We have seen
in the character of Cornelius in _Marius the Epicurean_ "some inward
standard ... of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various
elements of the period." Here is the extreme opposite. There is no
divine discontent in him, nor longing for happier things. He would never
have said that he would climb to heaven upon a ladder of razor edges.
There is nothing of the fallen angel about him at all, for he is a
spirit perfectly content with an intolerable past, present, and future.
Before the throne of God he swaggers with the same easy insolence as in
Martha's garden. He is the very essence and furthest reach of paganism.
So we have this curious fact, that Marlowe's Faust is the pagan and
Mephistophilis the idealist; while Goethe reverses the order, making
paganism incarnate in the fiend and idealism in the nobler side of the
man. It is a far truer and more natural story of life than that which
had suggested it; for in the soul of man there is ever a hunger and
thirst for the highest, however much he may abuse his soul. At the
worst, there remains always that which "a man may waste, desecrate,
never quite lose.
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