translated by Torsten Schwanke
Dark Gallery
Mephistopheles
Why do you draw me into these gloomy corridors?
Is there not pleasure enough in there,
In the dense, colourful courtyard bustle
Opportunity for fun and deceit?
Faust
Don't tell me that, you wore it out in the old days
Long since worn on the soles;
But now your to and fro
Is but to keep me from my word.
But I am tormented to do:
The marshal and the chamberlain drive me now.
The emperor wills, it must be done at once,
He wants to see Helen and Paris before him;
The pattern of men and women
In clear figures he wants to see.
Quickly to work! I must not break my word.
Mephistopheles
It was foolish, reckless to promise.
Faust
Thou hast not thought, journeyman,
Where your arts will lead us;
First we made him rich,
Now we shall amuse him.
Mephistopheles
You think it will happen at once;
Here we stand before steep steps,
Reaching into a stranger's domain,
Thou dost sacrilegiously run up new debts,
Thinking to conjure up Helen as easily
Like the paper ghost of florins.
With witches' charmes, with ghostly goblins,
I am at the service of keel-headed dwarfs;
But devil-lovers, though not to be scolded,
They cannot be considered heroines.
Faust
Here we have the old lyre‘s note!
With you, one always ends up in the unknown.
You are the father of all obstacles,
For every means you want a new reward.
With a few murmurs, I know, it's done;
As one looks around, you bring them to the spot.
Mephistopheles
The heathen people are none of my business,
They dwell in their own hell;
But there is a remedy.
Faust
Speak, and without delay!
Mephistopheles
I hate to discover a higher secret.
Goddesses are enthroned in solitude,
Around them no place, still less a time;
To speak of them is an embarrassment.
The mothers they are!...
Faust
Mothers!...
Mephistopheles
Do you shudder?
Faust
The mothers! Mothers! It sounds so strange!
Mephistopheles
So it is. Goddesses, unknown
To you mortals, not gladly called by us.
For their dwelling you may dig deepest;
It is your own fault that we need them.
Faust
Where to?
Mephistopheles
No way! Into the untrodden,
Not to be entered; a way to the unasked for,
Not to be asked. Are you ready?
Not locks are, not bolts to push away,
Thou art driven about by loneliness!
Hast thou a notion of dreariness and loneliness?!
Faust
Thou wouldst, I think, spare such sayings;
Here it smells like a witch's kitchen,
Of a time long past.
Must I not consort with the world?
Learn emptiness, teach emptiness?
I spoke reasonably, as I looked on,
The contradiction sounded twice as loud;
Must I even from vile pranks
To solitude, to savagery escape
And, not to fail altogether, to live alone,
To the devil give me up at last.
Mephistopheles
And had you swum the ocean,
The boundless there beheld,
Thou wouldst see wave upon wave there,
Even if you were afraid of sinking.
You would see some seed in the green
Of the still seas, you'd see dolphins brimming;
You'll see clouds drifting, sun, moon and stars,
You'll see nothing in the empty distance,
Nor hear the step you take,
Nor find a firm place where thou mayest rest.
Faust
Thou speakest first of all mystagogues,
Who ever deceived faithful neophytes;
Only the other way round.
Thou send'st me into the void,
That there I may increase art as power;
Treat me that I, like that cat,
May scrape your chestnuts from your embers.
Go on! we want to fathom it,
In your nothingness I hope to find all.
Mephistopheles
I praise thee ere thou part from me,
And see well that thou knowest the devil;
Here, take this key.
Faust
The little thing!
Mephistopheles
First take hold of it and don't hold it in low esteem.
Faust
It grows in my hand! it shines, flashes!
Mephistopheles
Do you now soon perceive what is possessed in him?
The key will scent the right place,
Follow it down, it will lead you to the mothers.
Faust
To the mothers! It always hits me like a blow!
What is the word that I do not like to hear?
Mephistopheles
Are you limited, that new word disturbs you?
Do you only want to hear what you've already heard?
Let nothing disturb thee, however it may sound further,
Already used to the most wonderful things.
Faust
But I do not seek my salvation in stiffness,
Shuddering is mankind's best part;
As the world may tease its sensibilities,
It feels the monstrous deeply.
