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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

impressions used and trusted as the first way out of the cloud. And we do work on “ because we must.” Pushed from behind, beckoned to from the beyond, so has the world written its poems and solved the problems of its days.

The manager continues, not waiting for reply. The poet has no lack of material. As to the German stage, it is open as a fair arena for thought of all degrees. It wel­comes what may come, however unlike what went before; so without restriction the poet may take the universe: “ And all you find be sure to show it.”

“ The stars in any number,

Beasts, birds, trees, rocks and all such lumber; hire, water, darkness, day and night.”

And he finished his counsel and direction with those notable words, that thus within the little sphere of their stage shall appear that greater one, ‘‘The Circle of Creation;” and all things brought thus into their guiding hands, in the action of the play, shall move as they shall direct, “From Heaven across the world to Hell.”

The phase opens a line of thought which can only be expressed by the interpre­tation of the entire drama. To speak of it briefly is to show only its significance as the suggestion of what is to be looked for in the play. A careless reading seems to imply that the action of the play beginning nobly, on the heights of Heaven, is to end in destruction. Such a course would be true enough to much of life as we see it, and as the first part of P'aust ends with the death of Margaret and the grief of Faust, and as many have never looked into the second part, it has been a popular impression that the name of P'aust is synonymous with evil and'damnation. But there is a second part to this drama to which the first is but introduction; and here, following to its close, the reader is led along an upward pathway, which is opened step by step by the struggle and the upward movement of Faust, as upon the earth, among men, he works out his salvation.

The opening scenes are an introduction to the drama. Their completion lies in it close. Putting the two together we have Goethe’s “ Circle of Creation,” and com­prehend what he meant when he said to his friend Eckermann that this much consid­ered and questioned line was “ not an idea, only the course of the action.”

In this scene the manager was talking to two highly intelligent people, and this closing phrase is the gesture by which he shows them his idea. He lifts his hand and sweeps a part of his circle from heaven to earth, and that, for his companions, is enough.

A circle is a mathematical figure; it belongs to nature, not to invention. It can not be altered; if perfect, from whatever point it begins to that point it must return in its completion.

If the elements of this play begin above, and if the play itself, as the poet insists, is to be a unity, showing the Circle of Creation in its imagined perfection, although such art may surpass most human living, it is evident that the progress of life must carry the elements of existence downward to earth and upward again toward heaven. This is the progress of the P'aust drama. The theme of the relationships of man to nature, to the invisible world and the visible, to man and to woman in society, government, ideal culture and art, in all aspiration for the beyond and all right usage of the earthly and human; this theme is pursued as P'aust passes from scene to scene to the close.

As we turn the page the curtain, falling on this “ Prelude on the Stage,” rises directly upon “The Prologue in Heaven.”

“Who e’er aspires unvveariedly,” says Ariel in the opening of the second part, “ is worthy of redeeming.”

With late years we have had the rendering of this theme in the exquisite music of Robert Schumann. I.ending it to Goethe’s words the two in harmony show this Circle of Creation in the power of its re-ascension; but even without that, in the drama alone, the closing pages are linked to those of the introduction, and by them we comprehend what was in Goethe’s mind when in the empty theater he set his manager, his poet and his wise man, the jester, to call into being and announce to us this drama of life.