The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Goethe’s Faust as a Reflection of His Esoteric Worldview

These writings were composed in 1902 and first published that year.

[ 1 ] Goethe is convinced that human beings can never solve the mysteries of existence within a single, comprehensive conceptual framework. He shares this view with all those who, after certain examinations of their inner lives, have managed to gain insight into the nature of knowledge. Unlike certain philosophers, they cannot speak of a limitation of human cognition. They realize that the human quest for wisdom has no limits, that it can, rather, be expanded into infinity. But they know that the depths of the world are unreachable. In every mystery that reveals itself to them lies the source of new mysteries; in the solution of one riddle lies another hidden one. Yet they also know that this new one will again be solvable for them once their soul has risen to the corresponding stage of development. Although they are so convinced that there are no unsolvable mysteries of the world for human beings, they never wish to be satisfied with a closed-off understanding, but only to climb to certain vantage points in the life of the soul, from which the perspectives of knowledge, fading into the distance, open up.

[ 2 ] Just as with knowledge in general, so it is with the knowledge we gain from the truly great works of spiritual life. They spring from a depth of the soul’s life whose source is beyond reach. One might even say that only those spiritual creations belong to the truly significant ones toward which one develops such a feeling to an ever-greater degree the more often one returns to them. This presupposes, however, that whenever one returns, one has oneself previously undergone a further development of one’s inner life. It seems that anyone who approaches Goethe’s Faust with this attitude must gain such a feeling from it.

[ 3 ] Anyone who also considers that Goethe began this work as a young man and completed it shortly before his death will be wary of forming an exhaustive opinion about it. Throughout his long and rich life, the poet progressed from one stage of development to the next, and he allowed his creation of Faust to participate fully in this ongoing development. He was once asked whether the conclusion of his Faust corresponded to the words of the “Prologue in Heaven,” written in 1797: “A good man, in his dark struggle, is well aware of the right path.” He replied that this was indeed “Enlightenment,” but that Faust ends in the highest age, and there one becomes a mystic. Certainly: the young Goethe could not have been aware that, in the course of his life, he would be elevated to the perspective for which he found the words at the end of Faust in the “Chorus mysticus”: “All that is transitory is but a parable.” At the end of his life, what is eternal in existence had revealed itself to him in a different way than he could have foreseen in 1797, when he had God speak to the archangels, alluding to this eternity: “And what hovers in wavering appearance, strengthen with enduring thoughts.”

[ 4 ] Goethe was well aware that his truth had been revealed to him gradually. He wanted his Faust to be judged from this perspective. On December 6, 1829, he said to Eckermann: “When one is old, one thinks about worldly things differently than when one was young... It is like someone who, in his youth, has a great deal of small silver and copper coins, which he exchanges for increasingly valuable items over the course of his life, so that in the end he sees his youthful possessions before him in the form of pure gold pieces.”

[ 5 ] Why did Goethe, in his old age, view “worldly matters” differently than he did in his youth? Because, over the course of his life, he ascended to ever higher vantage points of the inner life, where ever-new perspectives on truth were revealed to him. Only those who follow their inner development can hope to read the parts of Faust written by him in his old age in the proper way. For them, however, ever new depths of this cosmic poem are revealed. They advance toward an esoteric interpretation of the events and characters. Everything acquires, in addition to its external meaning, an inner, spiritual significance. Those who are unable to do so will, depending on their personal artistic perspective, call the second part of Faust—like the eminent aesthetician Vischer—a cobbled-together work of old age; or they will delight in the rich world of images and fairy tales that flowed from Goethe’s imagination.

[ 6 ] Anyone who speaks of an esoteric interpretation of Goethe’s Faust will naturally provoke the opposition of those who insist that a “work of art” must be understood and enjoyed “purely artistically.” They will be quick to accuse us of it being impermissible to transform the vivid figures of artistic imagination into straw-like allegories. If only such people realized that they are asserting nothing more than what, from a higher perspective, is called a “gypsy truth.” They believe that because the spiritual content is more straw-like to them, it must be so for everyone. No, there are those who, where you see straw-like allegories, breathe a higher life, in whom a deeper spirit springs forth where you hear only words. It is difficult at first to communicate with you if you do not have the “goodwill” to follow us into the “spiritual realm.” After all, we have only the same words that you have. And we cannot force anyone to share in the very different feelings we experience through these words. We do not fight against you. We concede everything you say. For us, too, Faust is at first a work of art, a creation of the imagination. We would consider it a shortcoming if we were unable to perceive this artistic value. But do not think that we have no appreciation for the beauty of the lily because we ascend to the spirit it reveals to us; do not think that we are blind to the image which, “in a higher sense,” is for us—like “all that is transitory”—merely a “parable.”

[ 7 ] We agree with Goethe. On January 25, 1827, he said to Eckermann: “But everything (in Faust) is sensual and, when staged, will appeal to everyone’s eye. And that is all I intended. If only the audience takes pleasure in the appearance; the initiate will not fail to grasp the higher meaning at the same time.”