Mephistopheles
Sink then! I could also say: climb!
It is all the same. Escape from the state of being
Into the realms unbound by form!
Revel in what has long since ceased to exist;
The drifting twines like clouds,
Swing the key, keep them at bay!
Faust
Well! Firmly grasping it, I feel new strength,
My breast enlarged, towards the great work.
Mephistopheles
A glowing tripod proclaims to thee at last,
Thou art in the deepest, deepest pit.
By its glow thou shalt see the mothers,
Some sit, others stand and walk,
As it comes. Formation, transformation,
The eternal Logos' eternal entertainment.
Floating with images of all creatures;
They see thee not, for they see but shadows.
Then take heart, for the danger is great,
And go straight for that tripod,
Touch it with your key!
Mephistopheles
That's right!
He joins, he follows as a faithful servant;
Steadily you rise, happiness lifts you up,
And before they know it, you're back with him.
And once thou hast brought him here,
Thou call'st hero and heroine out of the night,
The first that dares that deed;
It is done, and thou hast done it.
Then henceforth, after magical treatment,
The smoke of incense must rise to gods.
Faust
And now what?
Mephistopheles
Your being strive down;
Sinking stamping, stamping you rise again.
If only the key will serve him best!
Curious am I whether he will come again.
Brightly lit halls
Chamberlain
You still owe us the ghost scene;
Get to it! the master is impatient.
Marshall
Just now the most gracious asks about it;
You! do not hesitate to the majesty's disgrace.
Mephistopheles
Is that why my companion has gone away?
He already knows how to begin,
And labours in secret silence,
Must take special care;
For he who would raise the treasure, the beautiful,
Needs the highest art, the magic of the wise.
Marshall
What you need for arts is all the same:
The emperor wants everything to be ready.
Blonde one
A word, my lord! You see a clear face,
But it's not like that in the summer!
There sprout a hundred brownish red spots,
That cover the white skin to your displeasure.
A remedy!
Mephistopheles
What a pity! Such a shining sweetheart
Spotted in May like your panther kittens.
Take frog's spawn, toad's tongues, cohobated,
Carefully distilled in the fullest moonlight
And when it wanes, spread it clean,
Spring is coming, the specks are gone.
Brown one
The crowd is pressing to surround you.
I ask for means! A frostbitten foot
Prevents me from walking as well as dancing,
Even clumsily I move to greet.
Mephistopheles
Allow a kick from my foot.
Brown one
Well, that happens between lovers.
Mephistopheles
My footstep, child, has greater things in store.
To like, what one also suffered;
Foot heals foot, so it is with all limbs.
Come on! Take heed! You shall not return it.
Brown one
Woe! Woe! That burns! That was a hard kick,
Like a horse's hoof.
Mephistopheles
The cure you take with you.
You may now dance as you please,
At table revel with your loved one.
Lady
Let me through! My pains are too great,
They are seething in my deepest heart;
Till yesterday he sought salvation in my looks,
He gossips with her and turns his back on me.
Mephistopheles
It's a bit dubious, but hear me.
You must approach him quietly;
Take this charcoal, paint him a line
On sleeve, cloak, shoulder, as is fitting;
He feels in his heart a sweet pang of remorse.
But you must swallow the coal at once,
Bring not wine, nor water to his lips;
He sighs at your door tonight.
Lady
Is it not poison?
Mephistopheles
Respect where it is due!
Far would you have to run for such coal;
It comes from a funeral pyre,
Which otherwise we more diligently stoke.
Page
I'm in love, they don't think I'm ripe.
Mephistopheles
I no longer know where to listen.
Don't bet your fortune on the youngest.
The aged know you well.
New ones again! What a hard fight!
I help myself at last with truth;
The worst remedy! The need is great.
O mothers, mothers! Let Faust go!
The lights are already burning dimly in the hall,
The whole court moves at once.
Properly I see them march in succession
Through long corridors, distant galleries.
Now! they gather in the wide space
Of the old knight's hall, it hardly holds them.
On broad walls carpets spend,
With armoury corners and niches adorn'd.
Here, I think, no magic words are needed;
The spirits find their way to the place of their own accord.
