Canst thou with rich enjoyment fool me,
Let that day be the last for me!
The bet I offer!...
* * * * *
When thus I hail the Moment flying:
‘Ah, still delay—thou art so fair!’
Then bind me in thy bonds undying,
My final ruin then declare!”
That is the important point. Mephisto plunges Faust in the pleasures of revelry, love, power and classic beauty, but in spite of his burning craving for supreme happiness, he is incapable of enjoying the blissful moment. There never is a fleeting moment to which he can say “Ah, still delay—thou art so fair!” There is no absolute truth or absolute beauty, and therefore no absolute happiness. The blissful moment does not exist, and the only satisfaction which man is free to enjoy is in striving after an imaginary absolute. Faust never becomes absorbed in a moment of ecstasy and therefore the Devil loses the wager. By using his power unselfishly to further the lot of others, he is the instrument of his own salvation; he redeems himself by an ever higher and purer form of activity, as Goethe himself said, and dies with the conviction that
“He only earns his freedom and existence,