When Satan thus arrived in the new Creation the whole phenomenon was strange to him, and he had no idea what kind of a being Man was. He asked Uriel, whom he found on the sun fulfilling some Divine errand, in which of all the shining orbs round him Man had fixed his seat, or whether he had a fixed seat at all, and was not at liberty to shift his residence, and dwell now in one star, now in another. Uriel, deceived by the appearance which Satan had assumed, pointed out the way to Paradise.
Alighting on the surface of the Earth, Satan walks about immersed in thought. Heaven’s gate was in view. Overhead and round him were the quiet hills and the green fields. Oh, what an errand he had come upon! His thoughts were sad and noble. Fallen as he was, all the Archangel stirred within him. Oh, had he not been made so high, should he ever have fallen so low? Is there no hope even now, no room for repentance? Such were his first thoughts. But he roused himself and shook them off. “The past is gone and away; it is to the future that I must look. Perish the days of my Archangelship! perish the name of Archangel! Such is my name no longer. My future, if less happy, shall be more glorious. Ah, and this is the World I have singled out for my experiment! Formerly, in the days of my Archangelship, I ranged at will through infinity, doing one thing here and another there. Now I must contract the sphere of my activity, and labour nowhere but here. But it is better to apply myself to the task of thoroughly impregnating one point of space with my presence than henceforth to beat my wings vaguely all through infinitude. Ah, but may not my nature suffer by the change? In thus selecting a specific aim, in thus concerning myself exclusively with one point of space, and forswearing all interest in the innumerable glorious things that may be happening out of it, shall I not run the risk of degenerating into a smaller and meaner being? In the course of ages of dealing with the puny offspring of these new beings, may I not dwindle into a mere pungent, pettifogging Spirit? What would Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael say, were they to see their old co-mate changed into such a being? But be it so. If I cannot cope with the Almighty on the grand scale of infinitude, I shall at least make my existence felt by opposing His plans respecting this new race of beings. Besides, by beginning with this, may I not worm my way to a more effective position even in infinitude? At all events, I shall have a scheme on hand, and be incessantly occupied. And, as time makes the occupation more congenial, if I do become less magnanimous, I shall, at the same time, become happier. And, whether my fears on this point are visionary or not, it will, at least, be a noble thing to be able to say that I have caused a whirlpool that shall suck down generation after generation of these new beings, before their Maker’s eyes, into the same wretched condition of being to which He has doomed us. It will be something so to vitiate the Universe that, let Him create, create on, as He chooses, it will be like pouring water into a broken vessel.”
In the very course of this train of thinking Satan begins to degenerate into a meaner being. He is on the very threshold of that career in which he will cease for ever to be the Archangel and become irrevocably the Devil. The very manner in which he tempts the first pair is devil-like. It is in the shape of a cormorant on a tree that he sits watching his victims. He sat at the ear of Eve “squat like a toad.” It was in the shape of a serpent that he tempted her. And, when the evil was done, he slunk away through the brushwood. In the very act of ruining Man he committed himself to a life of ignominious activity: he was to go on his belly and eat dust all his days.
Such is the story of Milton’s Satan. It will be easy to express more precisely the idea which we have acquired of him when we come to contrast him with Goethe’s Mephistopheles. Meanwhile, we shall be much assisted in our efforts to conceive Goethe’s Mephistopheles by keeping in mind what we have been saying about Milton’s Satan.
We do not think it possible to sum up in a single expression all that Goethe meant to signify by his Mephistopheles. For one thing, it is questionable whether Goethe kept strictly working out one specific meaning and making it clearer all through Mephistopheles’s gambols and devilries, or whether, having once for all allegorized the Spirit of Evil into a living personage, he did not treat him just as he would have treated any other of his characters, making him always consistent, always diabolic, but not intent upon making his actions run parallel to any under-current of exposition. It may be best, therefore, to take Mephistopheles as a character in a drama which we wish to study. On the whole, perhaps, we shall be on the right track if, in the first place, we establish a relation between Satan and Mephistopheles by adopting the notion which we have imagined Satan himself to have entertained when engaged in scheming out his future life, i.e. if we suppose Mephistopheles to be what Satan has become after six thousand years. Milton’s Satan, then, is the ruined Archangel deciding his future function, and forswearing all interest in other regions of the universe, in order that he may more thoroughly possess and impregnate this. Goethe’s Mephistopheles is this same being after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand years in his new vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times sharper and cleverer. By way of corroboration of this view, we may refer, in passing, to the Satan of the Paradise Regained; who, though still a sublime and Miltonic being, dealing in high thoughts and high arguments, yet seems to betray, in his demeanour, the effects of four thousand years spent in a new walk. Is there not something Mephistopheles-like, for instance, in the description of the Fiend’s appearance when he approached Christ to begin his temptation? Christ was walking alone and thoughtful one evening in the thick of the forest where he had lived fasting forty days, when he heard the dry twigs behind him snapping beneath approaching footsteps. He turned round, and
“An aged man in rural weeds,
Following as seemed the quest of some stray ewe,
Or withered sticks to gather, which might serve
Against a winter’s day when winds blow keen
To warm him, wet returned from field at eve,
He saw approach; who first with curious eye
Perused him, then with words thus uttered spake.”
Observe how all the particulars of this description are drawn out of the very thick of the civilization of the past four thousand years, and how the whole effect of the picture is to suggest a Mephistophelic-looking man, whom it would be disagreeable to meet alone. Indeed, if one had space, one could make more use of the Paradise Regained as exhibiting the transition of Satan into Mephistopheles. But we must pass at once to Goethe.
Viewing Mephistopheles in the proposed light (of course it is not pretended that Goethe himself had any such idea about his Mephistopheles), we obtain a good deal of insight from the “Prologue in Heaven.” For here we have Mephistopheles out of his element, and contrasted with his old co-equals. The scene is Miltonic. The Heavenly Hosts are assembled round the throne, and the three Archangels, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, come forward to praise the Lord. The theme of their song is Creation—not, as it would have been in Milton, as an event about to take place, and which would vary the monotony of the universe, but as a thing existing and grandly going on. It is to be noted too that, while Milton appeals chiefly to the sight, and is clear and coherent in his imagery, Goethe produces a similar effect in his own manner by appealing to sight and hearing simultaneously, making sounds and metaphors dance and whirl through each other, as in a wild, indistinct, but overpowering dream. Raphael describes the Sun rolling on in thunder through the heavens, singing in chorus with the kindred stars. Gabriel describes the Earth revolving on her axis, one hemisphere glittering in the light, the other dipped in shadow. Michael in continuation sings of the ensphering atmosphere and the storms that rage in it, darting forth tongues of lightning, and howling in gusts over land and sea. And then the three burst forth in symphony, exulting in their nature as beings deriving strength from serene contemplation, and proclaiming all God’s works to be as bright and glorious as on the day they were created. Suddenly, while Heaven is still thrilling to the grand undulation, another voice breaks in:
“Da du, O Herr, dich einmal wieder nahst,
Und fragst wie alles sich bei uns befinde,
Und du mich sonst gewöhnlich gerne sahst,
So siehst du mich auch unter dem Gesinde.”