But Faust is not yet wholly delivered from evil; his activity is useful, indeed, but it lacks the finer grace of charity. He commissions Mephistopheles to destroy the cottage of old Philemon and Baucis, which stands in the way of his territorial improvements. It is the last crime of the unregenerate will. The four gray women—Care and Blame and Want and Crime—now assail him; but there is virtue in him to the last. However it may be with himself, grant only that ages hence the children of men, free and happy, may dwell upon the soil which he has saved for their place of labor and of love,—grant but this, and even in the anticipation of it he is made possessor of the highest bliss. Nor indeed is higher permitted to man on earth. And now that Faust has at last found satisfaction, and said to the passing moment, "Stay, thou art so fair," the time has come for Mephistopheles to claim his soul. But in this very aspiration after the perfect joy of others—not his own—Faust is forever delivered from the Evil One. The gray old man lies stretched upon the sand. Higher powers than those of his own will take him, guard him, lead him forward. The messengers of God bear away his immortal part. All Holy Hermits, all Holy Innocents, all Holy Virgins, the less and the greater Angels, and redeemed women who have sinned and sorrowed and have been purified, aid in his ultimate purification. It is the same thought which was interpreted in a lower key when Wilhelm Meister's fate was intrusted to Natalia. Usefulness is good; activity is good: but over all these should soar and brood the Divine graces of life, and love the chief of these. That which leads us farther than all the rest is what Goethe names "the imperishable womanly grace," that of love. And so the great mystery-play reaches its close. [Pg 6396]