beauty. In Wilhelm Meister, and especially in the drama, Torquato Tasso, Goethe has given examples of this relation, such as he himself had with Charlotte von Stein. OUTLINE OF PART II 27 In the two remaining acts we return from Greece to the Christian-Germanic scenes of the middle ages, which form the back- ground of the whole work. In these Faust endeavors to find a method of attaining happiness in an active life in this work-a-day world. He is done with women. Act IV. Mephistopheles now lures Faust with a graphic picture of the seething life of a great metropolis, say of Parisian pro- portions, with Faust as the biggest toad in the puddle, admired and envied by hundreds of thousands. It is tempting, but Faust has one serious objection to it: he likes to see the people increase and prosper, but they invariably turn rebels! That is the hair in the soup. The problem is how to force people to be grateful to you and remain servants after they have passed the age of servantry. Promethean Faust railing at re- bels (himself an arch rebel against all cus- tom and restraint) is as funny as Satan re- buking sin, Mephistopheles continues his picture of a metropolis, adding a grandiose suburban palace of pleasure in a park, with groves, 28 GOETHE'S FAUST hills, lawns, gardens, water-falls, fountains, and cosy grottoes with women (in the plural, mind you), which causes Faust to exclaim, "Modern and bad!" He has had enough of sensual pleasure and Mephisto- pheles' influence over him begins to wane. "You," says Faust, "with your sharp, bit- ter, repulsive nature, what do you know about the needs of a human being?" Faust feels an impulse to accomplish some great physical work. He wants to acquire dominion of property. He would subdue nature and make it serviceable to man ; would reclaim a tract of land from the sea and convert it into a fertile province To do this he must first obtain the sover- eignty of the sea coast from the Emperor. Mephistopheles suggests that the Emperor is now in hard straits. The paper money which Faust once created for him only served to lead him into extravagance and still greater ruin. In Church and State a strife is raging, similar to the French Revo- lution of later times. An Anti-Emperor of Napoleonic ability has arisen. The subse- quent conversation about the decline of the OUTLINE OF PAUT II 29 Emperor's authority gives Goethe the op- portunity to put into Faust's mouth some wise platitudes to the effect that rulers should shun pleasures and find their happi- ness in ruling only. Though the devil's ideal of pleasure no longer has any attrac- tion for Faust he fails to see that his scheme of mastery and property is no less a devil's ideal than pleasure. Faust and Mephistopheles proceed now and by using various arts and magic and by calling in some bullies, (primitive men of the mountains) offer the Emperor what help they can. The commanding general reports the situation desperate and resigns. The Emperor gives Mephistopheles practic- ally the command of the army and urges him to do what he can, but has scruples against entrusting him with the Marshal's baton ; he fears he is not the right man for it. Mephistopheles remarks that the baton would be of no use to him anyway : "There was a sort of cross thereon !" The devil was right. The cross is out of place on the in- signia of civil war (class war). War is strictly a devil's business. 80 GOETKE'S FAUST Affairs now soon take a more favorable turn; a final victory is won and Faust is rewarded with the dominion of the seashore in feudal right. Act V. With a large force of workmen Faust now proceeds to dike and drain the sea marsh, improve it and make it suitable for a teeming population. (It would be cruel to ask where he got the money to do this work or whether he used paper money.) He also builds a spacious harbor to accommodate foreign commerce. Mephistopheles and his bullies set out on an expedition with two ships and returned to the harbor with twenty, loaded with the spoils of foreign countries. Might is right. "Commerce, war and piracy, One in spirit are all three." Everything is flourishing, — in fact, per- fectly lovely, but there is again a hair in the soup. The cottage of Baucis and Philemon, an old couple noted for their simple hos- pitality, is an eyesore on Faust's domains. They had been living there before Faust was given the seacoast by the Emperor. He needs that location for a terrace and i OUTLINE OP PART II 31 orders them removed to a better place. Me- phistopheles with his bullies undertakes the job. They kick the door in ; the old people faint from fright; a guest who is stopping there shows resistance, but is overpowered ; in the scuffle some coals get scattered and the house catches fire ; incidentally the in- mates perish with it. The history of Na- both's vineyard and King Ahab repeats it- self. Faust regrets it too late ; but how can he help it if people will rebel against Fate, particularly where the Fate is manipulated by the rulers of society? Four grey women now come at midnight to Faust's castle, — Want, Guilt, Misery and Care. The door is bolted and they can- not get in. The first three turn away but Care enters at the key-hole. Faust refuses to be affected by her power to annoy and states what we might call his confession of faith (given hereafter). Thereupon she breathes her curse upon him and he be- comes blind. But though old and blind he is still determined to direct the work of reclaiming his land from the sea. One spirit can guide a thousand hands. He gives or- 32 GOETHE'S FAUST ders to rouse up his workmen from their sleep and stands in the doorway to hurry on the work by torchlight, in every way, — by prizes, pay or force. Unconsciously he is providing his own grave, for Mephistophe- les, as overseer, and his husky little devils, instead of constructing a canal, as Faust supposes they are doing, though they pre- tend to obey his orders, are actually dig- ging his grave right under his nose. Faust imagines the work is almost done. Only one small swamp remains. Were that drained his triumph would be complete. He foresees in his mind's eye the reclaimed marsh filled with children, adults and aged, living by their honest toil, a free and happy > people owing their fortunate condition to his benevolence. In this presentiment he feels the highest pleasure and can say to the passing moment, "Stay, thou art so fair." His role is ended. He sinks to the ground ready to die. Mephistopheles now i steps up and claims his soul in accordance with the contract; hell's jaws open to re- ceive it ; but swift angels check him and scatter roses about the grave, which drive OUTLINE OF PART II 33 back his base crew and scorch them with torments sharper than the flames of hell. "See! the purple roses borrowed From the hands of pious women Who had loved and sinned and sorrowed ; Loved above all human measure, Sinned and sorrowed and repented. Theirs it was for heaven the treasure To win home of that hi^gh spirit." The lesser devils can't stand it and tum- ble back again into hell; but Mephistophe- les sticks it out and for a time tries to jolTy the angels, but soon realizes that in an at- mosphere of purity his arts have no effect. His role too is here ended, and he bursts out in a storm of self reproaches. The angels carry off Faust's soul with the triumphant words :_^ "Rescued from the evil one. This noble spirit see! ( Him who unwearied still strives on We have the power to free." The closing scene is in heaven and brings, to the front again the long-forgotten Gret- chen. It is decidedly a woman's scene and 34 GOETHE'S FAUST highly characteristic of Goethe, the poet and lover. Gretchen's soul is saved by the prayers and work of Magdalens, and she in turn adds her prayers to theirs in order to save Faust. As Goethe could not put He- lena in this class, no mention is made of her, though she occupied a larger space in Faust's life than Gretchen. But to top off the pseudo-tragedy of Part I, it is Gretchen who now welcomes Faust's soul to heaven and claims the privilege of teaching and guiding him in his new life. No reference is made to .Christ; the Virgin Mary is the one called upon. "Aid in man's heart what thou of good. Of tender thought and earnest, Of holy love, in his best mood, Up-breathed to thee, discernest. Dost thou command it? Ours is zeal And courage all-defying. Dost thou breathe peace? At once we feel The warlike impulse dying." The close is a chant by a Myatic Chorus: "Everything perishing Is but a symbol ; All insufficiency OUTLINE OF PART II Here is fulfilled. The indescribable Turns here reality; Eternal Womanhood Draws us still on." i-^ CHAPTER III. COMMENTS. The foregoing outline, though far too brief, is as much of the contents of Faust as can be given in such small space. Hav- ing come to the end of the story, let us g-lance back and see what it all means. What is the conclusion of the whole mat- ter? Is it not plain that Faust found his happiness in the commonest kind of bene- volentia vulgaris? His ideal of human per- fection and happiness is to be the feudal lord of a colony on a reclaimed marsh, a sort of artificial or toy village, segregated from the main body of human society and connected with it only by piracy or perhaps commerce. The Pullman Car Shops, the Gary Steel Works and the Krupp Gun Works are examples of such toy villages. We are tempted to exclaim in Faust's own language (slightly modified): — "The poodle's kernel then is this, A Doctor of Philanthrophy! The idea makes me laugh." 36 \ COMMENTS 87 To make a single individual, Faust, happy, there must exist a vast and permanently- dependent population who w^orship him as a benefactor. This plan of becoming a pro- fessional philanthropist with other people's money is enough to raise the laughter of the gods. We shall come back to this subject later. In reading Faust we should have in mind the only other works which are at all com- parable with it, viz : Dante's Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost. If the majestic ser- iousness of Dante has won for his work the appellation of divine, we may justly de- scribe ]\Iilton's stern characters as grandly heroic, while Goethe's are almost human and for that reason more modern and inter- esting. Dante and Milton are both under the spell of dogmatic religion. Goethe is more philosophic. He has freed himself from dogmatism and is feeling about for a new foundation, suspecting that somehow it is to be found in humanity, but is not 'yet clear whether in all humanity or only the 38 GOETHE'S FAUST "good" part of it, or in Eternal Woman- hood. We feel that Faust and Mephisto- pheles and even the Lord himself are all very near to us. But it is human in the individualist sense alone, and herein are found its shortcomings and onesidedness. Whatever the life in heaven may be, whether the individual there is a perfect unit, isolated and independent of social in- fluences or not, one thing is certain, that in this present vale of tears life has two phases, the individual and the social ; and the attempt to treat of one and ignore the other_ while it may be made interesting as an illustration of toy literature, is essenti- ally and fundamentally a failure from the very start. Under class civilization all literature as well as all science may be called toy work; it does not make for human progress directly but only in- cidentally. The sciences and inventions are exploited by corporations primarily for profit, and all new discoveries merely broaden the field of exploitation and give rise to larger corporations. The toy litera- ture and arts merely serve for the diver- COMMENTS 39 sion of the same class; they affect the up- per surface of society only and do not rise to the dignity of really human productions, because they are not participated in by humanity, nor is it intended that they should be. r— ' It is precisely the conviction of this truth pressing on Faust's soul that makes him feel disgusted with all his sciences and I learning, and realize that he is out of touch withhumanity, as many another learned man has also felt. If he had devoted only a portion of that reflective energy, which he lavished so freely in other directions, to- wards investigating the meaning of indi- vidual and social, good and evil, he would not have needed to call in the devil as an instructor in these matters. Faust is restless, inquisitive, sticks his nose into everything but is never satisfied. He is as much of a devil as Mephistopheles, but of a different sort. He has more of the characteristics of Milton's Satan than Me- phistopheles has; is an open rebel, bold,^ X 40 GOETHE'S FAUST straightforward and defiant. When Mephis- topheles twits him for pausing in his at- tempted suicide, at the sound of the Easter bells, Faust admits that he was temporarily under the spell of old recollections, yet knew all the while that it was a delusion. He then bursts out as follows : — "We are but what the senses make of us, And this and all illusion do I curse, All that beguiles us, man or boy — that winds Over the heart its nets and chains us here In thraldom down or voluntary trance. This magic jugglery, that fools the soul — These obscure powers that cloud and flat- ter it! Oh, cursed first of all be the high thoughts That man conceives of his own attributes ! And cursed be the shadowy appearances The false delusive images of things. That slave and mock the senses ! cursed be The hypocrite dreams that sooth us when we think Of men — of deathless and enduring names ! Cursed be all that, in self-flattery, \ COMMENTS 41 We call our own, — wife, child, and slave, and plough ; — Curse upon Mammon, when with luring gold He stirs our souls to hardy deeds, or when He smoothes the couch of indolent repose^ A curse upon the sweet grape's balmy juice, And the passionate joys of love, man's high- est joys — And cursed be all hope and all belief; And cursed more than all, man's tame en- durance." In the same spirit is what we might call Faust's Confession of Faith, made to Care in the last Act, as follows : ■ — "I only through the world have flown : Each appetite I seized as by the hair: What not sufficed me, forth I let it fare, And what escaped me, I let go. I've only craved, accomplished my delight, Then wished a second time, and thus with might Stormed through my life: at first 'twas grand, completely, But now it moves most wisely and dis- creetly. 