Knights' Hall
Herald
My old business, to announce the spectacle,
The spirits' secret work languishes in me;
In vain one dares, for sensible reasons
To explain the confused switching.
The chairs are already at hand;
The emperor is seated just in front of the wall;
On the wallpaper he may there contemplate
Of the great time most comfortably.
Here now sits all, lord and court in the round,
The benches crowd in the background;
Even sweetheart, in dark ghostly hours,
At sweet love's page hath found a pleasant place.
And so, since all have taken their seats,
We are ready; the spirits may come!
Astrologer
Let the drama begin,
The lord commands, you walls open!
Nothing hinders any more, here is magic at hand:
The carpets vanish, as if rolled by fire;
The wall splits, it turns back,
A deep theatre seems to rise,
Mysterious a glow to light us up,
And I mount the proscenium.
Mephistopheles
From here I hope for general favour,
The devil's art of speech is to blow in.
You know the beat in which the stars walk,
And will masterly understand my whisper.
Astrologer
By miraculous power all here appears for show,
Massive enough, an ancient temple.
Like Atlas that once supported the heavens,
Here stand rows and rows of pillars;
They may well bear the weight of the rock,
Since two already carry a great building.
Architect
That would be antique! I wouldn't know how to praise it,
It should be called crude and supercilious.
Crude is called noble, unhelpful is called great.
Narrow pillars I love, striving, boundless;
A pointed arched zenith lifts the spirit;
Such a building builds us up most of all.
Astrologer
Receive with reverence star-filled hours;
By magic word be reason bound;
But far away move free
Glorious, wandering phantasy.
With eyes now behold what you boldly desire,
Impossible it is, therefore worthy of belief.
Astrologer
In priestly garb, garlanded, a miracle man,
Who now performs what he confidently began.
A tripod rises with him from a hollow tomb,
I can smell the fragrance of incense in the bowl.
He prepares to bless the great work;
From now on, only good things can come.
Faust
In your name, mothers enthroned
In the boundless, dwell eternally lonely,
And yet companionable. Around your head hover
Images of life, lively, without life.
What once was, in all glamour and shine,
It stirs there, for it wants to be eternal.
And you distribute it, all-powerful forces,
To the tent of day, to the vault of night.
Some are gripped by life's gentle course,
Others the bold magician seeks;
In rich gifts he lets, full of trust,
What each desires, the wondrous see.
Astrologer
The glowing key barely touches the bowl,
A hazy mist immediately covers the room;
It creeps in, it billows like clouds,
Stretched, clenched, twisted, divided, paired.
And now recognise a ghostly masterpiece!
As they walk, they make music.
From airy tones a know-not-like springs,
As they draw, all becomes melody.
The column shaft, even the triglyph sounds,
I even think the whole temple sings.
The hazy descends; out of the light pile
A beautiful youth emerges in time.
Here my office is silent, I need not name him,
Who should not know fair Paris!
First Lady
O! what a splendour of blossoming youth!
Second Lady
Like a peach fresh and full of juice!
Third Lady
The finely drawn, sweetly swollen lips!
Fourth Lady
Would you like to sip from such a cup?
Fifth Lady
He is quite pretty, even if he is not very fine.
Sixth Lady
He could be a little more agile.
Knight
I think I feel the shepherd's servant here,
Nothing of the prince and nothing of court manners.
Another knight
Ah well! half naked the boy is beautiful,
But we must first see him in his armour!
Lady
He sits down, softly, pleasantly.
Knight
Would you be comfortable on his lap?
Other Lady
He leans his arm so daintily over his head.
Chamberlain
The loutishness! I find that unlawful!
Lady
You gentlemen know how to find fault with everything.
Other Lady
Lolling about in the Emperor's presence!
Lady
He only imagines it! He thinks he's all alone.
Other Lady
The play itself, here it should be polite.
Lady
Sleep has gently taken over the fair one.
Other Lady
He's snoring now; of course it is, perfect!
Young lady
To the incense steam what smells so mixed,
That refreshes my heart most intimately?
Older lady
Truly! A breeze penetrates deep into the mind,
It comes from him!
It is the flower of growth,
Prepared in the young man as ambrosia
And spreads atmospherically all around.
