hyself, curse Lucifer
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven."

Goethe, with his changed conception of life in general, could not have
accepted this ending. It was indeed Lessing who first pointed out that
the final end for Faust must be his salvation and not his doom; but
Goethe must necessarily have arrived at the same conclusion even if
Lessing had not asserted it. It is clearly visible throughout the play,
by touches here and there, that Faust is not "wholly damnable" as Martha
is. His pity for women, relevant to the main plot of the play, breaks
forth in horror when he discovers the fate of Margaret. "The misery of
this one pierces me to the very marrow, and harrows up my soul; thou art
grinning calmly over the doom of thousands!" And these words follow
immediately after an outbreak of blind rage called forth by
Mephistopheles' famous words, "She is not the first." Such a Faust as
this, we feel, can no more be ultimately lost than can the
Mephistophilis of Marlowe. As for Marlowe's Faust, the plea for his
destruction is the great delusion of a hard theology, and the only
really damnable person in the whole company is the Mephistopheles of
Goethe, who seems from first to last continually to be committing the
sin against the Holy Ghost.

The salvation of Faust is implicit in the whole structure and meaning of
the play. It is worked out mystically in the Second Part, along lines of
human life and spiritual interest far-flung into the sphere that
surrounds the story of the First. But even in the First Part, the happy
issue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Only
on the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust and
cheat him "into self-complacent pride, or sweet enjoyment," only

"If ever to the passing hour I say,
So beautiful thou art! thy flight delay"--

only then shall his soul become the prey of the tempter. But from the
first, in the scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has to
bestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred such
bonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spirit
such as his can never be satisfied with what the fiend has to give, nor
lie down in sleek contentment to enjoy the earth without afterthought.

It is the strenuous and insatiable spirit of the man that saves him. It
is true that "man errs so long as he is striving," but the great word of
the play is just this, that no suc