43 GOETHE'S FAUST The sphere of Earth is known enough to me; The view beyond is barred immutably: A fool, who there his blinking eyes direct- eth And o'er his clouds of peers a place ex- pecteth ! Firm let him stand, and look around him well. This World means something to the Cap- able. Why needs he through Eternity to wend? He here acquires what he can apprehend. Thus let him wander down his earthly day; When spirits haunt, go quietly his way; In marching onwards, bliss and torment find, Though, every moment, with unsated mind!" This has the genuine Satanic ring. There is nothing Mephistophelean about it; it is too deep and heartfelt for that. Not even his chagrin at losing Faust's soul could wring from Mephistopheles such sincere expressions as these. It breathes the true spirit of Aeschylus's Prometheus, defying COMMENTS 43 the gods of Olympus and aiding the human race in the upward struggle towards free- dom. "Prometheus, unable to bring man- kind back to primitive innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil by leading mankind beyond the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through wis- dom." Faust struggles forward without remorse and without regard for the effect on others. Both his individual and social progress is made at the expense of others. What we object to is the assumption that this must necessarily and always be so, — that if the power to injure others were cut off there would be nothing left worth striving for, no : room for the play of enthusiasm or ambi- j tion of any kind. We have no objection to another's amusing himself or advancing himself provided he travels on his own ex- / pense. But when he takes his pleasure at the cost of another's ruin ; when he becomes generous with other people's money; when he attains his final happiness at the cost of other people's happiness and the ignore- \ V 44 GOETHE'S FAUST ment of their condition, we call a halt. Faust's genteel ignorance, which makes him conveniently oblivious of the effects left in the trail of his progress and blind to the. certain results of further advance, is as devilish as Mephistopheles' insincerity. His head is once for all ruthlessly set on being a philanthropist regardless of consequences. Faust also has the same self-indulgence as Mephistopheles, but in spite of this and combined with it he still retains his im- pulse toward striving forward. Wherein then does Faust's badness differ from that of Mephistopheles? In the fact that it is positive instead of negative; it is temporary only and lays a foundation for subsequent goodness, being merely a step in the course of human progress ; whereas Mephistopheles' badness being a negation, stagnation and doing of nothing, cannot serve as a foundation for anything. It con- tains no element of self-effort, but only self- indulgence. Hence with Mephistopheles the having been and ceased is the same as never having been. For Faust there is a valid and important difference between these two. COMMENTS 45 During the Class Era of human society, with its peculiar ethics and its separation of rights and duties, good may be tempor- ary evil and evil ultimate good. Faust's peculiar merit is supposed to con- | sist in his "unwearied striving," his impulse to go forward, to achieve, to accomplish something, and this impulse is not killed out but still survives after he has become sated with sensual pleasures. This unwear- ied striving seems all right at first glairce. But let us ask, — Striving after what? I Why, to get up on the backs of other peo- ple, of course! That is the only kind of i striving that counts in the Class State or in the ideals growing out of it. "Mastery and property are what I am going to win," says Faust, in rejecting Mephistopheles' ofifer of still more and greater sensuality. 1 But there is more than one kind of striv- ' ing. If instead of this, Faust had turned his efforts in another direction and striven un- weariedly to study and take part in the world with a view to reconciling the con- flict between individual and social life, in- stead of becoming disgusted with Law, Me- 46 GOETHE'S FAUST dicine, Philosophy and Theology, studied simply as disconnected sciences, he would have realized the usefulnes of these things, when properly correlated with social life and made subservient to it, and would have arrived at a different conception of progress land perfection. * * * Faust learns to his surprise that laws and justice are not peculiar to heaven and earth but are also found in the infernal regions. This had never occurred to him before, though he was a Doctor of Laws himself: Faust. "Hell has its codes of laws then, — well I will think better now of hell, If laws be binding and obeyed. Then Contracts with you may be made." Meph. "Made and fulfilled too, nowhere better,^ — We keep our contracts to the letter." The Infernal Code has a striking similar- ity to the Constitution of the United States ; it prohibits laws which impair the obliga- tion of Contracts. Faust's contract with COMMENTS 47 Mephistopheles' is merely the converse of jthe pioiis -man's contract with God. Both are typical of the bourgeois Age of Con- tract. The pious man contracts to sur- render his freedom and to serve God faith- fully here if he gets paid for it hereafter. Faust wants his pay, his satisfaction, his freedom here, and in consideration thereof promises to serve the Devil hereafter. Oth- erwise the two forms of contract are of the same general character. Both are con- tracts between a helpless human being and a supernatural power and bear all the ear marks of that fairness and equality which are alleged to underlie the contract between a servant and his employer. In every case, it is said, the serving party is perfectly free to contract or not contract as he sees fit. But in the same breath in which we are assured that we are free to choose between God and the Devil, we are also told that there is no other choice; it must be one or the other, yea or nay, a strict metaphysical cinch, excluding any third choice. Not much play for freedom here. We are sus- picious of this kind of freedom. It reminds 48 GOETHE'S FAUST US of the inalienable right of the citizen to vote for either the Republican or the De- mocratic party. If we first assume that there are such supernatural powers, then their blood-seal- ed contracts and covenants with men would indeed form the basis for a gruesome trage- dy. The desperate struggle of Faust's soul for freedom and satisfaction drives him into a compact with Mephistopheles which seems uncanny and repulsive to many worthy people and deters them from the study of this work. But is there anything more uncanny about this than about the pious man's covenant with God, to renounce humanity here for a promised satisfaction hereafter? One is as uncanny as the other. This idea of present happiness or future salvation by Contract runs clear back to the time when Adam was given the garden of Eden upon the condition (contract) that he should not eat of the tree of knowledge or of life, and it is precisely for the purpose of avoiding or overcoming this original and fundamental condition that Faust enters into a contract with Mephistopheles by COMMENTS 49 which he is to taste knowledge and life for a consideration. With open eyes and fully aware of the consequences, he took the step that Eve was led into by deception. In the larger and largest sense the story of Faust from first to last, in spite of its happy ending, might be called a tragedy of human existence, the Gretchen episode being a mere incident of the story as a whole. Life may be called either a tragedy or a comedy as best suits the pur- pose and point of view of each individual. Dante's glorification of Divine Law, as illustrated in his grandiose system of punish- ment, penitence, and bliss, is only a reflex or adaptation of the institutions of the Civ- ilized Era which were established to con- firm and uphold the Rule of Property, and particularly of the age-famed system of Ro- man jurisprudence and imperial govern- ment. This appears clearly enough from the poem itself. It appears still more clearly when the Vision is read in connection with Dante's prose work De Monarchia. Prop- erty is the spirit of all law, both heavenly and earthly. 60 GOETHE'S FAUST "Justice the founder of my fabric moved ; All hope abandon, ye who enter here." From this it appears that Dante's hell is merely a part of the machinery of some vast system of laws or "justice." Most of the punishments in Dante's hell, especially the lower and heavier ones, are for crimes against property, and the heaviest of all is for attempts to overthrow the ruling or- der of society. According to Dante the crucifixion of Christ was an act of justice, and no blame attaches to those who were guilty of it. Dante sings the praises of divine and im- perial justice in lOO cantos ; he justifies the murder of Christ. But we are all human and blind to ourselves. After acting as a dispenser of justice for several years, Dante by a turn of the wheel became himself a fugitive from justice and refused to submit to the decrees of his father-city (he was condemned to the stake), which he de- nounced to his dying day as a heaven-out- raging wrong. Such is the difference be- tween prescribing justice for others and taking the medicine oneself. COMMENTS 61 But suppose we should find after wider experience and better understanding of things that the assumed fate or supernat- ural power which determines man's weal or woe is in fact only the organized Econ- omic Power of Society; and that Faust's lack of wealth, honor and worldly power which forces him to a dog's life is not due to divine predestination but to the consti- tution of Society as moulded by historic evolution ; and suppose that by further his- torical (not "made-to-order") development, Society should become re-constituted in a way that would assure to Faust his full share of wealth, honor and power and re- move the cause of his complaint, making him feel like a man instead of a dog. What would happen then? Nothing; only the bot- tom would drop out of the so-called human tragedy ; the supernatural would vanish and the clarified soul would find its satisfac- tion not in despising this life and looking forward to a bourgeois heaven, free from the curse of labor, where all are capitalists and none laborers, but in the breadth and variety of its activity here, the joy of co- 6a GOETHE'S FAUST Operation with others and the consciousness of being able both to learn of them and in turn to improve and instruct them, which Faust found himself unable to do; there would be no place then for the fate tragedy, in the sense of servile and despairing awe ; but there would be a certain intelligent serenity and cheerfulness based on an un- derstanding of the Known and a moral con- viction and certainty that the now Un- known, when finally grasped, will be like to the already Known. In saying this we have perhaps said but little more than is contained in Napoleon's terse remark to Goethe himelf : — "Policy is Fate." Let us now take a glance at Mephisto- pheles. He appears at different times in somewhat different roles, but there is a gen- eral similarity running through them all. In the Prologue he appears as a sort of clown or jester at a reception held by the Lord in heaven, and in this capacity con- trasts strongly with the glory and dignity COIktMENTS 53 of the Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel and Mi- chael. The scene opens with the celebrated chorus of the Archangels, which cannot fail to remind the reader of the Nineteenth Psalm. No translation of this chorus which we have seen gives the spirit of it so well as Addison had previously done in No. 465 of the Spectator. Addison's verses are as follows : — "The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim : The unwearied sun from day to day. Does his Creator's power display. And publishes to every land, The work of an Almighty hand. Soon as the evening shades prevail. The moon takes up the wondrous tale. And nightly to the list'ning earth Repeats the story of her birth: Whilst all the stars that round her burn. And all the planets in their turn. Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole. 54 GOETHE'S FAUST What though, in solemn silence, all Move round the dark terrestrial ball? What though no real voice nor sound Amid their radiant orbs be found? In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, Forever singing as they shine, "The hand that made us is divine." Goethe has added one important thought, — the inconceivably swift whirling of the earth with its succession of paradisal splen- dor by day and gloomy darkness at night, and especially the perpetual conflict of the elements, which is typical of the lifelong struggle of the soul to overcome its mater- ial environment until it finds peace at last in discovering and becoming reconciled to the wisdom of natural and divine (i. e. so- cial) law, and leads a life of serenity in spite of all inner and outer conflicts. Goethe's meaning, but not his poetry may be given as follows : — "Though o'er the earth the tempests rage, The waves beat high against the cliffs. COMMENTS 66 The lig-htnings flash and thunders roar, And land and sea and air and fire Wage with each other ceaseless war; Yet earth pursues its even course, Regardless of the elements. And over all reigns peace supreme Imposed by God's eternal laws ; The sight makes angels' hearts rejoice." After hearing this chorus Mephistopheles feels himself out of place, but remembers that the Lord has generally been glad to see him on these occasions. He cannot sing any chant about suns and planets, but re- ports to the Lord that mankind is still groveling about on the earth the same as on the day of creation. Though gifted with reason they use their reason so perversely that they would be better oflF without it. Their condition is so miserable that Me- phistopheles really hasn't the heart to an- noy them. The Lord speaks kindly to him ; invites his attention to Dr. Faust as being a likely spepimen of humanity ; gives him leave to draw Faust away from the right path if he 56 GOETHE'S FAUST can, and is confident that in spite of his errors Faust will prove himself true to his consciousness of what is right. Mephisto- pheles takes the bet and is sure of winning. The Lord says he has never hated Mephis- topheles, but has in fact made him a com- panion to man to arouse him from sloth- fulness. Mephistopheles remarks (aside) that he likes to see the "Governor" from time to time and is careful not to break with him completely. It will be seen at once that Mephistophe- les is not the typical Satan. He is a modern and degenerate devil, smart and pessimistic. He is described by the Lord as one who de- nies, — a rogue, caviller, scoflfer and dis- sembler. He describes himself as one who wills the wrong and works the right; as "Old Iniquity." A more accurate name would be "Old Insincerity." He is frivolous, a hypocrite, a scofifer at every serious thing ; without purpose, ambition or aspiration of any kind. He forbids the witch to call him Satan. He has laid aside horns, tail and claws; he has become modernized and got "culture." His title is "Herr Baron." He COMMENTS CT wears a long rapier at his side and is a cavalier like other cavaliers. His ideal of happiness is sensual pleasure, something of the Versailles type, as described in the be- ginning of Act IV. After Faust's death he tries to flirt with the angels who come for Faust's soul, but feels his own powerless- ness when brought face to face with pure love. It is as hard for him to scoff in this atmosphere as it was for Gretchen to pray when he was around, and he reproaches himself for losing Faust's soul by carrying his smartness too far and not knowing when to stop. This picture of the devil is rather too modern to harmonize well with the general medieval-Catholic setting of the whole dra- ma. As a personification of Evil it is a failure. It is erroneous to hold up the fri- volity and sexual indulgences of fashionable society as being the quintessence of wicked- ness. To do so is to make the same mis- take as to confound the vices of the slum proletariat with the real wickedness of the revolutionary working class. The slum pro- letariat of the barrel houses and the slum- 68 GOETHE'S FAUST mers of fashionable society, say at Newport or Versailles, are both excrescences on the social body and are simply vicious and fool- ish, that is all. They are not really danger- ous to any one except themselves. To properly contrast good and evil you have to line up the moral, benevolent and pious capitalists (the so-called honest busi- ness men) on one side and the revolution- ary union labor class on the other side — men who preach sedition, slug scabs, de- stroy property and care nothing for capi- talist laws, courts or contracts. This is no parlor deviltry ; it is real wickedness com- parable to Satan's sin against God, as rep- resented by Milton. It is outside the realm of jokes. In this contrast, on one side all crimes dwindle into insignificance compared with the fundamental crime of class subjec- tion ; and on the other side all sins are pec- cadilloes compared with the attempt to in- ,terfere with the Rule of Property. \ \ Mephistopheles is not maliciously bad, \ but is insincere and indifferent. As Gret- I chen says, he has no sympathy or interest in anything. His enmity to God does not COaiMENTS 59 take an active form. IMilton's Satan is an older and far stronger type. He is a fierce and defiant Archangel, in grim earnest, thoroughly sincere. His crime was that he failed in an attempt to gain the rulership of Heaven and he remains God's open and implacable enemy. He attempts to ruin Adam and Eve, for the purpose of thwart- ing God's plans, not because he has any dis- like of them. He is a typical rebel. Faust himself has more of the Satanic defiance about him than Mephistopheles has. Satan's acts are not ordinary vices, but sins against God himself. Apart from these he is a strong and manly character. In his discus- sion with Christ during the temptation in "Paradise Regained" Satan has decidedly the best of the argument. Milton was some- thing of a rebel himself, on all fields except the religious ; his training in this prevented him from seeing how his political and so- cial views would look if applied to the ce- lestial realm. For Part H of Faust what Goethe really needed was a new sort of devil. Mephisto- pheles plays the role very well for Part I, 60 GOETHE'S FAUST representing the evil of self-indulgence in the individual life. But for the broader so- cial world of Part II and especially in Acts IV and V, he is a failure. However, Faust alone with the unerring instinct of an erring mortal hits the right trail here. He sets out for "dominion and property." This is some- thing worthy of a truly Satanic nature. Me- phistopheles lends what assistance he can, but his heart is not in this work. He calls it foolishness. From Goethe's own stand- point the right sort of a devil here would be one who would have drawn Faust over to the revolutionary army and made him leader of the Sansculottes, bringing about a victory over the Emperor and the ruin of Society. But that would not be literature. All literature of the Property Age must stop this side of the brink of social ruin. And the same limit is set to the much vaunted bourgeois science. According to this all things may be made the object of scientific study except politics. The science of politics spells the doom of class rule and hence is excluded from the domain of "legit- imate" science. Goethe himself was as COMMENTS 61 great in the toy sciences as in toy literature, but it never occurred to him to apply scien- tific methods to the study of political phe- nomena. What does the ruling class care for a little thing like science unless it serves either for profit or to strengthen its suprem- acy? To expect this class to put itself out of existence for the sake of being scientific, is as foolish as to expect it to reform itself away by legislation or benevolence, or to observe the law to its own destruction. When we go over all the wonderful dis- coveries and inventions of the past century we should expect to find the mass of the human race correspondingly elevated, as was predicted ovei and over again every time an important invention was brought out. Yet such has not been the result; and were it not for the smouldering hope that sometime somehow a change will be wrought, the words of Mephistopheles would have to be admitted as substantially true and not sufficiently refuted by the Lord's pointing to Faust as an example of one good man: — G2 GO£THi3-S FAUST "I only see how men fret on their day; The little God of Earth is still the same Strange thing he was, when first to life he came; That life were somewhat better, if the light Of heaven had not been given to spoil him quite. Reason he calls it — see its blessed fruit. Than the brute beast man is a beastlier brute." When we see little children working like mules, and see men and women in an un- necessary struggle for the necessaries of life while these great scientists piddle along with their little hobbies like telephones, turbines and tupenny tubes, which benefit the mass nothing, is it not right to say that they are only "fiddling while Rome burns"? But after all this is only one more proof that the working class will never be free unless it frees itself. This personification of evil in Mephisto- pheles as an absolute, active force is taken from the old theology; but it strikes us as COMMENTS 63 inconsistent with Goethe's representation of man as having an ineradicable inclination towards the good which eventually saves him. If this were true, none would perish. This would not be consistent with the doc- trines of the old theology on the damnation and punishment of the wicked. It would seem to us more logical from Goethe's own standpoint to represent Good as the active, positive force and Evil as the passive, nega- tive side of the same force; i. e., instead of good versus evil, say struggle versus sloth, self-control versus self-indulgence. If on the other hand Faust is to be con- sidered not as a type of all men, but only of a "capable" man, as he calls himself, or of a "good" man, as the Lord calls him, then Goethe has begged the question right at the start. He has selected a "good" man to show us how a good man can be saved. This does not interest us. What we want to know is how one can get to be good and capable in the first place before one is pit- ted against the devil. This Goethe forgot to tell us. "Man errs as long as he strives," says the 64 GOETHE'S FAUST Lord in the Prologue. In other words, Faust in contrast to Mephistopheles wills the good, but in groping blindly for it works the bad, and is saved for the sake of his good intentions in spite of his misdeeds. Instead of picturing man as fallen and re- quiring a Redeemer, Goethe represents him as possessing innate germs of goodness so indestructible that even the devil himself cannot ruin him. But this applies only to the good and capable. The idea that the good and capable individual arises as an accidental or self-created product, independ- ent of heredity, education and environment, is enough to bring a smile from a saint. / Now the fact is that this personification of Evil as an active force, attacking the Good, is not applicable to the individual life at all. Nature does not establish moral laws, distinguishing the good from the evil. This is done by Society. The individual is a unit and is not divided into two parts, one bad and the other good. "In my breast Alas! two souls dwell — all there is unrest|„ Each with the other strives for mastery, I COMMENTS 65 Each from the other struggles to be free. One to the fleshly joys which coarse earth yields, With clumsy tendrils clings, and one would rise In native power and vindicate the fields, Its own by birthright — its ancestral