The last two lines may be supposed to contain the author's justification of Mephistopheles' defeat and Faust's salvation. Though a man surrender himself to evil, if there is that in him which evil cannot satisfy, an impulse by which he outgrows the gratifications of vice, extends his horizon and lifts his desires, pursues an onward course until he learns to place his aims outside of himself, and to seek satisfaction in works of public utility,--he is beyond the power of Satan: he may be redeemed from evil.
One could wish, indeed, that more decisive marks of moral development had been exhibited in the latter stages of Faust's career. But here comes in the Christian doctrine of Grace, which Goethe applies to the problem of man's destiny. Faust is represented as saved by no merit of his own, but by the interest which Heaven has in every soul in which there is the possibility of a heavenly life.
And so the new-born ascending spirit is committed by the Mater gloriosa to the tutelage of Gretchen [Margaret],--una poenitentium,--now purified from all the stains of her earthly life, to whom is given the injunction:--
"Lift thyself up to higher spheres!
When he divines, he'll follow thee."
And the Mystic Choir chants the epilogue which embodies the moral of the play:--
"All that is perishing
Types the ideal;
Dream of our cherishing
Thus becomes real.