Mephistopheles
That's what she would be! I would have peace before her;
Pretty she may be, but she does not appeal to me.
Astrologer
There is nothing more for me to do this time,
As a man of honour I confess, I confess now.
Beauty is coming, and if I had tongues of fire -
Beauty has always been sung of -
To whom she appears, she is raptured from herself,
To whom she belonged, she was too highly blest.
Faust
Have I still eyes? Deep in the mind
Beauty's fountain most abundant?
My frightful walk brings blissful profit.
How the world was void to me, undiscovered!
What is it now since my priesthood?
First desirable, established, lasting!
Vanish from me the breath of life,
If I ever from thee rewean!
The shape that once enraptured me,
In magic's reflection delighted me,
Was but a foam of such beauty!
It is you to whom I have given
The impulse of all power,
The epitome of passion,
To thee inclination, love, adoration, madness!
Mephistopheles
So get a grip on yourself and don't fall out of character!
Older lady
Tall, shapely, only the head too small.
Younger lady
Look at that foot! How could it be more clumsy!
Diplomat
I have seen princesses of this kind,
I think she is beautiful from head to foot.
Courtier
She approaches the sleeper cunningly mild.
Lady
How ugly next to a youthful image!
Poet
He is illuminated by her beauty.
Lady
Endymion and Luna! As painted!
Poet
Quite right! The goddess seems to sink down,
She bends over to drink his breath;
Enviable! - A kiss! - The measure is full.
Duenna
In front of everyone! This is too great!
Faust
Terrible favour to the boy!
Mephistopheles
Quiet! Quiet!
Let the ghost do as he pleases.
Courtier
She creeps away, light-footed; he awakes.
Lady
She looks around! That's what I thought.
Courtier
He is amazed! It's a miracle what happens to him.
Lady
To her it is no miracle what she sees before her.
Courtier
With decency she turns to him.
Lady
I can tell she's taking him to task;
In such a case all men are stupid,
He probably believes that he would be the first.
Knight
Let me have her! Majestically fine!
Lady
The wooer! That's what I call mean!
Page
I'd like to be in his place!
Courtier
Who wouldn't be caught in such a net?
Lady
The jewel has passed through many a hand,
Even the pardon is quite worn out.
Other lady
From the tenth year she was no good.
Knight
Occasionally everyone takes the best;
I cling to these beautiful scraps.
Scholar
I see her clearly, but I confess freely:
It is doubtful whether it is the right one.
The present seduces into exaggeration,
I stick above all to what is written.
Then I read that she has indeed
Troy's greybeards taken in her net;
And methinks it fits here perfectly:
I am not young, and yet she pleases me.
Astrologer
No more boy! A bold heroic man,
He grasps her, who can hardly defend herself.
Strengthened arm he lifts her high up,
Will he even carry her off?
Faust
Mad fool! You dare!
Thou hearest not! stop! this is too much!
Mephistopheles
Do it yourself, the grimacing ghost!
Astrologer
Just one more word! After all that has happened,
I call the play the Rape of Helen.
Faust
What rape! Am I for nothing in this place?
Is not this key in my hand?
It led me, through horror and billow and wave
Of the lonelinesses, hither to the firm shore.
Here I find my footing! Here are realities,
From here the spirit may quarrel with spirits,
The double kingdom, the great, may prepare itself.
As far as she was, how can she be nearer!
I save her, and she is twice mine.
Daring! You mothers! Mothers! Ye must grant it!
He who has known her must not do without her.
Astrologer
What are you doing, Faust!
With violence he grasps her,
Already the shape is dimming.
He turns the key towards the youth.
Touch him! Woe is us, woe is us!
In a moment! In a moment!
Mephistopheles
There you have it! loaded with fools,
That at last comes to the devil's own hurt.
*
COMMENTARY
The three world mothers Rhea, Demeter and Persephone were called mothers in the Greek mysteries. Rhea is the daughter of Gaia and Uranos and sister and at the same time wife of Kronos, to whom she gives birth to Demeter as one of her daughters. Persephone, in turn, is the daughter of Zeus and his sister Demeter.
Goethe has the three mothers appear in the "Mothers" scene in the second part of his Faust poem. In a much more abstract form, they are also referred to in the Jewish Kabbalah. There they appear as the three world-creating basic letters Shin, Aleph and Mem.