[ 8 ] Anyone who truly wishes to understand Goethe must not shy away from such an initiation. One can pinpoint the exact moment in Goethe’s life when he came to realize that “all that is transitory is but a parable.” It was as if, standing before the ancient works of art, the thought crossed his mind: “This much is certain: the ancient artists possessed just as great a knowledge of nature and an equally sure grasp of what can be imagined and how it must be imagined as Homer did. Unfortunately, the number of first-rate works of art is far too small. But when one beholds even these, one has nothing left to desire but to recognize them properly and then depart in peace. The great works of art have been produced by human hands according to true and natural laws, and are at the same time the highest works of nature. Everything arbitrary and imagined falls away: there is necessity, there is God.» It was on September 6, 1787, that Goethe recorded this thought in the diary of his “Italian Journey.”

[ 9 ] There are other ways to penetrate the “spirit of things.” Goethe’s nature is an artistic one. Therefore, this spirit must reveal itself to him through art. It can be demonstrated that even his great scientific discoveries, through which he foreshadowed the scientific insights of the nineteenth century, were born of his artistic spirit. ^{1See my book “Goethe’s Worldview.”} One person may arrive at the same perspective of knowledge and truth through a religious development, another through a philosophical one.

[ 10 ] One may look for a depiction of inner spiritual development in Goethe’s Faust. In particular, one that an artistic personality must bring to life. By virtue of his intellectual disposition, he was predestined to look into the depths of nature itself. One sees how the boy already develops for himself a deeply felt devotion to nature as a result of his creed. He describes this to us in “Truth and Poetry.” “The God who stands in direct connection with nature, who acknowledges and loves it as his work—this seemed to him to be the true God, who could surely enter into a closer relationship with man as with all else, and who would care for him just as he does for the movement of the stars, for the days and seasons, for plants and animals.” He takes the finest minerals and rocks from his father’s natural history collection and arranges them in a regular order on a music stand. This is the altar upon which he intends to offer his sacrifice to the God of Nature. At the very top he places incense sticks, which he lights with the aid of a magnifying glass using the rays of the rising morning sun. Thus he has kindled a sacred fire through the very essence of the natural-divine forces. Does one not see in this the beginning of an inner development of the soul which, to speak in the terms of Indian theosophy, seeks the light in the center of the sun and the truth in the center of the light? Anyone who follows Goethe’s life can see this “path” on which, through intermediate stages, he sought the “deeper layer of consciousness” through which the eternal “necessity of God” was then revealed to him. In “Truth and Poetry,” he tells us how he dabbled in all manner of fields of knowledge, at times seeking through alchemical experiments to see if “through the power and mouth of the spirit, many a secret might be revealed to him.” Later, he sought the eternal laws in the works of nature and found in his “primordial plant” and “primordial animal” what the spirit of nature speaks to the human spirit when the soul, in his sense, has struggled its way to a mode of thought and imagination “in accordance with the Idea.” Between these two turning points in his spiritual life lies the composition of the part of Faust in which he has Faust, having despaired of all external knowledge, summon the “Earth Spirit.” The eternal, truth-bearing light itself speaks through the words of this “Earth Spirit”:

In the tides of life, in the storm of deeds
I surge back and forth,
Weaving to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A shifting weave,
A glowing life,
Thus I create at the rushing loom of time
And weave a living garment for the Deity.

[ 11 ] This is an expression of the comprehensive view of nature that we also encounter in Goethe’s prose hymn “Nature,” written when he was about thirty years old. “Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her—unable to step out of her, and unable to penetrate deeper into her. Uninvited and unannounced, she draws us into the circle of her dance and carries us along until we are weary and slip from her arms. She creates ever-new forms; what is there has never been; what was will not return—all is new, and yet always the old.... She is always building and always destroying, and her workshop is inaccessible. She lives in nothing but children, and the mother—where is she?—She is the only artist... Each of her works has its own essence, each of her manifestations the most isolated concept, and yet everything makes up a whole.... She is eternally transforming, and there is not a moment of stillness within her.... Her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.... All people are within her, and she is within all.... Life is her most beautiful invention, and death is her stratagem for having much life. ... One obeys her laws, even when one resists them. ... She is everything. She rewards herself and punishes herself, delights and torments herself. ... It knows neither past nor future. The present is its eternity. ... It has brought me in; it will also lead me out. I entrust myself to it. ... I did not speak of it. No, what is true and what is false—it has spoken of everything. Everything is its fault; everything is its merit!”

[ 12 ] Even in his old age, looking back on this stage of his spiritual development, Goethe said that it represented a subordinate worldview and that he had arrived at a higher one. But this stage opened up to him the eternal law of the universe, which permeates nature just as it does the human soul. It aroused in him the profound sense that an eternal, iron necessity unites all beings into one. It taught him to view human beings as intimately bound to this necessity. It is the sentiment expressed in the ode “The Divine” from the year 1782.

Let man be noble,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all beings
That we know.
.....
According to eternal, iron,
Great laws
We must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.

