Goethe was now in the full maturity of his powers, a man widely separated from the impetuous youth of the seventies whose Promethean emotions had burst forth with volcanic passion.  He had meanwhile become a statesman and a philosopher.  He had come to know in the court of Weimar a model of paternal government, conservative yet liberally inclined, and friendly to all higher culture.  He had found in his truly spiritual relation to Frau von Stein a safe harbor for his tempestuous feelings.  He had been brought face to face, during his sojourn in Italy, with the wonders of classic art.  The study of Spinoza and his own scientific investigations had confirmed him in a thoroughly monistic view of the world and strengthened his belief in a universal law which makes evil itself an integral part of the good.  The example of Schiller as well as his own practical experience had taught him that the untrammelled living out of personality must go hand in hand with incessant work for the common welfare of mankind.  All this is reflected in the completed Part First of 1808; it finds its most comprehensive expression in Part Second, the bequest of the dying poet to posterity.

Restless endeavor, incessant striving from lower spheres of life to higher ones, from the sensuous to the spiritual, from enjoyment to work, from creed to deed, from self to humanity—­this is the moving thought of Goethe’s completed Faust.  The keynote is struck in the “Prologue in Heaven.”  Faust, so we hear, the daring idealist, the servant of God, is to be tempted by Mephisto, the despiser of reason, the materialistic scoffer.  But we also hear, and we hear it from God’s own lips, that the tempter will not succeed.  God allows the devil free play, because he knows that he will frustrate his own ends.  Faust will be led astray—­“man errs while he strives”; but he will not abandon his higher aspirations; through aberration and sin he will find the true way toward which his inner nature instinctively guides him.  He will not eat dust.  Even in the compact with Mephisto the same ineradicable optimism asserts itself.  Faust’s wager with the devil is nothing but an act of temporary despair, and the very fact that he does not hope anything from it shows that he will win it.  He knows that sensual enjoyment will never give him satisfaction; he knows that, as long as he gives himself up to self-gratification, there will never be a moment to which he would say:  “Abide, thou art so fair!” From the outset we feel that by living up to the very terms of the compact, Faust will rise superior to it; that by rushing into the whirlpool of earthly experience and passion, his being will be heightened and expanded.