classic art. Through beauty, as Schiller tried to show
in his letters on 'AEsthetic Culture,' we attain to freedom. Faust is not
an artist, but a _man_; Helena is but one of the spirits whose influence
is needed to make him real and elevated. It is she who qualifies him
for achieving practical work in a high, ideal spirit.

The Fourth Act of the Second Part is wholly concerned with practical
work. What is this which engages the student of the metaphysic cell, who
had gone through the four Faculties, and is now once again grown old?
What is this? Only well-defined and useful activity. He has rescued some
acres of arable land from the rage of the barren sea.

But Faust is not yet wholly delivered from evil; his activity is useful,
indeed, but it lacks the finer grace of charity. He commissions
Mephistopheles to destroy the cottage of old Philemon and Baucis, which
stands in the way of his territorial improvements. It is the last crime
of the unregenerate will. The four gray women--Care and Blame and Want
and Crime--now assail him; but there is virtue in him to the last.
However it may be with himself, grant only that ages hence the children
of men, free and happy, may dwell upon the soil which he has saved for
their place of labor and of love,--grant but this, and even in the
anticipation of it he is made possessor of the highest bliss. Nor indeed
is higher permitted to man on earth. And now that Faust has at last
found satisfaction, and said to the passing moment, "Stay, thou art so
fair," the time has come for Mephistopheles to claim his soul. But in
this very aspiration after the perfect joy of others--not his own--Faust
is forever delivered from the Evil One. The gray old man lies stretched
upon the sand. Higher powers than those of his own will take him, guard
him, lead him forward. The messengers of God bear away his immortal
part. All Holy Hermits, all Holy Innocents, all Holy Virgins, the less
and the greater Angels, and redeemed women who have sinned and sorrowed
and have been purified, aid in his ultimate purification. It is the same
thought which was interpreted in a lower key when Wilhelm Meister's fate
was intrusted to Natalia. Usefulness is good; activity is good: but over
all these should soar and brood the Divine graces of life, and love the
chief of these. That which leads us farther than all the rest is what
Goethe names "the imperishable womanly grace," that of love. And so the
great mystery-play reach