[ 13 ] And this same view is expressed in the Faust monologue “Forest and Cave,” written around 1787:

Sublime Spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,
That I asked for. You did not in vain
Turn your face toward me in the fire.
You gave me the magnificent natural world as my kingdom,
The power to feel it, to enjoy it. You do not
do you permit me only to be a cold, marveling visitor,
but grant me to look into its deep bosom
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the procession of the living
past me and teach me to know my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce, crashing down,
Squeezing neighboring branches and trunks as it sweeps down,
And the hill thunders hollow and dull at their fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Me to myself, and in my own breast
Secret, deep wonders open up.

[ 14 ] Through the wonders of his own breast, Goethe gains a perspective on his soul. It is a perspective that can no longer be revealed by the external world alone; rather, it is revealed only when a person descends into his own soul, so that ever higher mysteries are revealed to him in ever deeper regions of consciousness. Then the world of the senses and the intellect takes on a new meaning. It becomes a “parable” of the eternal. Man realizes that he must forge a more intimate bond between the external world and his own soul. He experiences that within him resound the voices that are also called upon to solve all the mysteries of the external world. “The inadequate—here it becomes achievement.” ^{2The author of these remarks subscribes to the view put forward by Ad. Rudolf in the Archiv für neuere Sprachen LXX 1883, that the spelling “Ereignis” is based solely on a hearing error by the person transcribing Goethe’s dictation, and that the correct word is “Erreichnis.” This note was added in 1918, in the new edition, with the altered spelling in Goethe’s text. In 1902, the manuscript and printed text still read “Ereignis.”—Ad. Rudolf is also supported by K. J. Schröer in his edition of the Faust poems, which Rudolf Steiner used during the rehearsals of Faust scenes in Dornach (1914–1919). It was not until 1928 that a manuscript by Goethe with the spelling Ereignis from A. Kippenberg’s Goethe collection became known as a facsimile print.} The highest fact of life, the separation into the masculine and the feminine, becomes the key to the mystery of humanity. The process of cognition becomes a process of life, a process of fertilization. The soul, in its depths, becomes the woman who, fertilized by the world spirit, gives birth to the highest meaning of life. The woman becomes the “parable” of these depths of the soul. We ascend to the mysteries of existence by allowing ourselves to be drawn upward by the “Eternal Feminine.” Higher existence begins when we experience the path of wisdom as a spiritual process of fertilization.

[ 15 ] The profound mystics of all ages have felt this way. They allow the highest knowledge to emerge from a spiritual fertilization, just as the Egyptians conceived the soul-man, Horus, through the spiritual gaze that emanates from Osiris—the one raised from the dead—and outshines Isis. The second part of Goethe’s Faust is a work written from such a mindset.

[ 16 ] Faust’s love for Gretchen in the first part is a sensual one. Faust’s love for Helena in the second part is not merely a sensual, concrete experience; it is a “parable” for the deepest mystical experience of the soul. In seeking Helena, Faust seeks the “eternal feminine”; he seeks the depths of his own soul. It is inherent in the nature of Goethe’s personality that he allows “the woman in man” to be the archetype of Greek feminine beauty. For he had come to realize the divine necessity inherent in the beauty of Greek works of art.

[ 17 ] Faust has become a mystic through his marriage to Helena. As such, he speaks at the beginning of the fourth act in Part Two. He sees the image of woman, the depths of his own soul, and says:

... Formless, broad, and towering,
It rests in the east, like distant ice-capped mountains,
And reflects the great meaning of fleeting days in dazzling light.
Yet a delicate, light wisp of mist still hovers around me
Over my chest and brow, refreshing, cool, and soothing.
Now it rises lightly and hesitantly, higher and higher,
Coming together. — Is a delightful image deceiving me,
As the most youthful, long-deprived, highest good?
The earliest treasures of the deepest heart well up,
Aurora’s love, with light swing, points it out to me,
That first glance, swiftly felt, barely understood,
Which, once captured, outshone every treasure.
Like the beauty of the soul, the lovely form intensifies,
Does not dissolve, but rises into the ether,
And carries the best of my inner self away with it.

[ 18 ] When we read these words, which describe the delights felt by one who has descended into the depths of his own soul and felt the best of his inner self swept away by his “Eternal Feminine,” is it not as if we were listening to the philosophers of Greece:

When you rise, freed from the body, into the free ether,
She (the soul) will be an immortal god, beyond death

[ 19 ] For at this stage, death becomes a “parable.” Man dies to the lower life in order to be reborn into a higher one. The higher spiritual life becomes a new stage of becoming; the temporal becomes a “parable” of the eternal, which comes to life within man. The connection with the “Eternal Feminine” gives rise to the child within the human being, which is imperishable because it belongs to the Eternal. The higher life is the letting go, the death of the lower existence, and the birth of the higher. Goethe expresses this in his “West-Eastern Divan” with the words:

And as long as you don’t have that—“Die and be reborn!”—
You are but a gloomy guest on this dark earth.

