Goethe, then, was under no illusions as to the darker aspects of the world. He knew and felt that an awful conflict goes on between two mighty powers, the one fair and beneficent, the other hideous and malign. But he convinced himself--or, perhaps, it would be truer to say, the conviction grew in his mind--that this struggle is not necessarily eternal; that in spirits which, in spite of failure and suffering, have always an inward longing for light and freedom, the good power ultimately triumphs, and crushes evil for ever under its feet. To have a great conviction was in Goethe’s case to be conscious of an urgent demand for its expression. Some time or other, therefore (perhaps in 1788, when, at Rome, he wrote of “the plan” having been “made”), it must have occurred to him that “Faust” provided him with precisely such a medium of expression as he needed. Faust has turned from all the highest influences to which his spirit in its inmost depths responds. In a mood of despair he has abandoned his ideals, and is seeking through the world for some rapture that will satisfy his cravings. So far, he is a type of humanity in one aspect of its life. But--Goethe seems to have asked himself--why should not Faust be a type of humanity in a larger, greater sense? If it is the destiny of evil to be conquered and to pass away, might not Faust become the representative of this sublime world-process? In his deep, imaginative spirit might we not see the entire course of the struggle, from the moment when evil seems to attain supremacy until that in which it will have to give way to the ultimate and absolute sway of good? Nothing short of this was Goethe’s aim in his final conception of “Faust.” The poem was to embody all that his thought and his experience of life had taught him as to the spiritual history and the spiritual destiny of man.