skies." If these two souls are to be understood as typifying Good and Evil we take exception to the sentiment. The earthly soul is not evil; in moderation and under self-mastery it is good. It is only in its excesses that it is evil. It is only through the existence of favorable conditions for the earthly soul that the heavenly soul itself can be pro- perly developed. The heavenly soul is not unqualifiedly good, regardless of time. If it were, suicide would be the immediate duty of all. These two souls are not striving with each other for mastery but are bound inseparably together, and man must un- wearied still strive on for the good which both afford and for mastery over the ex- tremes which each one alone would lead to. There is nothing particularly heavenly about draining a sea marsh and providing 66 GOETHE'S FAUST food and homes for a colony of poor peo- ple. Yet Faust found good in this. The conception of Good and Evil in a moral or social sense was not developed un- til the coming in of the Property Age and the division of society into two classes, the possessing or good class, and the properti- less or bad class ; and afterwards these terms were applied to individuals according to their attitude towards the property class, as being friendly or hostile to it. It is remarkable that Plato, the first real philosopher in a civilized State, in his Re- public when he sets out to define what is good or just, postpones the application of these terms to the individual until after he has first determined what is just as applied to the State, saying that after we have thus learned to read JUSTICE in large letters we can more readily decipher it when writ- ten small in the individual. He then pro- ceeds to show in a roundabout way what in substance amounts to this, viz : that those who rule or ought to rule are good and those who serve are bad. Then coming down to the individual he shows that by COMMENTS 67 analogy the governing part of man, i, e. his reason, is good and the serving parts, the appetites and passions, are bad; and the good man, being himself ruled by his rea- son, will recognize the right of the "reason- able class" to rule in the State, otherwise he would not be good. All of which amounts to this : that inasmuch as only those can rule in a State who either control its property or are the retainers of those who do, and only those can be forced to serve who do so from economic necessity, the good, broadly speaking, are the property owners, including their retainers who constitute the military force, and the bad are the proper- tiless. Plato does not represent the State as a magnified individual, as many have errone- ously interpreted him ; on the contrary, like Menenius Agrippa in his fable to the Roman Plebeians, taking the class State as a norm, Plato represents the individual as a miniat- ure class State and applies the attributes of the State to the individual. Such is the power of social environment to shape un- (58 GOETHE'S FAUST consciously what appears to be the free play or self-directed activity of the mind. What is called reason is, however, itself a variable quality; people do not agree on what is reasonable nor on what persons are wise and best fitted to govern. To say with Goethe that a man who is good in the be- ginning will turn out good in the end, and if he fails to do so, then he was not really good in the beginning ; or to say with Plato that the wise man is just and the just man is wise, is only marking time, shifting from one foot to the other without getting for- ward; but when we connect justice with the material world and human life by saying that it is only the interest of the dominant economic class, or from the opposite stand- point that it is the interest of the subject class, we have got past the stage of tautol- ogy and invaded the realm of Property; the hair begins to bristle and the fur begins to fly; poetry and philosophy, morality and reason give way to vile denunciations, coarse threats and physical force, and we then get our first taste of pure justice un- sugarcoated. COMMENTS 69 Plato's analogy between the State and the Individual is of course lame. Under civili- zation the State is not an institution exist- ing for the common benefit of all, as as- sumed by Plato and by all other philoso- phers down to the present time, but is an exploitative, military organization which is only the tool of the property class ; its func- tion is to protect this class against its so- called "fellow"-citizens at home and to aid it in conquering and subjugating its neigh- bors abroad. The art of managing this State is classed by the philosophers as a separate profession and the knowledge required for this is called the sum of all wisdom. But when exploitation comes to an end this particular kind of wisdom will appear fool- ishness and will die out. The final suprem- acy of the Avorking class pre-supposes its training by evolution to the point where it is competent for industrial administration, but not for exploitative government, as "philosophers"; hence this class can never become wise and good in Plato's sense nor in Goethe's either, which is fundamentally the same. Faust became at the close of his 70 GOETHE'S FAUST life as perfect a philosopher and ruler as Plato could wish for; but he required the assistance of the Devil to execute his or- ders. To personify the subject class as an Evil Being, seeking to destroy the ruling class, would be perfectly correct. With what un- disguised gusto could Mephistopheles, em- bodying the spirit of the despised bourge- oisie of the i8th Century, scoff at every- thing which was sacred to the then ruling class, the feudal nobility! For a picture of the Devil Triumphant we must turn to the Communist Manifesto: — "The bourgeoisie (class devil), wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feu- dal ties that bound man to his "natural su- periors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstacies of re- ligious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved COilMENTS 71 personal worth into exchange vahie, and in place of the numberless indefeasible char- tered freedoms, has set up that single, un- conscionable freedom — Free Trade (and Free Contract). In one word, for exploita- tion, veiled by religious and political illu- sions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with rev- erent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers." We are told by Bayard Taylor that Goethe intended in the second part of Faust to treat of politics, but gave it up and sub- stituted finance and paper money instead. If this be true it shows that Goethe had at least an inkling of the truth that somehow or other man's social life has something to do with his development as an individual. But Goethe knew enough to drop a hot potato. He would not have to study polit- ical history very long until he made the- discovery that in the class war of politics it is the so-called Evil which ultimately 72 GOETHE'S FAUST overthrows the Good and that this is the law of social progress. The reason of this is that an individual, being a ph3^sical unit, may be reformed or changed and still retain its identity; while a class by its very nature can never be reformed: the only way to change it is to supplant it by a different class, which change in the case of a ruling class amounts to a revolution and to a transposition of the words "good and evil," "right and wrong" and their use in a dif- ferent sense from before; we have then crossed the social equator and the words "summer" and "winter" have the reverse of their former meaning. This is the very opposite of Goethe's "good man" theory and of course he could make no use of politics in his celebrated "tragedy." All of Mephistopheles' irony, sarcasm, scorn, sly innuendoes, sneers, ven- om, cynicism, contempt and pessimism, which when applied in individual life are unjustified and are properly described as evil, are applied with perfect propriety and justice by a subject class struggling for its life against the oppression of a domineering class. COMMENTS 73 " • Force with force "Is well ejected when the conquered can," says Milton. As the accepted rules of war do not apply between a civilized nation and savages, so also they do not apply in a war of one class against another. In this war there are no proprieties. Everything is fair. No quarter is asked or given. The class which is down has nothing to lose. The ruling class has already done its worst and fears its subjects as the only devil and loss of power as the only hell. This quality of the working class never to acquiesce in its condition short of obtaining complete mastery of its masters is the one redeeming characteristic which puts it on a par with Faust's ceaseless striving, which ultimately saves him. Such is the Class Devil as he really exists and ultimately prevails over the Good. The individual devil that we read about as tempting the good man to do evil is merely a poetic license and of course never wins a final victory, — at least not over a "good" and "capable" man. He is only allowed temporary successes to keep up the interest in the play. 74 GOETHE'S FAUST Why did it never occur to Goethe to let his typical man seek happiness in the role of Wagner, the servant, or Valentine, the common soldier, or one of the laborers who with pick and shovel drained the marsh? Because in the eye of a Property Society these are not human beings, but are merely pawns, like Gretchen, who exist only for the purpose of allowing a real human being like Faust to work out what is pompously called the tremendous "problems of life" that present themselves to the bourgeois mind. This overpowering sense of the "tremendosity" of human "problems" is one of the manifestations of that hypocrisy which has ever characterized the domineer- ing class. These problems are nothing more nor less than how to keep dow^n the subject class and make it believe itself incompetent to assume control and make itself happy. Overwhelmed by the "tremendosity" of this problem, the bourgeois mind seeks to solve it by formulas more difficult than the prob- lem itself. For instance, ostensibly the principal problem of the capitalist class is to provide for the employment, prosperity COMMENTS 76 and happiness of the working class; and this is the problem that Faust finally un- dertook to solve by reclaiming the marsh. Instead of doing this in the direct way by simply giving the working class the choic- est land and the entire product, the capital- ist class withholds a large part of this prod- uct for foreign commerce; then it builds an expensive navy of both merchantmen and battleships, establishes a vast consular system, commercial treaties, tarifif systems to "protect" labor from every one except those who are robbing it, sends armies abroad to conquer colonies and markets, irrigates deserts at home or drains marshes a la Faust. What is all this for, anyhow? Answer: "We are extending our commerce so as to provide for the employment and welfare of our working class," We repeat, this is what is called solving a problem by a formula more difficult than the problem itself. No wonder it causes headaches for the bourgeoisie. Why does bourgeois literature always represent the struggle with the supernat- ural as an individual affair? Instead of con- 76 GOETHE'S FAUST ceiving this contract as made between an individual and a supernatural power, let us try to conceive it as made between the ruling class and a supernatural power, say with God, for future happiness or with Satan for present happiness. Then it will at once be seen that the supernatural power is nothing but the ruling class itself. For as to future happiness, when and where did a ruling class ever efface itself here to win the hereafter? And as for present happi- ness, what more could Satan give the ruling class than it now gives to itself? ^ ^ ^ Some years ago the producing class in Egypt began to agitate this question of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, not from an individual standpoint, but from a class standpoint. They had been rescued from starvation by the ruling class of Egypt and had been treated so well that they had mul- tiplied enormously. Yet, just as Faust says, they turned rebels. They were wholly dead to any feeling of gratitude towards their benefactors. They decided that the pre- requisite of all justice and righteousness COMMENTS 77 from their standpoint was economic inde- pendence, and to accomplish this end all crimes were justifiable, if contributing to that end and not done out of mere wanton- ness. The most shocking- measures were taken against the Egyptians. The French Revolution with its Reign of Terror was mild compared with the ten plagues and the slaughter of the first-born. Finally, with the aid of a supposed supernatural power the end was accomplished ; the leading civilized nation of the then world was humbled and one step forward was taken in social prog- ress by the victory of Evil over Good. And, mark well, it was only by being offered present economic advantage that the de- pendent class could be induced to place any reliance on the supernatural leader in this struggle. Classes are not moved by prom- ises of the hereafter, though individuals sometimes are. The deity of a class must and does invariably stand for the economic interests of that class. That the working class and the master class cannot worship the same god was as true in the days of the Pharaohs as it is today. 