[ 20 ] In his Prose Sayings, we find the same idea: One must give up one’s existence in order to exist. Goethe shares the same view as the mystic Heraclitus. The latter speaks of the Greeks’ worship of Dionysus. For him, it would be a futile, even shameful service if it were offered merely to the god of natural life, of sensual pleasure. But that is not the case. It is not merely the Dionysus of life, of immediate sensual fertility, to whom this activity is directed; it is at the same time the god of death, Hades. It is Hades and Dionysus, one and the same, for whom they “light noisy fires.” In the Greek mysteries, life was celebrated in union with death; this is the higher life that passes through sensual death. It is the life of which the mystics speak when they say: “And so death is the root of all life.” The second part of Goethe’s Faust depicts an awakening, the birth of the “higher human being” from the depths of the soul. One understands Goethe’s words from this perspective: “The crowd of spectators” may take “pleasure in the spectacle”; yet “the initiate will not fail to grasp the higher meaning.”

[ 21 ] Anyone who has come to understand the development of true mystical knowledge will find much of it in Goethe’s Faust. After (in the first part, following the invocation scene with the Earth Spirit) Faust has spoken with Wagner and is left alone, he expresses his despair at the insignificance he feels in the presence of the Earth Spirit in these words:

I, the image of the deity, who once
Felt myself so close to the mirror of eternal truth,
Delighted in my own heavenly radiance and clarity,
And cast off the son of Earth;
I, more than a cherub, whose free power
Already flowed through the veins of nature
And, creating, to enjoy the life of the gods
Presumptuously measured itself—how must I atone!

[ 22 ] What is the “Mirror of Eternal Truth”? One can read about it in the works of the mystic Jakob Böhme. “Everything of which this world is an earthly parable and mirror exists in the divine realm in great perfection within the spiritual being; not merely the spirit as a will or thought, but being, physical being, vitality, and power—yet to the outer world it appears incomprehensible: then from the same spiritual essence, in which the pure element resides, both from the dark essence in the mystery of wrath and the primal source of the eternal, audible essence—from which the qualities arise—this visible world has been born and created, as a distinct echo from the essence of all essences.” For those who love “gypsy truths,” it should be noted that it is by no means intended to be claimed that Goethe had precisely this passage by J. Böhme in mind when he wrote the above verses. What he did have in mind, however, is the mystical insight expressed in J. Böhme’s sentences. And Goethe certainly lived in such mystical insight. He grew ever more mature in it. He drew from the mystics. And from this source sprang the possibility for him to view life, “all that is transitory,” merely as “a parable,” as a mirror. There lies an inexhaustible process of inner development between the time when Goethe wrote the words of doubt in the first part—that he was, after all, far from the “mirror of eternal truth”—and the words of the “Chorus mysticus,” which express that in the “transient” one can truly see only the “parable” of the eternal.

[ 23 ] The mystical “Die and Be” pervades the opening scene of the second part: “A charming landscape. Faust lies on a flower-strewn lawn, weary, restless, seeking sleep.” The elves, led by Ariel, bring about Faust’s “awakening.” Ariel speaks to the elves:

You who hover around this head in ethereal circles,
Show yourselves here in the noble manner of elves,
Soothe the heart’s fierce turmoil;
Remove the fiery, bitter arrows of reproach,
Purify his inner self of the horror he has endured.
Four are the pauses of the night’s repose,
Now, without delay, fill them kindly.
First, lower his head upon the cool pillow,
Then bathe him in the dew from Lethe’s stream;
Soon his limbs, stiff with cramps, will be supple again,
As he rests, strengthened, awaiting the day.
Having fulfilled the fairest duty of the elves,
Return him to the sacred light.

[ 24 ] And at sunrise, Faust is returned to the “holy light”:

The pulse of life beats fresh and alive,
Gently welcoming the ethereal twilight;
You, Earth, remained steadfast this night as well,
And breathe anew, refreshed, at my feet,
Already beginning to surround me with delight,
You stir and inspire a resolute determination,
To strive ceaselessly toward the highest existence.

[ 25 ] What did Faust seek in his “study” (in the first part), and what has become of him at the stage at which he appears before us at the beginning of the second part? He expresses what he seeks there in the words of the “Wise Man”:

The spirit world is not closed off.
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
Come, bathe, disciple, undaunted
Your earthly breast in the morning glow!

[ 26 ] Here, Faust cannot yet bathe his earthly breast in the morning glow. After summoning the Earth Spirit, he must acknowledge his own insignificance. But he is able to do so at the beginning of the second part. Ariel explains how this happens:

Listen! Listen to the storm of the senses!
Resounding to the ears of the spirit
The new day is already dawning.

[ 27 ] J. Böhme affirmed that the “new day” of knowledge and life is born from the dawn when he titled the first work with which he delved into mystical wisdom “Aurora” or “The Dawn Rising.” The passage already cited in the fourth act of the second part of Faust shows how Goethe lived within such ideas. “The earliest treasures of the deepest heart” are revealed to him through “Aurora’s love.”—Once Faust has truly bathed “his earthly breast in the morning glow,” he is ready to lead a higher life within his earthly journey. He appears with Mephistopheles at the imperial court during a festival full of pleasure and vain indulgence. He himself must contribute to heightening the enjoyment. He appears in the mask of Plutus, the god of wealth, in the midst of a masquerade. He is required to conjure up Paris and Helen from the underworld to heighten the “amusement.” In doing so, it is revealed to us that Faust’s inner life has reached the stage where he has grasped the “die and become.” He participates in the festival of pleasure, but during the course of the festivities he embarks on the “journey to the mothers.” Only with the Mothers can he find the images of Paris and Helen that the Emperor wishes to see. With the Mothers lies the realm where the eternal archetypes of all being are preserved. There is a region there that one can only enter “if one has given up one’s existence in order to exist.” There, Faust can also find what of Helen endures through the ages. But Mephistopheles, who until then had been his helper, cannot lead him into this region. This is characteristic of his nature. He says explicitly to Faust:

You think it will all fall into place at once;
Here we stand before steep steps,
Reaching into the most unfamiliar realm.

