So far as we can judge from the fragments, Lessing’s Faust was to be driven to the pact solely by his thirst for knowledge. Goethe was to create the eternal type, the man who seeks to encompass the universe, who demands complete and ultimate satisfaction for the limitless craving of the human soul. The first impulse to create a Faust drama of his own came to Goethe from a marionette version of the popular drama, a performance of which he saw in Leipzig in his student days, for he never saw it performed by living actors, and neither the Folk book nor Marlowe’s tragedy came into his hands until much later. It was a task which occupied him all his life. His original draft, the _Urfaust_, has only been discovered in manuscript in recent times, but in the year 1790 he published _Faust. A Fragment._ The first part of the completed tragedy appeared in 1808, and the second part in 1833, a year after Goethe’s death. The fundamental difference between Goethe’s conception of the problem and all that had gone before is typified in the fact that it is not a _pact_ into which Faust enters with Mephisto, but a _wager_. There are indeed two wagers. In the Prologue in Heaven, Mephisto discusses Faust with the Lord and says,[13] “What will you bet? There’s still a chance to gain him, If unto me full leave you give, Gently upon _my_ road to train him!” The Lord enters into the spirit of the thing and replies, “As long as he on earth shall live, So long I make no prohibition, While Man’s desires and aspirations stir, He cannot choose but err. * * * * * A good man, through obscurest aspiration, Has still an instinct of the one true way.” The opening monologue, which shows Faust in his study fighting with the realization that “here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before,” is an echo of the initial monologue of Marlowe’s tragedy, which came to Goethe through the medium of the popular drama and the puppet-show. Hitherto the pact had been for a definite period of twenty-four years, during which Faust was to enjoy all that the Devil could give him and then to fulfil without hope of mercy his part of the bargain. Goethe’s Faust, however, demands more than the fulfilment of transitory desires. He wants to grasp the moment of supreme satisfaction, and if Mephisto cannot give him that, Faust’s soul remains his own:— “When on an idler’s bed I stretch myself in quiet, There let, at once, my record end! Canst thou with lying flattery rule me, Until, self-pleased, myself I see,— Canst thou with rich enjoyment fool me, Let that day be the last for me! The bet I offer!... * * * * * When thus I hail the Moment flying: ‘Ah, still delay—thou art so fair!’ Then bind me in thy bonds undying, My final ruin then declare!”