Sp. Art thou he that called?
Thou trembling worm!
Faust. Yes; I’m he; am Faust, thy peer.
Sp. Peer of the Spirit thou comprehendest—not of me!
Faust. What! not of thee! Of whom, then? I, the image of Deity itself, and not even thy peer?“
No, indeed, Mr. Faust, thou dost not include within thyself the totality of the practical world, but only that part thereof which thou dost comprehend—only thy vocation, and hark! “It knocks!”
Oh, death! I see, ’t is my vocation; indeed, “It is my famulus!”
And this, too, is merely a delusion; this great mystery of the practical world shrinks to this dimension—a bread-professorship.
It would seem so; for no theory of the practical world is possible without the ability to know truth. As individual, you may imitate the individual, as the brute his kind, and thus transmit a craft; but you cannot seize the practical world in transparent forms and present it as a harmonious totality to your fellow-man, for that would require that these transparent intellectual forms should possess objective validity—and this they have not, according to your conviction. And so it cannot be helped.
But see what a despicable thing it is to be a bread-professor!