78 GOETHE'S FAUST Let US suppose now that some Egyptian Goethe, a councilor at the court of Karl August Pharaoh, should wish to write a great tragedy on the dealings of supernat- ural powers with the human race and the conflict between Good and Evil in all the phases of human life ; but instead of taking for his theme this world historic class strug- gle, should select some obscure member of the Egyptian hierarchy and detail his in- dividual life and fidelity to his caste as showing the final victory of Good over Evil ; could anything be more ridiculous? And yet he would only be doing what Goethe has done in ignoring the epochal social con- flict of his day and writing the biography of a professor as an illustration of the con- flict between Good and Evil, — a professor, who though he pretends to renounce his religion and play the role of tough boy on the surface, yet in fact remains sound to the core on the one vital point of class domination. * * * When we consider the mighty longing of Goethe's soul for real life and freedom, like COMMENTS 79 the longing of the Homunculus, and see how he was hemmed in by the narrow circle of life at Weimar, and aside from that hem- med in by the property organization of so- ciety, prevailing among all the advanced portions of the human race, with its iron- clad customs, laws and institutions, evolved and administered not to promote human free- dom, but to maintain the supremacy of a small class against the ceaseless struggles of the suppressed mass of mankind and against the single-handed efforts of here and there a Titanic individual, always re- sulting in his own destruction : — "Who may dare To name things by their real names? The few Who did know something and were weak enough To expose their hearts unguarded — to ex- pose Their views and feelings to the eyes of men, They have been nailed to crosses — thrown to flames." And when we consider further that this 80 GOETHE'S FAUST had been the condition of humanity during all those periods of history about which in Goethe's time anything definite was known ; and that Goethe clearly realized the fact of this oppression and sympathized with the oppressed, as many passages in his works show, but could not attain to an under- standing of what this mysterious and ap- parently absurd social phenomenon meant and could not trace its source nor outcome ; and when we consider further what Goethe had seen and sufifered under the French Revolution and the wars arising out of it ; and the fact that though he had become sufficiently emancipated on the religious and philosophical side, his social standing as well as the backward political condition of the Fatherland prevented him from sym- pathizing with the democracy or seeing any hope in it; in view of all this, is it any wonder that Goethe despaired of finding happiness in the sphere of normal human society under these conditions, but like a monk who renounces civil life, Goethe let his hero find his ultimate happiness in a secluded corner of the world, inflicting so- COMMENTS 81 called benefits upon those who do the actual work of his microcosmic community while he himself stands aloof from them. Faust, notwithstanding his delusions to the contrary, ended about where he began. He began as a book worm, and complained that although he knew books he knew nothing of men and the world. He there- fore proceeds to go through what he is pleased to call a course of experience in the world, in which he experiences everything except the one thing necessary to ex- perience, viz., producing his own livelihood' side by side with his fellowmen and co- operating with them politically. He winds up not as one of the world himself but as a benefactor of the world from the outside. He goes, as it were, into the old clothes donation business on a large scale; instead of clothes he donates second rate scraps of land to the homeless or to those few of the homeless that he can directly reach, and claims the gratitude due to a benefactor. But the literary and scientific labors of a bookworm inure ultimately to the benefit of others and entitle him also to the rank of a 83 GOETHE'S FAUST —J benefactor. So that Faust has changed himself from a benevolent distributer of knowledge into a benevolent distributer of^ marsh land. He began as a four-times doctor. He quit with one additional title, — Doctor of Philanthropy; that is all. Were it not for the fact that he acts as gravedigger for his ideals as well as his body, the re- mark of Mephistopheles would be true, viz : that his death left things just the same as if he had never lived. He is still outside of real productive society, real life, and his benevolence produces merely a happiness of despair, the same as the Stoic philosophy and Christian religion (when confined to private life only) are the consolation of a soul resigned, either temporarily or perma- nently to a condition of mental servitude which despairs of working class emancipa- tion, i. e. race emancipation. It is the con- dition of the resigned, confirmed and in- corrigible pessimist with a forced cheerful- ness in his despair, suggestive of the "Smile that won't come ofif", which is only a modification of the Mephistophelean grin. He postpones all his noble aspirations until COMMENTS 83 the future life and so far as this world is concerned he is as completely without faith or hope as the Old Sinner himself. It is only with reference to the future life that hope finds a place in his bosom. The "de- pravity of human nature" is the broad cloak with which he covers and excuses not only the vices and crimes of individuals, but also the injustice of the governing class, thus maintaining that class government is an inherent part of "human nature." Dr. George Weber in his Universal History recognizes the unsatisfactory char- acter of the concluding part of Faust, with- out knowing the seat of the difficulty. He puts the matter thus : "In order to bring the Faust poem (Part I) to a satisfactory close it would be neces- sary to bring about a reconciliation between man's spiritual freedom and development and his sensual nature ; for only in this harmony of the highest spiritual develop- ment with the strong passions of a healthy nature is found the ideal of a perfect man. To establish this harmonious union, and to guide man, so organized, into real and active 84 GOETHE'S FAUST life, — to let deeds follow upon the heels of knowledge and enjoyment, — this would have been the problem of the Second Part of Faust. But neither the numerous con- tinuations which Goethe himself invited others to attempt, (which, moreover, were only repetitions), nor Goethe's own Second Part, which betrays the marks of old age and of changed views, can be considered as a successful solution of this problem," We reply that Goethe has solved the problem as well as it can be solved from a class standpoint. He has represented economic charity, class charity, as the pinnacle of human happiness, — higher than justice, be- cause justice between classes is a thing inconceivable to the bourgeois mind. In fact "justice" in its technical sense is a product of class civilization and is hence irreconcilable with Social Solidarity. Social justice is a negation of the idea of justice in the same way that common or public property is a negation of the idea of property. The difficulty exists not in Goethe's old age nor in the method of the solution, but in the fact that the problem COMMENTS 86 itself, which Weber states, is iinsolvable until classes have been abolished. Until then the perfect or near-perfect man must divide his life between profit grinding on one hand and charity dispensing on the other, as Carnegie and Rockefeller have done. No reconciliation between man's spiritual development and his sensual nature can take place until after there has been a reconciliation between the individual and society, for the reason that man's spiritual freedom and development involve questions relating to social life, upon which depend our definitions of Good and Evil. We cannot therefore agree with Bayard Taylor \vhen he says that in Faust we find the problem of Good and Evil simply stated and sublimely solved, by the discovery that only in working for the benefit of his fellow beings can man taste happiness. This is a luxury which very few can enjoy in the manner that Faust employed. It is all right for these few, but it is hard, bitter hard on the multitude who are the victims of this artificial and essentially selfish happiness. Not in working "for" others as their 86 GOETHE'S FAUST domineering benefactor but in working "with" others as an equal comrade is happiness to be found. If we must have benevolence, let it not be one sided, but reciprocal. Our conclusion, then, is that Goethe judged from a socialist standpoint, although his intentions were all right and he did as well as any one could in his circumstances, nevertheless undertook too big a job for a Property Homunculus. In attempting to treat of Good and Evil as absolute qualities, he made a botch of it. The Property Age is not the absolute age, much less is the Bour- geois Division of it the final resting stage of humanity. The Working Class Devil will overthrow it and establish a dififerent kind of happiness and a different kind of good and of evil. CHAPTER IV. THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM, Goethe began to work on Faust in 1774 when he was twenty-five years old. Part I was substantially finished before the out- break of the French Revolution, though it was not published till 1790. Faust's restless and defiant spirit is typical of the seething activity of the intellectual world in those pre-revolutionary years. Part II occupied Goethe at intervals during the rest of his life and was finished in 1831, a few months before he died at the ripe age of eighty two years. When he began this work French Rationalism was at its height ; all of the old institutions of society were subjected to unsparing criticism. So far as this was directed against the church and priestcraft Goethe joined heartily in it. He never lets an opportunity slip to take a fling at the priests. But he drew the line at democracy and materialism. He had been elevated to 87 88 GOETHETS FAUST the ranks of the nobility and was an ideal- ist. Democracy was at that time exclusively political, and materialism was gross and physical. Goethe could not foresee that democracy was to expand so as to include modern industry and afiford a basis for a universal nobility, and that materialism was to expand so as to include the world of mind and imagination and become idealistic. Too enlightened and honest to accept the catechism, too sentimental to be satisfied with the then current one-sided rationalism, he found in the heart of woman that self- sacrificing, unquenchable, all-forgiving and all-forgetting love and inspiration which for him answered the purpose of both philos- ophy and religion. As for politics, he got as far as benevolent paternalism and let it rest at that. After the victory over the Anti-Emperor and his forces the Archbishop, in the double role of Archbishop and Chancellor, impresses on the Kaiser the magnitude of his sin in allying himself with the powers of darkness. To atone for this nothing will suffice except the most liberal donations to the Church and THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM 89 tithes from the whole reahn ; and it is only with difficulty that he is prevented from claiming tithes from the sea which overflows Faust's land. But the worm at last turns, and this is refused. Whatever the defects of Faustdorf were, Goethe with masterful satire rescued it from the clutches of the Church, though he could not shake off Mephistopheles. But if the class-state is forever compelled to choose between an alliance with the Church on one hand and the Devil on the other, it is truly in a sorry plight. Between the time of beginning Faust in 1774 and finishing it in 1831 the French Revolution had come and gone (apparent- ly) ; the Napoleonic wars were all over ; democracy had failed; the Bourbons were back on the throne and the Holy Alliance had reached the height of its power. All that even well-intentioned men of those times asked for was that the people be treated with mercy and benevolence, but ruled with a strong hand. The watchword was, "Everything for the people, nothing by the people." There is no doubt that in 90 GOETHE'S FAUST Part II of Faust Goethe has caught the true spirit of the times and environment in which he lived as regards the relations of ruler and ruled. We see reflected here the spirit of feudal reactionism as truly as the struggles of the English Revolution are reflected in Paradise Lost, or as the spirit of universal empire, joined but not subject to a universal church, is reflected in the work of Dante, the Ghibelline. All these works are by men who were more than poets; they had ab- sorbed all history, literature and science down to their respective times and combined and moulded this mass into their immortal works, tinged with the characteristics both of the individual authors and of the social organizations in which they lived. In order to be fair towards Goethe we here give Faust's last words, his Swan Song in full :— "Below the hills a marshy plain Infects what I so long have been retrieving: This stagnant pool likewise to drain Were now my latest and my best achieving. To many millions let me furnish soil. Though not secure, yet free to active toil ; THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM 91 Green, fertile fields, where men and herds go forth At once, with comfort, on the newest Earth, And swiftly settled on the hill's firm base, Created by the bold, industrious race. A land like Paradise here, round about; Up to the brink the tide may roar without. And though it gnaw, to burst with force the limit, By common impulse all unite to hem it. Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true : He only earns his freedom and existence. Who daily conquers them anew. Thus here, by dangers girt, shall glide away Of childhood, manhood, age, the vigorous day: And such a throng I fain would see, — Stand on free soil among a people free! Then dared I hail the Moment fleeing: "Ah, still delay — thou art so fair." The traces cannot, of mine earthly being. In aeons perish, — they are there! — In proud fore-feeling of such lofty bliss, I now enjoy the highest Moment, — this!" 92 GOETHE'S FAUST The subjection of external nature to the needs of man which Faust aims at in re- claiming the marshy sea coast is a good thing. It is one element of human progress. It can be accomplished by social effort only. Faust makes use of social power but seems entirely blind to its significance, as blind as if he had already been stricken by Care, as he finally was. This subjugation of Nature should be considered as only preliminary to the emancipation of the race from the King- dom of necessity, giving it the conscious control of its own destiny. This result Faust does not aim at. He perverts his subjugation of Nature to his own glorifica- tion and to providing his colony with the material comforts of life, accompanied by what he calls Freedom. Nothing is said about the education of these people. The education of successive generations by means of written language and numerals is in a certain sense an artificial and com- pulsory process, but it is a necessary part of freedom. And this is only elementary; next comes their education in other matters, particularly in political affairs. Then it is THE MODEL COLOXY: FREEDOM 93 all over with, the model coloii}^ of Freedom, Feudalism and Filanthropy. If in a class society the acme of happiness is found in the hopeless social conditions which force the tender hearted to take refuge in philanthropy, so much the worse for class society and the literature it pro- duces; for this benevolence is exercised without affecting the prime source of wretchedness, class subjection. Philanthro- pists are non-factional as between the differ- ent factions of the property class, but are not non-partisan. There are no philanthro- pists but such as oppose the working class revolution in its positive activity. As soon as a philanthropist opposes property rule and advocates working class supremacy he is dropped off the list of philanthropists. Philanthropy is based on property rule. If the essential product of present society is to be simply a crop of philanthropfsts on one hand and an ever recurring crop of helpless victims on the other, the society will wither away as did ancient society and bring forth no offspring capable of independent life and of becoming its legitimate successor. The 94 GOETHE'S FAUST problem is not how to supply the world Avith benefactors, but how to eliminate benefactors from the world entirely Cand substitute social justice instead). Faust's work however, in draining the marsh, required sacrifices: — "Human victims bled and suffered Nights was heard the cry of woe." If you think that progress and the con- quest of nature, made under class conditions for profit or to satisfy the cupidity of a morbid philanthropist, is a matter of holiday sport, read the construction reports of the Chicago Drainage Channel or any similar work and learn how the men were treated; how they worked; what food and shelter they had ; what form of recreations ; how they were mutilated, suffered, died, their bodies thrown away and forgotten, all for the sake of "human" progress, they them- selves of course not being human. O Progress, what crimes are committed in thy name! Faust's colony was won by war, drained by slaughter, enriched by piracy and supported by the permanent subjection of the people. THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM 05 In our most advanced industries (the Steel Works, for example) it has become necessary to enclose the grounds with a wall and establish private hospitals inside for the victims of "progress" ; and the records of these so-called "accidents" are concealed from the public with the con- nivance of the civil authorities as being so horrible that their exposure would endanger the foundations of society. Or read the history of the Homestead strikes and learn how Philanthropist Car- negie worked for human progress. We are not told how Faust managed his strikes, but we can easily see that Mephistopheles and his rustlers would be ideal strike breakers, from the way they treated Baucis and Philemon. Mephistopheles' devil-may-care report on this exploit of making away with these helpless old people forms a striking passage. Instead of allowing the old couple to make themselves happy in their own way, Faust was determined to make them happy in his own Avay, so as to have the selfish pleasure of seeing them grateful to him for economic 96 GOETHE'S FAUST blessings bestowed after he had first reduced them to want. "They soon will learn to thank me and to praise For all life's blessings in life's closing days; Feel how much I have served them and the sight Of their contentment will give me delight." The result is, they are killed by the cure. One of the deepest lessons of life and one that Faust never learned is to allow others not only the naked right, but also the inde- pendent and inalienable means to make themselves happy in their own way, and not insist on forcing them into a position where they will have to be thankful to you for helping them. In Faust's treatment of Baucis and Phile- mon Goethe pictures the covetousness of the rich in robbing the poor as being the Great Evil. Again he has missed the mark. He strains at a gnat and swallows a camel. Faust's fundamental crime was not in ruin- ing two old people, but in the exercise of political power to organize a whole colony THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM 97 into a perpetual condition of servitude and degradation. The crimes of a great in- dividual are as insignificant as his benevol- ence. It is not the occasional crimes of the rulers that hurt. Their Old and Standing Iniquity consists in their class honesty and goodness. It is when the honesty and goodness of the ruling class are shown at their best that the hopeless condition of the working class stands out convincingly in all its horrid reality, because then it is all the more inexcusable. The quintessence of Faust's wisdom is expressed in the lines: — "He only earns his freedom and his living Who daily conquers them anew." It reads right. But Faust himself in another place has raised a question which, slightly modified, applies here: "Ja was man so 'verdienen' heisst "Wer darf das Kind beim rechten Namen nennen?" "What is hight 'earning', who will dare "To call the child by its right name?" From whom are we to "earn" and "con- 98 GOETHE'S FAUST quer" our freedom and livelihood? Say, from the master class? And these latter, from whom do they "conquer" their liveli- hood. Well, let that pass for now. Freedom is something which can neither be earned nor conquered by anvbody from anybody. Neither can it be the gift of a benefactor; nor can it be found in any secluded corner, sheltered from fierce social struggles. It can only be won by the evolu- tion of the main stream of human society through successive class supremacies, based on advances in industrial development, and culminating in the almost miraculous per- fection of machinery and the final suprem- acy of the all-inclusive and class-abolishing working class. We think we do Goethe no injustice when we assume that by the word "Free- dom" he means that kind of political free- dom which in his own life-time the bour- geois class was trying to establish in lieu of the previously existing feudal system of government. At that time freedom looked good. What this "freedom" means we are now able to judge. It is no longer a question THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM 99 of theory, as it was in Goethe's time. It has been tested in practice, has exhausted the good which it was capable of developing and has now become intolerable, being a clog to further progress. It means the freedom of the strong to destroy the freedom of the weak. The pen of Goethe himself would be inadequate to describe the travesty of freedom which Goethe's ideal freedom has resulted in. Bourgeois freedom means freedom of exploitation, which in- volves economic dependence ; hence efifect- ive, economic freedom is a negation of bourgeois freedom and is called the "Coming Slavery". It may appear to some that our comments are flippant and savor too much of Goethe's Baccalaureus, Perhaps so. Nothing which attacks the present order of society could be in good form, no matter what shape it took. An attack on proprietorship necessari- ly involves a violation of the proprieties. But we speak not by our own power, we are pleading the cause of a class ; and if our words have any weight it will be owing to that fact. And we are willing to 100 GOETHE'S FAUST pit our flippancy against that genteel ignor- ance, intellectual dishonesty and silent denial of daylight facts, which form the distinguishing characteristic of ruling class moralists to-day, and make the frank brutal- ity of the slavery- age appear almost a virtue. What in Goethe's time might be excused as owing in some degree to an honest ignorance or unconsciousness is to- day nothing but pure cussedness, (say simulated unprejudice, or class interest con- cealed). This agnosticism or apodictic un- certainty of capitalist moralists as to the claims of the proletariat appears all the more ridiculous when contrasted with their positive support of the "vested rights" of their patrons. This pride of assumed impartiality which declines to be classified is simply a cheap form of self-flattery. The final and ticklish problem before Goethe' was how to smuggle Faust into heaven and thus bring the story to a happy conclusion, like getting the lovers married at the end of a novel. He cannot get in by the door of Christ, so much is certain. His THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM 101 confession of Faith, as delivered to Care, has not a very striking similarity to the Apostles' Creed; Baucis and Philemon will not help him to get in, nor will the work- men whose lives were ruthlessly sacrificed in draining the marsh. Helena is of no use to him. We would have expected that the v Lord, who turned him over to Mephisto- '^ pheles in the beginning would now appear and say : "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord;" but no Lord appears. So he must fall back on Gretchen, the magdalens and mater gloriosa. It is her unfathomable love which saves Faust's soul without any mediation of Christ. The Catholic worship of the Virgin Mary fits in nicely with Goethe's idea of Eternal Womanhood as the elevating and saving force. It would further appear from the characters in the last scene that a woman has to repent before she gets into heaven, but a man doesn't. This