Enter a Student.

Student. I am but fresh arrived to-day, And come my best respects to pay, To one whose name, from boor to Kaiser, None, without veneration, mention.

Mephistopheles. I feel obliged by your attention! You see a man than other men no wiser: Have you made inquiry elsewhere?

Student. Beseech you, sir, be my adviser! I come with money to spend and spare, With fresh young blood, and a merry heart, On my college career to start: My mother sent me, not without a tear, To get some needful schooling here.

Mephistopheles. A better place you could not find.

Student. To speak the truth, ’tis not much to my mind. Within these narrow cloister walls, These antiquated Gothic halls, I feel myself but ill at ease; No spot of green I see, no trees, And ’mid your formal rows of benches, I almost seem to lose my senses.

Mephistopheles. That all depends on custom. Don’t you see How a young babe at first is slow To know its mother’s breast; but soon With joy it strains the milky boon; So you anon will suck nutrition From Wisdom’s breasts with blest fruition.

Student. I yearn to do so even now; But, in the first place, tell me how?

Mephistopheles. My help is yours, or great or small; But choose your Faculty, first of all.

Student. I aim at culture, learning, all That men call science on the ball Of earth, or in the starry tent Of heaven; all Nature high and low, Broad and deep, I seek to know.

Mephistopheles. There you are on the proper scent; Only beware of too much distraction.

Student. With soul and body I’m girt for action, And yet I cannot choose but praise A little freedom and merriment, On pleasant summer holidays.

Mephistopheles. Redeem the time, for fast it fleets away, But order rules the hour it cannot stay. Therefore ’tis plain that you must pass First of all through the logic class. There will your mind be postured rightly, Laced up in Spanish buskins tightly, That with caution and care, as wisdom ought, It may creep along the path of thought, And not with fitful flickering glow Will o’ the wisp it to and fro. There, too, if you hear the gentleman through The term, to every lecture true, You’ll learn that a stroke of human thinking, Which you had practised once as free And natural as eating and drinking, Cannot be made without one! two! three! True, it should seem that the tissue of thought Is like a web by cunning master wrought, Where one stroke moves a thousand threads, The shuttle shoots backwards and forwards between, The slender threads flow together unseen, And one with the others thousand-fold weds: Then steps the philosopher forth to show How of necessity it must be so: If the first be so, the second is so, And therefore the third and the fourth is so; And unless the first and the second before be, The third and the fourth can never more be. So schoolmen teach and scholars believe, But none of them yet ever learned to weave. He who strives to know a thing well Must first the spirit within expel, Then can he count the parts in his hand, Only without the spiritual band. Encheiresis naturæ, ’tis clept in Chemistry, Thus laughing at herself, albeit she knows not why.

Student. I must confess I can’t quite comprehend you.

Mephistopheles. In this respect time by and by will mend you, When you have learned the crude mixed masses To decompose, and rank them in their classes.

Student. I feel as stupid to all he has said, As a mill-wheel were whirling round in my head.

Mephistopheles. After logic, first of all, To the study of metaphysics fall! There strive to know what ne’er was made To go into a human head; For what is within and without its command A high-sounding word is always at hand. But chiefly, for the first half year, Let order in all your studies appear; Five lectures a-day, that no time be lost, And with the clock be at your post! Come not, as some, without preparation, But con his paragraphs o’er and o’er, To be able to say, when you hear his oration, That he gives you his book, and nothing more; Yet not the less take down his words in writing, As if the Holy Spirit were inditing!

Student. I shall not quickly give you cause To repeat so weighty a clause; For what with black on white is written, We carry it home, a sure possession.

Mephistopheles. But, as I said, you must choose a profession.

Student. With Law, I must confess, I never was much smitten.

Mephistopheles. I should be loath to force your inclination, Myself have some small skill in legislation; For human laws and rights from sire to son, Like an hereditary ill, flow on; From generation dragged to generation, And creeping slow from place to place. Reason is changed to nonsense, good to evil, Art thou a grandson, woe betide thy case! Of Law they prate, most falsely clept the Civil, But for that right, which from our birth we carry, ’Tis not a word found in their Dictionary.

