He who goes in with the rest of men in their sorrow and their
rejoicing cannot but find the meaning of Easter morning for himself. It
is a festival of earth and the spring, an earth idealised, whose spirit
is incarnate in the risen Christ. Faust longs to share in that, and on
Easter Eve tries in vain to read his Gospel and to feel its power. But
the only cure for such morbid introspectiveness as his, is to cast
oneself generously into the common life of man, and the refusal to do
this invites the pagan devil.
Another point of interest is the coming of the _Erdgeist_ immediately
after the _Weltschmerz_. The sorrow that has filled his heart with its
melancholy sense of the vanity and nothingness of life, and the
thousandfold pity and despondency which go to swell that sad condition,
are bound to create a reaction more or less violent towards that sheer
worldliness which is the essence of paganism. In Bunyan's _Pilgrim's
Progress_ it is immediately after his floundering in the Slough of
Despond that Christian is accosted by Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Precisely the
same experience is recorded here in Faust, although the story is subtler
and more complex than that of Bunyan.
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