is a striking commentary on the peculiar ethical code by which a sin, common to both, ruins the woman but leaves the man unscathed. Woman's love deified is certainly a very 102 GOETHE'S FJnrST pretty idol. If we had to choose as an idol some fraction of the Universe we think we should choose this. Hut we make the same objection to it that we make to Helena's beauty — viz. it is transitory. In order to make it eternal it must be transferred to heaven. But if Helena's beauty had been transferred to heaven it too would have been eternal and might have served Faust for an idol just as well. But as there is some doubt whether there is any heaven which can exist outside of and beyond the infinite Universe, the only thing left which is eternal is the ever changing and ever ident- ical Kosmos or totality of all idols, both material and ideal, earthly and heavenly, considered as a Unit; and the man who worships this will never be in danger of having his idol taken away from him. But after all we have no desire to criticize Goethe's plan of salvation. In fact we are able to derive some comfort from it. If Infinite Love, working spontaneously, will save such as Faust, who lived a life of un- restrained self-indulgence at the expense of others (accompanied, it is true, by a laud- THE MODEL COLONY: FREEDOM 103 able striving for advancement) without remorse and without any apparent effort to sharpen his conscience or even to have any conscience of any kind, we may certainly rest easy as to the future of those who hold themselves responsible not only for their acts, but also to some extent for the state of their conscience itself, and do not satisfy themselves with the approval of a conscience which has never been aroused from a comatose or morbid state. A man is responsible for the healthy condition of his conscience, no less (and no more) than for the healthy condition of his body. His control over both, though not absolute, is considerable. It is generally assumed that conscience is a uniform, invariable factor, alwaj'-s right. Yet some of the greatest crimes of history have been committed under mistake of conscience. The uprightness of "conscience" is as much a myth as its opposite, called the "depravity of human nature*'. In the Prologue the Lord skilfully dodged this point by saying that the conscience of a good man will keep Rim in the right way. 104 GOETHE'S FAUST Yes, a good man will go right without any conscience. But as the Lord omitted to define a good man we will here supply that oversight: — A man whose conscience is moulded by the ruling class is a good man ; and one whose conscience is moulded by the subject class is a bad man^ an undesirable citizen. Faust, when he became old and wise fulfilled the Lord's prophecy. He assisted the Emperor to put down the revolution and took good care to provide for his own colonists in such a way that they would never revolt, (so he hoped). CHAPTER V. THE GRETCHEN TRAGEDY. Let US now go back to the pseudo- tragedy of Gretchen, which occupies about one half of Part I in space and more than that in popular interest. If Goethe's idea of women does not coin- cide with that of Euripides, viz., that one man is worth ten thousand women, it is certain that in Goethe's time their social position and learning sank into insignific- ance when compared with an intellectual giant like Faust. We cannot discuss here the large question of the wretched position of the female sex during the entire Property Age. But we shall take exception to the practice of treating seduction as the subject of a tragedy, no matter how beautifully it may be handled. If it be excused as a necessary part of a great man's experience in class society then again we say, so much the worse for class society. 105 106 GOETHE'S FAUST Gretchen was a pure, young girl, a devout Catholic, almost a child in experience. Her mother is a widow and p^r, of course. Necessarily poor, or you couldn't make the tragedy. Gretchen's education has been neglected and she is overworked from dawn till dark. — No need of going any farther. There is the tragedy right there ! Stop and think a moment. A girl "past fourteen"; no father, no property, no education, no experience. "Must cook, knit, sew, must wash and dry; Run far and near^ — rise ere the light. And not lie down till late at night." Isn't that tragedy enough? One would think so for a person of normal taste. But the morbid taste of class society demands "hot stuflf". It finds its highest entertain- ment in the unhappy condition of its own victims. The first step, of course, towards winning Gretchen's attention is to give her what she lacks most, — property. A casket of jewels is sent her. Why that? If Gretchen is a human being in the pursuit of happiness, why shouldn't she give Faust a box of THE GRETCHEN TRAGEDY 107 jewelry, — gold watch, cuff buttons, diamond stud and all. Think what pleasure it would have given her to witness Faust's gratitude for such a gift. But that is not the way to make a tragedy; Gretchen is not a human being and has no right to pursue happiness. Faust monopolizes this business for himself. What would an economically independent girl, with an economically independent mother and the education and training which this implies, care for a casket of jewels from a stranger? It would be re- sented as an insult. That the underlying cause of seduction in a majority of cases is an economic one is so generally recognized as to need no proof. The overworked and underpaid department store and sweat shop girls are regularly, almost proverbially, cited in illustration of this. But not only in the inception of the evil is the economic cause predominant. In its ultimate results it is the economic condition of the un- fortunate one which becomes so unbearable as to lead to despair. She is deprived of the opportunity to earn an honorable livelihood, even if she is able and willing to do so. 108 GOETHE'S FAUST That Gretchen's moral defect is not fatal, Goethe himself has shown by landing her in heaven, and if she is good enough for heaven, why should she not be given a chance on earth instead of being served up as material for a tragedy? Her love is so pure that it saves Faust in spite of himself. When Mephistopheles, seeing her at Martha's house with the box of jewelry, pretends to take her for a "lady" she and Martha are perfectly dumfounded, and in- form him that she is nothing but a "poor girl." The seduction of a "lady" might furnish material for the yellow newspapers, but it could not afiford the basis for a high grade literary "tragedy." It lacks the element of Economic "Fate." The seduction tragedy is based on the fictitious necessity of poverty and ignorance. It requires no great insight to see that most of the little romances and love tragedies which Goethe experienced in his own life and which caused him and others that infinite sufifering which only sensitive natures can understand, were owing to economic (and hence social) differences in THE GRETCHEN TRAGEDY 109 the situation of the respective parties inter- ested. If the victim in these cases were given a chance to become again a useful member of society, doing her share of the w^ork and receiving her share of the good things of life, she would, it is true, carry a sad heart in her bosom, but all the other noble qualities of a human being would still be hers, — intelligence, skill, gentleness, help- fulness, kindness, truthfulness, courage, justice, yes, even "benevolence". Just think of that! Do all these count for nothing? Is the mere animal side of woman of such paramount importance that when this is once marred, nothing is left of her? This is the characteristic bourgeois view of woman as an instrument of production and sensuality. Her impairment for such purposes is looked upon as depreciating her commercial value, is called her "ruin". So deep seated is this commercial estima- tion of woman and so ruthless and irresist- ible is the property instinct that it has falsi- fied the teaching of Christ and created a sole and only "scriptural" ground for 110 GOETHE'S FAUST divorce, viz : throwing suspicion on the genuineness of a paternal heir to the family estate. Tolstoy has clearly shown that according to Christ's teaching there is no scriptural ground for divorce whatever. It is strange that his acuteness did not reveal to him the reason why this particular ground, out of so many, was interpolated as the one necessary concession to the Property State; and this would have led to the further discovery that not religion moulds the ruling class, but on the contrary the ruling class moulds religion. Instead of the Christian marriage being adopted by society, the property marriage has been foisted upon Christianity. The working up of this so-called "ruin" of a lower member of society into a factitious and frenzied tragedy is the high- est delight of those who think that the economic conditions created by their own class rank the same for tragic purpose as those arising from the uncontrollable work- ings of nature. This, of course, is much nicer than to allow the victim to become recuperated through the beneficent in- THE GRETCHEN TRAGEDY HI fluences of nature and start with an Alpine sunrise to begin life over again, as did Faust. The essence of the Tragic is that it appear inevitable. The moment it appears to be avoidable, it loses its tragic force and is detected as a spurious article. There is another point that must not escape us. Gretchen got to heaven and welcomed Faust on his arrival there. But what became of the baby that was thrown into the pond? Did Faust welcome it in heaven? It is the constant boast of modern society that it protects the sanctity of motherhood. But here is a large class of mothers whose sufferings are ignored, and who are looked upon as a burden to the taxpayers and who, in many cases, have no other course but to abandon or murder their off-spring, for which a merciful God may forgive them, but Society never does. This circumstance gives simply additional zest to the tragedy in the eyes of a bourgeois audience. It flatters the ruling class to reflect that its laws are as immutable as fate. Why not have Gretchen appear as a 112 GOETHE'S FAUST Madonna with her child in her bosom, as she welcomes Faust, and he taking it and tossing it in his arms for joy. But no, the bourgeois heaven, modeled after the bour- geois eartTi, will not stand for any foolish- ness on the bastardy question ; it touches a property right, — the right of inheritance. Faust's love afifair with Helena in the castle near Sparta, though a greater breach of morality than that with Gretchen, occasioned no tragedy, not even a ripple. The child, Euphorion, instead of being drowned in a pond was the pride and joy of the entire household. That is the difference between the law of the castle and the law of the "plain room". Wealth stands above the moral law. It is wealth (the wealthy class) that moulds the moral law as it pleases and pays those who teach it as so moulded. "She was not the first one", Goethe lets Mephistopheles say. No, Goethe, and (leider!) she will not be the last one. So long as the Property Age endures there will be thousands like her every year in spite of your Gretchen tragedy. Even if this were played in all the theaters of the land every THE GRETCHEN TRAGEDY 113 night in the year as a moral lesson, it could have but little effect so long as economic conditions remain unchanged ; and while these are ignored, we do not care to have you try your skill in working up our pity. It is not a fit subject for that purpose and the effort falls flat upon one who has seen the light. This method of teaching virtue is as roundabout and maladroit as the capitalists' famous plan of making workingmen happy by extending commerce, etc., It consists of these steps. 1. Provide a large class of girls oppressed by poverty and ignorance and overwork. 2. Provide a class of wealthy and idle men seeking sensual pleasure. 3. The natural result will then happen. 4. Provide a great poetical genius to write a tragedy involving a seduction. 5. Have it played in the theaters as a moral lesson and warning to all "good" men and girls. 