Mephistopheles is at first a little staggered by the sight, but he soon
finds himself on familiar terms with them and ends by borrowing the form
of one of them (she becoming for the time absorbed into her two
sisters)--for as medieval devil he has no right of entree into that
classical scene in which he and Faust are now to play their parts. It is
therefore in the form of a Phorkyad or Gorgon that Mephisto will appear
when we next meet him.

Meanwhile the Homunculus has found congenial spirits among the
sea-nymphs and sirens on the shores of the Aegean. He longs to gain
freedom from his glass, in which he is still imprisoned. Nereus the
sea-god is unable to help him, but sends him to his father Proteus, the
great ocean prophet, who bears him out into the midst of the ocean. Here
Galatea the sea-goddess (identical with Aphrodite, the sea-born symbol
of the beauty of the natural-world) passes by in her chariot drawn by
dolphins and surrounded by Nereids. The Homunculus in an ecstasy of
love dashes himself against her chariot. The glass is shattered and he
is poured forth in a stream of phosphorescent light over the waves--thus
being once more made one with Nature.

The theory that _water_ was the prime element, a theory advocated
especially by the old Ionic philosopher Thales, was held by Goethe, who
was a 'sedimentarist' in geological matters, and in this classical
_Walpurgisnacht_ he has introduced, much to the annoyance of many
critics, a dispute between Thales and other sages on the question
whether the formation of the world was due to fire or water.

We have now reached that part of _Faust_ which is known as the _Helena_.
It was written before the rest of Part II, though doubtless when he
wrote it Goethe had already conceived the general outline of the whole
poem. Of the wonderful versatility of Goethe's genius no more striking
example can be given than the sudden and complete change of scene, and
not only scene but ideas and feelings, by which we are transported from
the age of Luther and the court of a German Kaiser and the laboratory of
a modern scientist back--some 3500 years or so--to the age of the
Trojan war.

Instead of extravagance and grotesqueness, instead of the diversity, the
rich ornamentation, the heaven-soaring pinnacles and spires of Gothic
imagination--we have in the _Helena_ sculpturesque repose, simplicity,
dignity and proportion. It is as if we had been suddenly transported
from some Gothic