Personally, Goethe became aware of this entire relationship with mothers from reading Plutarch. Plutarch, the Greek writer whom Goethe read, speaks of mothers. One scene in Plutarch in particular seems to have made a deep impression on Goethe's mind to have made: The Romans are at war with the Carthaginians. Nicias is Roman-minded and he wants to wrest the city of Engyion from the Carthaginians. He should therefore be handed over to the Carthaginians. Then he acts insane and runs around in the streets shouting: The mothers, the mothers persecute me! - You see from this that in the time of which Plutarch speaks, this relationship of the mothers is not associated with the ordinary sensual understanding, but with a state of human beings in which this sensual understanding is not there, brings into context. Undoubtedly, everything that Goethe read in Plutarch gave him the inspiration to introduce the expression, the idea of mothers, into Faust.
When Mephistopheles mentions the word “mothers,” Faust shudders. Faust has to descend into a realm of the soul in which Mephistopheles can no longer follow him, into a realm of the soul that leads out of the sensuality contaminated by Lucifer, to a province of the soul where the original creative powers can still be found, where the mothers of human soul power reside. The external reason for this is the desire of the Emperor, Paris and Helena to see “the model image of men and women” in “distinct forms”. Here Goethe was referring to Sachs's depiction of how a necromancer at the court of Emperor Maximilian made Helen appear. But it was the emperor himself who fell for her and was paralyzed as a result.
Faust must therefore descend to the mothers. “Into the untrodden, not to be entered; a path to the unbidden, not the too-requested” the path leads into a world of fluctuating appearances without a fixed contour:
FAUST.
The mothers! Mothers! - It sounds so strange!
MEPHISTOPHELES.
That's it too. Goddesses, unknown
To you mortals, we do not like to call them.
For their dwelling you may dig deep;
It's your fault that we need them.
FAUST.
Where is the way?
MEPHISTOPHELES.
No way! Into the untrodden,
Those not allowed to enter; a path to the uninvited,
Not too pleading. Are you ready?
Not locks not bolts are to push away,
You are driven around by loneliness.
Do you have any concept of desolation and loneliness?
FAUST.
You saved, I thought, such sayings;
It smells like a witch's kitchen here.
MEPHISTOPHELES.
And if you had swum across the ocean,
Seeing the limitless there,
So you would see wave after wave coming there,
Even if you dread doom.
You would see something. You probably look in the green
Dolphins roaming the calm seas;
You saw clouds moving, sun, moon and stars -
You will see nothing in the eternally empty distance,
Not hearing the step you take,
Find nothing solid where you rest.
FAUST.
You speak as the first of all mystagogues,
Who the faithful neophytes ever betrayed;
Just the other way around. You send me into the void,
So that I can increase art as a force there;
Always close! we want to explore it,
In your nothingness I hope to find the all.
Spatial concepts no longer make sense in this world where everything is in fluid motion. Above and below lose their meaning here. Behind the finished creation, Faust steps back into the realm of the forces that brought this creation into being.
Sink then! I could also say: climb!
It doesn't matter. Escape from what has come into being
Empires unbound in the structure!
Mephistopheles can still give Faust the key to this realm, but he cannot enter himself - and this means that Faust can escape Luciferian grasp for the first time!
The journey to the mothers takes Faust to where the human soul has found its origins. Here is the source from which the three most essential soul forces, thinking, feeling and willing, flow. There are three mothers that Faust meets here. You can see how Goethe leads us here into a world that goes much deeper than anything that depth psychology can grasp. Here, Goethe shows us a comprehensive psychology of the human soul, not in abstract terms, but in vivid images.
Faust's mystical immersion in the depths of his own soul leads him to the archetype of the human soul, as it was once created by the gods. From here he can bring Helen, who expresses this eternal archetype in her beautiful nature, into consciousness - so strongly, so intensely that through a kind of mass suggestion it becomes present to the entire assembly at the imperial court, with which Mephistopheles helps a lot, but also through this in turn everything is subject to his control. What first flashed past like a fleeting glow in the witch's kitchen is now clearly in Faust's soul. And yet, he is not yet able to truly unite with this eternal human soul. As soon as he wants to touch Helen, driven by renewed desires, the picture atomizes in a powerful explosion and Faust falls to the ground, paralyzed and unconscious.
