Disgusted with the useless quest after that science which deals only with phenomena and their material causes, he turns to magic, as he does in the old legend; but it is here no diabolic medieval wizardry which shall enable him to summon the devil, for, as we shall see, Faust does not summon the devil; Mephistopheles comes to him uncalled. Goethe has merely used this motive of magic to intimate attainment of perfect knowledge of Nature through the might of genius--that revelation of the inner secrets of the universe which he himself, in what he calls the 'Titanic, heaven-storming' period of his life, believed to be attainable by human genius in communion with Nature. 'Nature and Genius' was the watchword of the followers of Rousseau and the apostles of the Sturm und Drang gospel--a return to and communion with Nature, such as Wordsworth preached and practised, and such as Byron also preached but did not practise. Only to the human spirit in full communion with the spirit of Nature, of which it is a part, are revealed her mysteries. All other means, as Faust tells us, are useless. Mysterious even in the open day Nature within her veil withdraws from view. What to thy spirit she will not display Cannot be wrenched from her with crowbar or with screw. Faust turns from his dreary little world of books and charts and retorts and skeletons. He opens the window and gazes at the moon floating in her full glory through the heaven. His heart is filled with a yearning to be 'made one with Nature,' and in words which remind one of certain lines of Wordsworth he exclaims: O might I on some mountain height, Encircled in thy holy light, With spirits hover round crags and caves, O'er the meadows float on the moonlight's waves. Then, turning from Nature, he casts once more a look around his dreary cell: Ah me, this dungeon still I see, This drear accursèd masonry, Where e'en the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes, Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, grey with dust, Which to the vaultèd ceiling creep Against the smoky paper thrust, With glasses, boxes, round me stacked And instruments together hurled, Ancestral lumber stuffed and packed-- Such is my world! And what a world!... Alas! In living Nature's stead, Where God his human creatures set, In smoke and mould the fleshless dead And bones of beasts surround me yet. He takes up the book of the Mystic astrologer Nostradamus and sees in it the sign, or cipher, of the universe. As he gazes a wondrous vision reveals itself: the mystic lines of the cipher seem to live and move and to form one living whole; and in spirit he beholds the Powers of Nature ascending and descending and reaching to each other golden vessels filled with the waters of life and wafting with their wings blessing and harmony through the universe.