nding of the poem in its initial stages to bear in mind that
Faust is not at first a votary of the vulgar black art which consists
in calling up bad spirits and doing reprehensible things by their
assistance. Further on he shows that he is a master of that art too,
but at first he is concerned with "natural magic," which some of the
old mystics whom Goethe read conceived as the highest and divinest of
sciences. The fundamental assumption of natural magic is that the
universe as a whole and each component part of it is dominated by an
indwelling spirit with whom it is possible for the magician to get
into communication. If he succeeds he becomes "like" a spirit--freed
from the trammels of the flesh, a partaker of divine knowledge and
ecstatic happiness.

Pursuing his wonderful vagaries by means of a magic book that has come
into his possession, Faust first experiments with the "sign" of the
Macrocosm, but makes no attempt to summon its presiding genius, that
is, the World-spirit. He has a wonderful vision of the harmonious
Cosmos, but it is "only a spectacle," whereas he craves food for his
soul. So he turns to the sign of the Earth-spirit, whom he feels to be
nearer to him. By an act of supreme daring he utters the formula which
causes the Spirit to appear in fire--grand, awe-inspiring, terrible. A
colloquy ensues at the end of which the Spirit rebuffs the
presumptuous mortal with the words: "Thou art like the spirit whom
thou comprehendest, not like me"--and disappears. The meaning is that
Faust, who knows very little of the Earth, having always led the
narrow life of a brooding scholar in one little corner of it, is not
fit for intimacy with the mighty being who presides over the entire
planet, with its rush and change, its life and death, its vast and
ceaseless energy. He must have a wider experience. How shall he
get it?

It is a moot question whether Goethe at first conceived Mephistopheles
as the Earth-spirit's envoy, sent for the express purpose of showing
Faust about the world, or whether the Devil was thought of as coming
of his own accord. Be that as it may, _Faust_ is an experience-drama,
and the Devil's function is to provide the experience. And he is _a_
devil, not _the_ Devil, conceived as the bitter and malignant enemy of
God, but a subordinate spirit whose business it is, in the
world-economy, to spur man to activity. This he does partly by cynical
criticism and opposition, but more especially by holdi