[ 28 ] The realm of the eternal is foreign to Mephistopheles. This might seem inexplicable at first glance, considering that he belongs to the realm of evil—that is, to an eternal realm itself. It becomes clear, however, when one considers Goethe’s unique perspective. He did not experience the eternal necessity for himself within the realm of Christianity, to which, for him, hell and the devil belong. To him, this eternal reality dawned personally in a realm where the Christian imagination does not penetrate. It must certainly be admitted that a figure like Mephistopheles, in terms of his ultimate origin, can also be found in pagan religious concepts. ^{3Compare Carl Kiesewetter, Faust in History and Tradition. [Subtitle: With special consideration of occult phenomenalism and medieval magic. 1893.} For Goethe, however, it belonged to the Nordic-Christian world. That is where he drew it from. It was his personal experience that he could not find his realm of the eternal within this conceptual world. To understand this, one need only recall the characterization Schiller gives of Goethe when, in a profound letter (August 23, 1794), he holds up a mirror to his nature: “Had you been born a Greek, or even just an Italian, and had an exquisite nature and an idealizing art surrounded you from the cradle, your path would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps rendered entirely superfluous. Even in your first perception of things, you would then have absorbed the form of the necessary, and with your first experiences, the grand style would have developed within you. Now, since you were born a German, since your Greek spirit was cast into this Nordic creation, you had no choice but either to become a Nordic artist yourself, or to replace in your imagination what reality withheld from it through the aid of the power of thought, and thus, as it were, to give birth to a Greece from within and by rational means.”

[ 29 ] It is not my task here to address the various interpretations that have been offered regarding the meaning of Mephistopheles. These interpretations express precisely the opposite of my own aim: the tendency to transform artistic figures into wooden allegories or symbols. For an esoteric interpretation, Mephistopheles may certainly be understood as a real human being—in the sense of poetic reality, of course. For the esoteric interpretation does not seek the spiritual content that certain figures acquire only through the poet, but rather that which they already possess in life. The poet can therefore neither take it away from them nor give it to them, but takes it, like that which is visible to the eye, from life. But it belongs to the nature of Mephistopheles that he lives in the sensual, in the material. Hell, too, is after all only the embodied material. For one who lives in the material world as he does, the eternal in the womb of the mothers can be nothing but the most alien of realms. Man must pass through the material in order to re-enter the eternal, the divine, in which he has his origin. If he finds the way there, if he “gives up his existence in order to exist,” then he is of the nature of Faust; if he cannot let go of the material, he is a character like Mephistopheles. Only the “key” to the realm of the Mothers can Mephistopheles still give to Faust. There is truly a mystery attached to this “key.” One must have experienced it to fully grasp it. Those who live in science will find it easiest to attain.

[ 30 ] One can accumulate as much knowledge as one likes, and yet the “spirit of things,” the realm of the mothers, may remain closed to one. Yet in knowledge, one essentially holds the key to the spirit realm in one’s hand. It becomes either erudition or wisdom. Let a wise person take possession of the “dry scholarly material” that a mere know-it-all has accumulated: it will lead them into a realm that is the “most foreign domain” to the other. With the key that Mephistopheles gives him, Faust is able to reach the Mothers. The way Mephistopheles and Faust speak of the realm of the Mothers reflects their characters:

Mephistopheles:
You will see nothing in the eternally empty distance,
Hear not the step you take,
Find nothing solid where you rest.

Faust:
You send me into the void,
So that there I may increase both art and power;
You treat me so that, like that cat,
I may scrape the chestnuts from the embers for you.
Go on, then! Let us explore it,
In your nothingness I hope to find the universe.

[ 31 ] Goethe confided to Eckermann how he came to include the mother scene. “I can tell you nothing more,” says Goethe, “than that I found in Plutarch that in ancient Greece, mothers were spoken of as deities.” This must have made a great impression on Goethe, who, based on his mystical insight, understood the significance of the “eternal feminine.”

[ 32 ] From the realm of the mothers, Faust conjures up the figures of Helen and Paris. When he then sees them before him at the imperial court, he is seized by an irresistible urge toward Helen. He wants to take possession of her. An explosion ensues. Faust sinks unconscious and is carried away by Mephistopheles. — We have thus reached a point in Faust’s development that is of great significance. Faust is ready to penetrate into the spiritual realm. He can spiritually rise to the eternal archetypes. He is at the point where the spiritual becomes visible to man in an infinite perspective.

