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* Wie sich Verdienst und Gluck verketten , * Das fallt den Thoren niemals ein ; Wenn sie den Stein der Weisen hatten Der Weise mangelte den Stein /
—i — * It never occurs to the fools how worth and success are bound to each other . Had they the stone of the philosopher they would still want the philosopher forthe stone / We have then a mask exhibited before the emperor by his new favourite and minister , in which , under the wildest and most whimsical of forms , comprehending all kinds of personifications , intellectual qualities , classes of society , the Parcae , Furies , Pluto , and other creatures of Grecian philosophy , we have the gayest and bitterest of contemplations of human life . It ends , as if in
derision of the threatened fate of the universe , with an universal conflagration , which , however , fixes Mephistopheles in the favour of his imperial master ; and the work concludes abruptly with a —ist fortzusetzen—to be continued . We have already spoken of the announced termination . To Falk , Goethe expressly declared , that Faustus had at last found
mercy . Our hopes of what is still behind are repressed by the knowledge that whatever additions may have been made , must have proceeded from a man beyond seventy years of age ; and literary history affords no instance of productive mind , poetic invention , retained to such an age , the limit of the lower faculties of man , the boundary set to mere animal life . Instead of speculating , therefore , on what may be left unpublished , we are disposed once more to look back on the poem as it is , and endeavour
to give our readers an idea of the execution by a prose version of two scenes . The first , the dialogue between a student * a Freshman , who comes to the Doctor for advice—which Mephistopheles gives . We pass over a bantering reference to some of the peculiar practices of German universities . ' Meph . Declare , before you further go , what is the faculty you choose ? 4 Student . I wish to be a learned man , know all that heaven and
earth contain—the Sciences and Nature too . ' This modest desire the Devil of course applauds , and as a first step advises the study of logic' So will your mind be duly trained , laced-up in Spanish boots , steadily moving- in the path of thought , not rambling- like a will-o ' -thewisp ; so you will learn that what you formerly did all at once , like eating * and drinking * requires a one , two , three . It is with the manufactory of thought as with a weaver ' s web , in which one step sets a
thousand threads in motion , and while the shuttle flies the unseen threads are driven—one blow forms a thousand combinations . Now comes the philosopher , and he shows you how this must be . That the first being so and the second so , therefore the third and fourth , were so , and if the first and second were not , the third aiid fourth could never be ., This is praised bv the disciples in all places , but they have never
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No . 71 . 3 H
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Goethe * * Works . 753
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 753, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/33/
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