melancholy sense of the vanity and nothingness of life, and the
thousandfold pity and despondency which go to swell that sad condition,
are bound to create a reaction more or less violent towards that sheer
worldliness which is the essence of paganism. In Bunyan's _Pilgrim's
Progress_ it is immediately after his floundering in the Slough of
Despond that Christian is accosted by Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Precisely the
same experience is recorded here in Faust, although the story is subtler
and more complex than that of Bunyan. The _Erdgeist_ which comes to the
saddened scholar is a noble spirit, vivifying and creative. It is the
world in all its glorious fullness of meaning, quite as true an idealism
as that which is expressed in the finest spirit of the Greeks. But for
Faust it is too noble. His morbid gloom has enervated him, and the call
of the splendid earth is beyond him. So there comes, instead of it, a
figure as much poorer than that of Worldly Wiseman as the _Erdgeist_ is
richer. Wagner represents the poor commonplace world of the wholly
unideal. It is infinitely beneath the soul of Faust, and yet for the
time it conquers him, being nearer to his mood. Thus Mephistopheles
finds his opportunity. The scholar, embittered with the sense that
knowledge is denied to him, will take to mere action; and the action
will not be great like that which the _Erdgeist_ would have prompted,
but poor and unsatisfying to any nobler spirit than that of Wagner.

The third incident which we may quote is that of _Walpurgis-Night_. Some
critics would omit this part, which, they say, "has naught of interest
in bearing on the main plot of the poem." Nothing could be more mistaken
than such a judgment. In the _Walpurgis-Night_ we have the play ending
in that sheer paganism which is the counterpart to Easter Day at the
beginning. Walpurgis has a strange history in German folklore. It is
said that Charlemagne, conquering the German forests for the Christian
faith, drove before him a horde of recalcitrant pagans, who took a last