114 GOETHE'S FAUST 6. Influence on the aforesaid working^ g\rls=0. We object therefore to seduction as a subject of tragedy for the same reason that we object to the tramp and the hobo as a subject of comedy either on the stage or in the ilkistrated papers. The reason is, that in both cases the victim of social injustice is utilized for the entertainment of the class which is responsible for the wrong. Viewed in this light, there is nothing comic about the one nor tragic about the other. It is a hopeful sign that the working class has now reached a stage where it no longer enjoys being either laughed at or pitied by its masters. It is imbued with a seriousness which does not admit that its inferior con- dition is to remain an accepted fact — much to the discomfort and unrest of the class whose highest literature is rooted in the assumption of the helplessness of women and the degradation of the wealth producers. But it will be said that we have criticized a poem, a work of art, as if it were a philosophical treatise. No, we have simply THE GRETCHEN TRAGEDY US shown that in Class Society the highest poetry reflects merely class ideas, — is merely class poetry, toy poetry, and gets its recognition, its standing from that fact alone. CHAPTER VI. GOETHE AND MILTON. Goethe and Alilton were separated by about one hundred and fifty years. It is worth while with a few rough strokes to compare these two men. Both were born in important cities and belonged to the well- to-do burgher class. Goethe's father was a councilor, Milton's a scrivener, combining probably the work of an attorney and conveyancer. Both were most carefully educated in the classics from early youth, finished the University and continued their studies for a considerable time thereafter, Both were students of Italian literature and visited Italy. Milton did this earlier in life, when his youthful enthusiasm led him even to vie with the native poets in their own tongue. Goethe made the journey later in life and devoted more attention to matters of art. Milton was the more intellectual ; his mind (and we had almost said his body) 116 GOETHE AXD MILTON 117 was scholarly and classical of the purest type and his whole education tended to develop this character. Aside from music, in which he was proficient, he does not seem to have cultivated the arts, nor the sciences either. In his Paradise Lost, perhaps for poetic reasons, he still uses the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. Goethe's range of studies was wider and embraced all the arts and sciences. Also the influence of French literature was much greater on Goethe than on Milton, as was to be ex- pected, for reasons that are apparent. Both exhibited in early life great talent for dramatic writing. Although Milton's trend in this direction was checked by external circumstances, his ability was unquestioned. Goethe was able to give full swing to his genius in this field. In their marriage relations both were un- fortunate. Milton, having experienced the domestic inferno, was too honest and courageous to tamely submit in silence, as many do, but straightway wrote his treat- ises on Divorce, proved the righteousness of divorce for incompatibility by the infall- 118 GOETHE'S FAUST ible authority of the Bible and set the ideal of domestic liberty on a par with religious and civil liberty. Finding polygamy justi- fied by the Old Testament, he justified polygamy. He did not assume to be wiser than the God of Abraham. Goethe, having entered into an unfortunate domestic rela- tion, bore it to the end with a fortitude and constancy which commands our profoundest respect. He wrote his Elective Affinities, which, contrary to popular opinion, teaches that marriage is or should be indissoluble upon any ground whatever. On the marriage question we should say that the supposed Epicurean stands on as high a plane of morality as the pretentious Christian, if not higher. Milton's supposed puritanism is as dis- tasteful to the Germans as Goethe's supposed libertinism is to the English, and prejudice in both cases has no doubt pre- vented many from appreciating these two men. Goethe's Teutonic physique and exuberant spirits and vitality would make poets like Spenser and Milton seem to him squeamish, cold and self-righteous. The GOETHE AND MILTON 119 hearty, lusty humanness and animalism of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Byron was more congenial to the poet who could write the scene in Auerbach's Cellar, a feat which we venture to say would have been utterly impossible for Milton to accomplish. He could be coarse when necessary for serious purposes, as he was in his reply to Salmas- ius, but not out of mere frivolity. In order to contrast Milton's daintiness with the revelry of the wine cellar, let us quote here his sonnet giving his idea of conviviality : — "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining? Time will run On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lilly and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice. 120 GOETHE'S FAUST Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise." Goethe's inner life was full of storm and stress. Milton, so far as we can judge, never had to go through the fierce struggle for self-mastery which Goethe has so vividly pictured in Faust's advances to Gretchen. and he was consequently spared the humil- iation of such a fall as Faust suffered. In Milton's case continence was no great virtue. He never realized in his own ex- perience the full meaning of the truth that the man who stops in a downward course is greater than he who successfully resists the first temptation. Each of these men occupied an official position in the government and lived through a period of great political upheaval. Goethe's position was insignificant and GOETHE AND MILTON 121 needs no further notice. Milton, hearing the rumblings of the approaching conflict while in Italy, hastened home from his travels, dropped his cherished studies and his poetry and threw himself with absolute devotion on the side of what was then progress. He was ill-fitted for such rough and tumble strife, a thing which many of us make into an excuse for shirking duty at the present time. Even when using his pen in support of the commonwealth as Crom- well's Foreign Secretary, he felt as though he were working only with his left hand, as he expresses it. Yet with this left hand he wrote the Defense of the English People and completely demolished Salmasihs and the whole crew of royal apologists. Read his stern protest in Cromwell's name to the Prince of Piedmont against the massacre of the Waldenses and warning against any further attem.pt to coerce them on account of their religion (which was heeded) ; compare this vigorous action with the passive attitude of the so-called American Commonwealth towards the massacres that have been going on now for 122 GOETHE'S FAUST years in Russia and see how faint censure here amounts to practical approval of those atrocities ; see how our milksop statesmen and presidential candidates, traveling in Russia, hobnob with the authorities who are responsible for these things ; and then figure out if you can, how long it will take at this rate of backsliding for bourgeois democracy to reach the goal of Liberty. For twenty years Milton fought the good fight, and after working himself blind and seeing his cause temporarily defeated, he withdrew to devote himself again to the Muses. Another in his place might easily have given up hope and lent his genius to the victorious reaction. But not Milton. Although he had got a little ahead of the procession, it was not for him to go back to the mass. He looked forward to the time when the body of the procession would catch up with him and appreciate his work. His last piece, the Grecian-modeled drama Sampson Agonistes, breathes a spirit of defiance rather than defeat. Though un- successful he had made no mistake. What Goethe would have done had he GOETHE AND MILTON 123 been drawn into the vortex of a first rate social war such as the English Common- wealth, the French Revolution or the struggle now going on in Russia, it is im- possible to say. He was never put to the test. As a spectator beyond the border he witnessed the French Revolution. The enlightenment which took place in the in- tellectual world preceding that outbreak had its influence on him. Its restless and defiant spirit is reflected in the character of Faust in Part I. But in later years when the popular cause had apparently failed, Goethe seems to have had no higher political ideal than a benevolent paternalism. His moral courage and convictions cannot be quest- ioned ; but his environment was un- propitious and his mission seemed to lie in another direction. It was the ambitious scope of Part II of Faust, intended to cover the whole social activity of man, which forced Goethe to venture to some extent on political ground, with indifferent success, as we have tried to show. Goethe could have learned something from Milton about politics and also about 124 GOETHE'S FAUST cultivating the sense of duty and educating the conscience, instead of merely running through the world, as Faust boasts to Care. But in some things Goethe shows a long advance over Milton : — he had freed him- self not only from scholastic austerity and the slavish imitation of classical literature, but also from dogmatic theology. For Milton the Bible was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ; although he did pretty much as he pleased, his argumentative skill was always equal to the task of reconciling his acts and views with the Bible. Goethe too was familiar with the Bible, but in his day the influence of the dogmatic-metaphysical was on the wane and the effect of the evolutionary method was already noticeable. Goethe's combination of the romantic and the classical, of the spirit and the flesh, gave him broader human sympathies. If it was the merit of the Greeks to have first represented the gods in human form instead of in the earlier forms of animals and monsters, we may say it was Goethe's merit to have drawn both Lord and Devil from GOETHE AND MILTON 125 the far away regions in which they dwelt in the strained imaginations of Dante and Milton, and brought them down to earth to talk and act like human beings. /Milton sings of woman's fall as the cause of all our woe, and his estimation of woman is strictly patriarchal. She is an inferior being. The race ruined by her must be re- deemed by a male, the first-born of God. Goethe's story is the reverse of this. Re shows us a man, and a strong one at that, yielding to the devil and his salvation by a daughter of Eve instead of by the son of God. And the woman makes the vicarious atonement too; she so loved the man that she not only gave up all for him in her life time, but died on the block that the re- quirements of "justice" might be fulfilled to the strict letter of the law. It was this that made her prayers to the mater gloriosa, the Queen of Heaven, effectual to save Faust's soul. The duality of sex seems to be as great a stumbling block in religion as the duality of mind and matter formerly was in phil- osophy. This difficulty has now be.'^n over- 126 GOETHE'S FAUST come in philosophy, by the work of bietz- gen and others, not by denying to one the right of existence or by sacrificing one to the other or trying unnaturally to force one into the category of the other; but by referring both mind and matter to a genus high enough to include both, viz. the unifying Infinity or infinite Universe. Nature is large enough to contain and unify all differ- ences and apparent opposites. The next great poet who attempts anything on these lines will have to reconcile this duality of sex. The abolition or reconciliation of economic classes will go far towards clear- ing the way for the reconciliation of the sexes ; and we suspect that instead of being compelled to resort to the expedient of having one sex save the other by the sacri- fice and death of the innocent to atone for the guilty, our future poet will be able to find a way by which the whole race can co-operate in harmony for the salvation of all its members of both sexes without the unneccessary sacrifice of any. Goethe had no use for Christianity. Al- though Jesus was human enough to be GOETHE AND MILTON 127 attractive, yet in his genuine, original character he was too radical and plebeian for Goethe's purposes ; and in the distorted and monstrous character which has been foisted upon him by the political hierarchy called the Church, putting the seal of heaven's approval on every form of oppression, he is more like Mephistopheles than Jesus, Hence Goethe had to get along without him. Milton's theme is now dead. Paradise Lost was once quite generally used as a reading and parsing book in schools ; but that day is past. Goethe's theme however is still fresh and will continue to occupy reflecting minds until the abolition of class society has enabled mankind to eat the for- bidden fruit of Knowledge and has revealed the mystery of human "government" and of Plato's "wisdom" and at the same time revealed the mystery of so-called Good and Evil. [■" This book is DUE on the last date stamped below twf^n tD-tM [?EB9^ VW REtTD II mt CEO 1HF3 RECD L04JiilS M^ MAY2;!1988 M/IY23J9(8 MAR 16 IS Series 4967 rr... Ji™^ LIBRARY UNIVEfelTY OF CALIFORNIA iiP§ ANGELES ^ UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 535 610 o