The day before me and the night behind,
Above me heaven unfurled, the floor of waves beneath me,—
A glorious dream! though now the glories fade.
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me.”
Not long afterwards, Faust sees “the black dog roving there through cornfields and stubble,” the dog who is the same as the devil, the tempter, in whose hellish fires Faust has singed his wings. When he believed that he was expressing his great longing for the beauty of the sun and the earth, “he went astray thereover” and fell into the hands of “the Evil One.”
“Yes, resolute to reach some brighter distance,
On earth’s fair sun I turn my back.”
This is what Faust had said shortly before, in true recognition of the state of affairs. The honoring of the beauty of nature led the Christian of the Middle Ages to pagan thoughts which lay in an antagonistic relation to his conscious religion, just as once Mithracism was in threatening competition with Christianity, for Satan often disguises himself as an angel of light.[[108]]
The longing of Faust became his ruin. The longing for the Beyond had brought as a consequence a loathing for life, and he stood on the brink of self-destruction.[[109]] The longing for the beauty of this world led him anew to ruin, into doubt and pain, even to Marguerite’s tragic death. His mistake was that he followed after both worlds with no check to the driving force of his libido, like a man of violent passion. Faust portrays once more the folk-psychologic conflict of the beginning of the Christian era, but what is noteworthy, in a reversed order.