[ 33 ] Now he can either be modest and tell himself that this path cannot be traversed in a single bound, but must instead be traversed slowly through countless stages of life; or he can seek to seize the divine ultimate goal in a storm of passion. Faust chooses the latter. He undergoes a new trial. He must learn that man is bound to matter, and that only after he has passed through all the stages of the material world is he purified enough to attain the final goal.

[ 34 ] Only a purely spiritual being, one born in a spiritual manner, could unite directly with the spiritual. The human spirit is not such a being. It must pass completely through the material world. Without this journey through life, the human spirit would be a being without substance. If it existed in such a form, it could not live. If it were to come into being in any way, it would have to begin the material journey all over again. For the human being is what he is only because he has passed through a series of previous incarnations. Goethe also had to portray this idea in Faust. On December 16, 1829, Goethe spoke to Eckermann about the homunculus: “For such spiritual beings as the homunculus, who have not yet been darkened and limited by a complete incarnation, were counted among the demons.”

[ 35 ] The homunculus is thus a human being, yet without the materiality necessary to a human being. He is artificially created in the laboratory. On the day already mentioned, Goethe says even more about him to Eckermann: “As a being to whom the present is entirely clear and transparent, the homunculus sees into the inner being of the sleeping Faust.” But because everything is transparent to his spirit, the spirit itself is of no consequence to him. “Reasoning is not his business; he wants to act.” Insofar as a human being is a knower, it is precisely through knowledge that the impulse to will, to act, is awakened. It is not knowledge, nor the spirit as such, that matters, but rather the task of guiding this spirit through the material world, through action. The more knowledgeable a being is, the greater its impulse to act must be. And a being created by purely spiritual means must be filled with a thirst for action. This is the situation in which Homunculus finds himself. His powerful urge for reality leads Faust and Mephistopheles to Greece, to the “Classical Walpurgis Night.” In the realm where Goethe found the highest reality, Homunculus is to be physically created. This then also gives Faust the opportunity to find the real Helen, not merely her archetype. In Greek reality, Homunculus becomes the guide. We need only follow Homunkulus on his journey through the Classical Walpurgis Night to fully understand his nature. He wants to hear from two Greek philosophers, Thales and Anaxagoras, how he can come into being—that is, how he can come to act. He says to Mephistopheles:

I float from place to place
And would gladly emerge in the best sense,
Eager to shatter my glass in two;
But what I have seen so far,
I dare not venture into.
Only, to tell you in confidence:
I am on the trail of two philosophers,
I listened, and they said: Nature! Nature!
I do not wish to part from them.
Surely they must know the nature of the world;
And in the end I shall surely learn,
Whither it is wisest for me to turn.

[ 36 ] He wants to learn about the natural conditions of physical formation. Thales leads him to Proteus, the master of transformation, of eternal becoming. Thales says of the homunculus:

It seeks advice and longs to come into being.
It is, as I have heard,
A wondrous being, only half-born into the world.
It lacks nothing in intellectual qualities,
But sorely lacks tangible virtues.
Until now, only the glass gives him weight,
Yet he would gladly have been embodied first.

[ 37 ] And Proteus proclaims the law of becoming:

But there is no need to dwell on this here,
In the vast sea you must begin!
There, one starts small
And takes pleasure in devouring the smallest things.
One grows little by little
And develops toward greater achievements.

[ 38 ] Thales offers the following advice:

Yield to the noble desire,
To begin creation anew!
Be ready to act swiftly!
There you move according to eternal laws,
Through a thousand, a thousand forms,
And you have time until you reach humanity.

[ 39 ] Goethe’s entire view of nature—the kinship of all beings and their metamorphic development from the imperfect to the perfect—is embodied here in this image. At first, the spirit can exist in the world only in embryonic form. It must pour itself into matter, into the elements, submerge itself in them, in order to assume a higher form from them. The homunculus shatters against Galatea’s shell chariot. He dissolves into the elements. The “Sirens” describe the process.

What fiery wonder do the waves reveal to us,
That crash against one another, sparkling?
Thus it glows and sways and shines upward:
The bodies glow on their nocturnal path,
And all around, everything is surrounded by fire;
So let Eros reign, who began it all!

[ 40 ] The homunculus is no longer a spirit. It has mingled with the elements. From them it can arise. Desire, will, action, and Eros must enter into the spirit. The spirit must pass through matter, through the Fall. According to Goethe’s words above, the spiritual being must be darkened and limited. This is necessary for a “perfect incarnation.” The mystery of incarnation constitutes the second act of the second part. Proteus, the master of physical transformations, explains this mystery to the homunculus:

Come with me in spirit to the damp expanse,
There you will live in all its length and breadth,
Here you may move about as you please;
Just do not strive for higher places: ^{4The editions have “Orden,” which is likely just a hearing error on the part of the scribe.}
For once you have become a human being,
Then it is completely over for you.