Student. Your words have much increased my detestation. O happy he, to whom such guide points out the way! And now, I almost feel an inclination To give Theology the sway.

Mephistopheles. I have no wish to lead you astray. As to this science, ’tis so hard to eschew The false way, and to hit upon the true, And so much hidden poison lurks within, That’s scarce distinguished from the medicine. Methinks that here ’twere safest done That you should listen but to one, And jurare in verba magistri Is the best maxim to assist thee. Upon the whole, I counsel thee To stick to words as much as may be, For such will still the surest way be Into the temple of certainty.

Student. Yet in a word some sense must surely lurk.

Mephistopheles. Yes, but one must not go too curiously to work; For, just when our ideas fail us, A well-coined word may best avail us. Words are best weapons in disputing, In system-building and uprooting, To words most men will swear, though mean they ne’er so little, From words one cannot filch a single tittle.

Student. Pardon me, if I trespass on your time, Though to make wisdom speak seems scarce a crime; On medicine, too, I am concerned To hear some pregnant word from one so learned. Three years, God knows, is a short time, And we have far to go, and high to climb; A wise man’s fingers pointing to the goal Will save full many a groan to many a laboring soul.

Mephistopheles. [aside] I’m weary of this dry pedantic strain, ’Tis time to play the genuine devil again. [Aloud.] The spirit of Medicine ’tis not hard to seize: The world, both great and small, you seek to know, That in the end you may let all things go As God shall please. In vain you range around with scientific eyes, Each one at length learns only what he can; But he who knows the passing hour to prize, That is the proper man. A goodly shape and mien you vaunt, And confidence, I guess, is not your want, Trust but yourself, and, without more ado, All other men will straightway trust you too. But chiefly be intent to get a hold O’ the women’s minds: their endless Oh! and Ah! So thousandfold, In all its change, obeys a single law, And, if with half a modest air you come, You have them all beneath your thumb. A title first must purchase their reliance, That you have skill surpassing vulgar science; Thus have you hold at once of all the seven ends, Round which another year of labor spends. Study to press the pulse right tenderly, And, with a sly and fiery eye, To hold her freely round the slender waist, That you may see how tightly she is laced.

Student. This seems to promise better; here we see Where to apply and how to use the knife.

Mephistopheles. Gray, my good friend, is every theory, But green the golden tree of life.

Student. I vow I feel as in a dream; my brain Contains much more than it can comprehend; Some other day may I come back again, To hear your wisdom to the end?

Mephistopheles. What I can teach all men are free to know.

Student. One little favor grant me ere I go; It were my boast to take home on this page [Presenting a leaf from his album.] Some sapient maxim from a man so sage.

Mephistopheles. Right willingly.

[He writes, and gives back the book.

Student. [reads] Eritis sicut Deus scientes bonum et malum.

[He closes the book reverently, and takes his leave.

Mephistopheles. Follow the ancient saw, and my cousin, the famous old Serpent, Right soon shalt thou have cause, at thy godlike knowledge to tremble!

Enter Faust.

Faust. Now, whither bound?

Mephistopheles. Where’er it pleases you; The world, both great and small, we view. O! how it will delight, entrance you, The merry reel of life to dance through!

Faust. My beard, I am afraid, is rather long; And without easy manners, gentle breeding, I fear there is small chance of my succeeding; I feel so awkward ’mid the busy throng, So powerless and so insignificant, And what all others have I seem to want.

Mephistopheles. Bah! never fear; the simple art of living Is just to live right on without misgiving!

Faust. But how shall we commence our course? I see nor coach, nor groom, nor horse.

Mephistopheles. We only need your mantle to unfold, And it shall waft us on the wind. Who makes with me this journey bold No bulky bundle busks behind; A single puff of inflammable air, And from the ground we nimbly fare. Lightly we float. I wish the best of cheer To Doctor Faustus on his new career.