Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 7.djvu/20

 xii INTRODUCTION

this result; and thus the condition is never fulfilled which entitled Mephistopheles to claim his soul.

Another important but by no means novel truth Goethe may also have meant to enforce. It is one which is tolerably sure to have been reached by every man who has learned to place his happiness in helping toward the happiness of others — namely, that it is not here on earth that the soul can look for satisfaction. In a higher sense than was present to the mind of Ulysses in Tennyson's poem,

"All experience is an arch, wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever, as we move."

Problems thicken upon us the more we see, the more we think, the more we feel, of which the solution is not to be found within " this visible diurnal sphere." It is, in truth, only by the hope that these will be solved in that immortal life of which this of eartlh is but an initial stage, that existence is made endurable to those who suffer, and to those who think. This hope it was which, in the case of Socrates, for example, while it reconciled him to life, robbed death of its terrors, in the assurance that with death came the dawn of a brighter and nobler existence, of which the happiest experiences of this world were but feeble symbols, and in which he should see realised the things for which his soul had yearned on earth in vain. Almost the last words of the present poem point to the same faith, the Chorus Mysticus singing, as Faust is borne into the heavenly sphere —

"Alles Vergangliche 1st nnr ein Gleichniss; Das Unzuliingliche Hier wird Ereigniss!"