[ 41 ] That is all the Master of Physical Transformations can know about the Incarnation. He believes that once a human being has come into being as such, development ceases. What comes next does not fall within his domain. He is at home only in the physical realm; and through the process of becoming human, the spiritual separates itself from the merely physical. The further development of the human being takes place in the realm of the spiritual. The highest point to which natural Eros can lead is the separation into two sexes: the male and the female. This is where spiritual development begins; Eros becomes spiritualized. Faust enters into a marriage with Helena, the archetype of beauty. Goethe is convinced that through his marriage to the Greek beauty, he has become what he is. For Goethe, the mystery of spiritualization had an artistic character. From Faust’s marriage to Helena, Euphorion is born. Goethe himself also explained what Euphorion is. Eckermann quotes Goethe’s words under the date of December 20, 1829: “Euphorion is not a human being, but an allegorical being. In him is personified the poetry that is bound to no time, no place, and no person.” Through the marriage that Faust experiences in the depths of his soul, poetry is born. This coloring of the spiritual mystery must again be traced back to Goethe’s personal experience and essence. He saw in art, in poetry, “a manifestation of secret laws of nature” that would never be revealed without them. ^{1(Compare his aphorisms in prose.)} As an artist, he had ascended to the higher stages of the life of the soul. It was only natural that he endowed poetry not only with general traits but also with those drawn from the poetic creations of his time. Byron’s traits have passed into Euphorion. “As a representative of the latest poetic era,” Goethe told Eckermann on July 5, 1827, “I could use no one but him (Byron), who is without question to be regarded as the greatest talent of the century. And then, Byron is neither ancient nor romantic, but he is like the present day itself. I had to have someone like that. Moreover, he was also a perfect fit precisely because of his restless nature and his warlike tendencies, which led to his downfall at Missolunghi. Writing a treatise on Byron is neither convenient nor advisable, but I shall not fail to honor him on occasion and refer to him in detail in the future.” Faust’s marriage to Helena cannot be a lasting one. Descending into the depths of the soul is, even according to Goethe’s conviction, possible only in life’s moments of celebration. One plunges into the regions where the highest spiritual is born. But with the transformation one has experienced there, one returns once more to active life. Faust undergoes a process of spiritualization; but even as a spiritualized being, he is to continue to act in immediate life. The person who has gone through such solemn moments must, however, see how the deeper spiritual aspect vanishes again in immediate reality. This is depicted in Goethe’s work. Euphorion vanishes back into the realm of darkness. Human beings cannot bring the spiritual into permanent earthly life. But this spiritual is now intimately connected with their soul. Its child, the spiritual, also draws their soul into the realm of the eternal. They have wed themselves to the eternal. Through the highest spiritual achievements, human beings enter the eternal with their very best being, with the depths of their soul itself. The marriage he has entered into in his soul allows him to merge with the cosmos. Like this eternal call that resounds in the breast of the ever-striving human being, the words of Euphorion ring out:

Don't leave me alone, Mother,
in this dark realm!

The person who has sensed the eternal within the temporal hears this call from the spiritual within him constantly. His creations draw his soul toward the eternal. Thus Faust will live on. He will lead a double life. In life he will create; but his spiritual child connects him, on his earthly journey, with the higher realm of the spirit. This will be the life of a mystic. Not, however, of one who will spend his days in idle contemplation, in a dreamlike inner life, but in full activity—yet in such a way that every deed is imbued with the nobility that man attains through spiritual deepening.

[ 42 ] Faust’s external life, too, now becomes that of a man who has given up his existence in order to exist. He wishes to work entirely selflessly in the service of humanity. But one more trial lies ahead of him. Even at his level, he cannot fully reconcile his work in material existence with the pure needs of the spirit. He has reclaimed land from the sea. He has built a magnificent cultural center upon it. But an old cottage still stands; an elderly couple lives there. This disturbs the new creation. The old couple refuse to exchange their property for the most magnificent estate. Faust must watch as Mephistopheles fulfills his wish with a twist toward evil. He sets their home ablaze; the couple dies of fright. Faust must experience once again that “perfect humanization” is “darkened and limited,” that it must lead to guilt. It was his senses, his material nature, that played this trick on him, that imposed this trial upon him. — When he hears the little bell ringing from the old couple’s chapel, he bursts out with the words:

Damn those bells! How shameful!
They wound me like a treacherous shot;
Before my eyes, my kingdom is boundless,
But behind me, vexation taunts me,
Reminding me through envious sounds,
My high estate is not pure,
The linden grove, the brown building,
The decaying little church is not mine.
And if I wished to rest there,
I shudder at foreign shadows,
Thorns in my eyes, thorns in my soles,
Oh! If only I were far away from here!

Faust’s senses give rise to a fateful desire. He still retains a remnant of the existence he had to abandon in order to exist. The estate is not his. In “Midnight,” four gray women appear: Want, Guilt, Worry, and Need. It is they who limit and darken human existence. Accompanied by them, he walks through life. He cannot live at all without first being guided by them. For only life itself can set him free from them. Faust has reached the point where three of them have no power over him. Only Worry retains this power. She says: “/p”

“Sisters, you cannot and must not go in.”
Worry creeps in through the keyhole.

