nterest except the unfinished play by Lessing, which, as it was
written while Goethe was still a lad, and seems to have been only
printed in fragments at some later date, can hardly come under Bayard
Taylor's list. From these fragments it is clear that Lessing meant to
save Faust's soul, if not his body. Toward the end of the last act, when
the devils are triumphing over their apparent victory and the possession
of Faust's body, a voice from heaven is heard: 'Triumph not! Ye have not
won the battle over human nature and human knowledge. The Deity has not
given to man the noblest impulses in order to bring him to eternal
misery. What you imagine you possess is only a phantom.'

Although we cannot tell for certain how Lessing meant to solve the
problem, I think it is almost certain that Faust was to work out his own
salvation amidst error and sin much as Goethe's Faust does. Before
attempting (as I shall do on other occasions) to give a description of
the two parts of Goethe's poem--in attempting which I shall keep as
closely as I can to the original and to questions arising directly out
of Goethe's own words--it will be useful and interesting to consider the
most striking points in which his _Faust_ differs essentially from all
its predecessors, except perhaps Lessing's--and Lessing, although he
struck the new chord, did not resolve it. But this is a subject
involving many and far-reaching questions, which, if they are to be
solved at all, are not to be solved by theory and dogma. I shall
therefore endeavour to state the case as simply and as objectively as
possible, avoiding metaphysical cobwebs and giving the _ego_ and
_non-ego_ a wide berth. I shall content myself in most cases with merely
pointing out the doctrine apparently preached by Goethe (reminding you
now and then that even his own seemingly categorical dogmas were to him
merely temporary forms of thought) and shall prefer to let much justify
its existence as an integral part of the living whole rather than to
expel the life by dissection and to examine the dead parts through the
spectacles of a commentator.

In my next lecture, after a brief consideration of these preliminary
questions, I shall try to describe the first Part of the drama--a task
of more than common difficulty, for the story is familiar to many of
you, and a bare rehearsal of the action of the play would prove
wearisome, while any attempt to communicate by means of translation the
wonderful b