The fervor and the rush, the sparkle and foam of his early productions, had been replaced by the stately calm and the luminous breadth of view that is born of experience.  The torrent of the mountains had become the river of the plain; romantic impetuosity had changed to classic repose.  He could still, by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself back into the old moods, resume the old thread, and so complete the first “Faust.”  But we may confidently assert that he could not, after the age of forty, have originated the poem, any more than before his Italian tour he could have written the second “Faust,” purporting to be a continuation of the first.  The difference in spirit and style is enormous.

As to the question which of the two is the greater production, it is like asking which is the greater, Dante’s “Commedia” or Shakspeare’s “Macbeth”?  They are incommensurable.  As to which is the more generally interesting, no question can arise.  There are thousands who enjoy and admire the First Part to one who even reads the Second.  The interest of the former is poetic and thoroughly human; the interest of the other is partly poetic, but mostly philosophic and scientific....

The symbolical character of “Faust” is assumed by all the critics, and in part confessed by the author himself.  Besides the general symbolism pervading and motiving the whole,—­a symbolism of human destiny,—­and here and there a shadowing forth of the poet’s private experience, there are special allusions—­local, personal, enigmatic conceits—­which have furnished topics of learned discussion and taxed the ingenuity of numerous commentators.  We need not trouble ourselves with these subtleties.  But little exegesis is needed for a right comprehension of the true and substantial import of the work.

The key to the plot is given in the Prologue in Heaven.  The devil, in the character of Mephistopheles, asks permission to tempt Faust; he boasts his ability to get entire possession of his soul and drag him down to hell.  The Lord grants the permission, and prophesies the failure of the attempt:—­

“Be it allowed!  Draw this spirit from its Source if you can lay hold of him; bear him with you on your downward path, and stand ashamed when you are forced to confess that a good man in his dark strivings has a consciousness of the right way.”

Here we have a hint of the author’s design.  He does not intend that the devil shall succeed; he does not mean to adopt the conclusion of the legend and send Faust to hell.  He had the penetration to see, and he meant to show, that the notion implied in the old popular superstition of selling one’s soul to the devil—­the notion that evil can obtain the entire and final possession of the soul—­is a fallacy; that the soul is not man’s to dispose of, and cannot be so traded away.  We are the soul’s, not the soul ours.  Evil is self-limited; the good in man must finally prevail.  So long as he strives he is not lost; Heaven will come to