And that worry is like a voice deep within every human heart, urging him on. No one can dispel the final doubt as to whether they can truly stand before the Eternal One with their life’s account. Faust feels this at this very moment. Does he truly have only pure powers around him? Has he freed his “inner self” from all that is impure? He has taken “magic” along on his path. He confesses this with the words:

I have not yet fought my way out into the open air.
If I could banish magic from my path,
Forget spells entirely,
I would stand before you, Nature, a man alone,
Then it would be worth the trouble to be human.

No, even Faust cannot dispel his last doubts. Even with regard to him, one might say:

If no ear were to hear me,
It would still thunder in my heart;
In a transformed form
I would wield fierce power.

Faust initially intends to confront this anxiety as if every trace of doubt regarding his life’s reckoning had vanished from within him:

I know the circle of the earth well enough.
Our view is blocked beyond that point;
Fool! Whoever turns his eyes there, squinting,
Founds his own kind above the clouds!
Let him stand firm and look around here;
To the capable, this world is not silent.
Why should he wander into eternity!

In these lines, Faust demonstrates that he is in the process of fighting his way completely into the open. Worry seeks, in its own way, to remind him of the eternal. It shows him how people who act upon the earth merely add the temporal to the temporal. And when they do this, when they believe that the world is not silent to the capable, then worry, in the end, remains with them after all. And just as it is able to do this with others, it believes it can do so with Faust as well. It believes it can reinforce the doubts that come to a person when he asks himself whether all his work has any meaning at all. It voices what it is capable of doing to people:

Should he go? Should he come?
The decision has been taken from him;
In the middle of the well-trodden path
He staggers, groping his way in half-steps.
Such an unstoppable rolling,
Painful letting go, adverse duty,
Now liberating, now crushing,
Half-sleep and poor refreshment
Pins him to his place
And prepares him for hell.

Faust’s soul has progressed too far to succumb to the power of worry in the manner implied here. He may call out to it:

But your power, O worry, creeping ever greater,
I will not acknowledge it.

She can only affect his physical being. As she vanishes, she breathes on him; and he goes blind. With that, his physical being has died a little more.

The night seems to penetrate ever deeper,
Yet within, a bright light shines.

All that remains to be considered now is the spiritual aspect of Faust. Mephistopheles, who lives in the material world, has no power over this. Ever since the Helena scene, Faust has been in the eternal realm with his best part, with the deepest part of his soul. This eternal realm takes complete possession of him after his death. Faust’s immortal essence is incorporated into this eternal realm by the genies.

The noble soul is saved
From evil in the spirit world:
Whoever strives with all his might,
We can redeem him;
And if love has truly
Descended upon him from above,
The blessed host will meet him
With a warm welcome.

“Love from above” stands in stark contrast to the “Eros” that Proteus referred to, and of which it is said (at the end of the second act of the second part):

And all around, everything is engulfed by fire,
So let Eros reign, he who started it all.

This Eros is the “love from below,” which guides the homunculus through the elements and physical transformations so that it may ultimately emerge as a human being. Then “the love from above” begins, which further develops the soul.

[ 43 ] Faust’s soul stands on the path to the eternal and infinite. An infinite perspective opens up before it. One can sense this perspective intuitively. To render it concretely in poetic form is a great difficulty. Goethe felt this. He said to Eckermann about it: “Incidentally, you will admit that the conclusion, where the saved soul ascends, was very difficult to write, and that, with such supernatural, scarcely conceivable things, I could very easily have lost myself in vagueness had I not given my poetic intentions a beneficially limiting form and firmness through the sharply defined, Christian-ecclesiastical figures and concepts.” It was necessary to point to the inexhaustible content of the soul; the deepest inner self had to be represented in symbol. “Holy anchorites, scattered across the mountains, dwelling among the ravines” represent the highest states of the soul’s development. One is led upward into the regions of consciousness—of the soul—where the world increasingly becomes a “parable” of the eternal.

[ 44 ] This consciousness, the depths of the soul, are contemplated in a mystical way in the image of the “Eternal Feminine,” the Virgin Mary. The Doctor Marianus adores her with rapture:

Supreme Ruler of the World!
Let me, beneath the blue,
Spread-out canopy of the sky
Behold your secret.

[ 45 ] Faust concludes the “Chorus mysticus” with monumental words. They are meant to be words of eternal wisdom. They proclaim the mystery that “all that is transitory is but a parable.” What lies in the farthest distance before man, where the path he treads leads him once he has grasped this “die and become”:

The Inadequate,
Here it becomes an achievement. ^{5Regarding the spelling of “Erreichnis,” see the note on p. 18 above. [See note 2 here}

What cannot be described because it can only be experienced; what the initiates of the “Mysteries” experienced when they were led onto the “Path” of the Eternal; what is inexpressible because it lies in such deep chasms of the soul that words, shaped by the temporal, cannot grasp it:

The Indescribable,
Here it is.

And alongside all this lies the power of one’s own soul, the forces that a person senses when they cross the inner gates of the soul, when they seek within themselves the divine voice that calls them to a union between the “Eternal Masculine”—the world—and the “Eternal Feminine”—consciousness:

The Eternal Feminine
Draws us upward.