less unhappy than Goethe's Faust. He had studied and taught for forty years, and knew in the end just as little as Faust; an old woman, his neighbour, who had learned nothing, and merely had faith in Vishnu and the old myths, was perfectly happy. The Brahman was well aware that he too would have been happy had he remained stupid, but neither he nor anyone else would have been willing to change places with the happy old woman. Voltaire caustically enquires why intelligence and happiness should be thus contrasted, but cannot furnish an answer.
Metaphysical speculation devours itself and others. Mihailovskii, borrowing an expression from Turgenev, terms it "self-devouring." There is a remedy for the trouble, the remedy recommended by Chrysostom to a disciple suffering from the malady of speculation, and it is to have a wife and children. This, says Mihailovskii, is practical counsel, for it prescribes that man shall not live for himself alone, but shall concern himself for others. The Brahman and the old woman are both defective, both impossible, both victims of social institutions; they are not complete human beings, but merely parts of the social organism. The Brahman's old neighbour works and does nothing else, just as Wagner, Faust's famulus, does nothing but work, seeing that his only function is to acquire knowledge of facts The Brahman and Faust, no less than the old woman and Wagner, are not complete human beings. They are all invalids; they all suffer from hypertrophy of some particular organ, which undergoes excessive development pari passu with neglect of the other organs. If we are to remain human in our study of science, we must ot like the Brahman and Faust endeavour to transcend the limits of the knowable, but we must be equally careful to avoid becoming like Wagner enslaved by sensual empiricism. Wagner, too, ceased to be human, for it was he who endeavoured to construct the homunculus. Faust did not follow Wagner in this unnatural aberration, but Faust himself succumbed to the folly of metaphysics.
In the second part of Faust, Goethe attempted to solve the problem. The allegorical struggle with the forces of nature, says Mihailovskii, is magnificent; the endeavour to be useful is morally good—but it fails. The principle of utility is no less inadequate than are all the other special criteria, such as truth, beauty, justice, etc. The only sound criterion of