This is the danger of all mysticism that penetrates into the inner depths of the soul, that whatever is brought up to consciousness from there must be carried through the Luciferic sphere again. The highest things can again be seized by the lowest desires - with fatal consequences for the soul's life. These overpowering soul forces can strike the consciousness like a powerful electric shock if it cannot surrender to them completely pure and free of sensual fervor. Just look at some mystical writings and notice what lustful fantasies are often mixed into them.
Regarding the mothers that Goethe speaks of, the philosopher also points to the teachings of the Orphics, who in turn influenced Pherecydes of Syros. The Orphics spoke of three supersexual primal principles of the world, which they called Zeus, Chronos and Chaos. They should not be directly equated with the gods of the same name in Greek mythology. They are mothers in the sense that the whole world is born from them. In Pherecydes this became the three primary principles Chronos, Zeus and Chton, which one can only identify with time, space and matter in a very abstract and inauthentic way when one moves from the imaginative image life to the thought life.
In the different cultures of the peoples, the transition from the old experience of images to the experience of thoughts took place at different times. In Greece you can overhear this transition if you take a look at the personality of Pherecydes. He lives in a world of imagination, in which the image experience and the thought still have an equal share. Its three basic ideas, Zeus, Chronos, Chthon, can only be presented in such a way that the soul, in experiencing them, simultaneously feels that it belongs to the events of the external world. You are dealing with three experienced images and can only come to terms with them if you do not allow yourself to be misled by everything that your current habits of mind would like to imagine.
Chronos is not time as it is currently imagined. Chronos is a being that, in today's language, can be called "spiritual" if one is aware that the meaning is not exhausted. Chronos lives, and his activity is consuming, consuming the life of another being, Chthon. Chronos reigns in nature, Chronos reigns in man; in nature and man, Chronos consumes chthon. It doesn't matter whether one experiences the consumption of Chthon by Chronos internally or observes it externally in the processes of nature. Because the same thing happens in both areas. Connected to these two beings is Zeus, who, in the sense of Pherecydes, can no more be imagined as a divine being in the sense of the current conception of mythology than as a mere "space" in today's sense, although he is the being that is what is between Chronos and Chthon, proceeds, creates spatial, extensive design.
The interaction of Chronos, Chthon, Zeus in the sense of Pherecydes is experienced directly in the image, just as the idea of eating is experienced; but it is also experienced in the outside world, as the idea of the blue or red color is experienced. This experience can be presented in the following way. One draws attention to the fire that consumes things. Chronos manifests itself in the activity of the fire, the heat. Anyone who looks at the fire in its effectiveness and does not yet have the independent thought but the image at work sees Chronos. At the same time he sees "time" with the effectiveness of fire - not with the sensual fire. There is no other idea of time before the thought is born. What is currently called “time” is only an idea formed in the age of mental worldview. If you direct your gaze at the water, not as it is as water, but as it transforms into air or steam, or at the dissolving clouds, you experience in the image the power of “Zeus”, the spatially effective broadener; one could also say: that which “radically” expands. And if you look at the water as it becomes solid, or the solid as it forms into liquid, then you see Chthon. Chthon is something that later became “matter,” “substance,” in the age of intellectual worldviews; Zeus has become “ether” or “space”; Chronos at “time”.
Through the interaction of these three primary causes, the world is created in the sense of Pherecydes. Through this interaction, on the one hand, the sensual material ranges arise: fire, air, water, earth; on the other side a sum of invisible, supersensible spirit beings that animate the four material worlds. Zeus, Chronos, Chthon are beings towards whom the expressions “spirit, soul, matter” can be used, but this only approximates the meaning. Only through the connection of these three primordial beings do the more material world kingdoms arise, that of fire, air, water, earth and the more spiritual and spiritual beings. Using an expression of the later world views, one can call Zeus as “space-ether”, Chronos as “time-creator” and Chthon as “material-provider” the three “prime-mothers” of the world. You can still see it in Goethe's Faust, in the scene of the second part where Faust goes to the Mothers.
Just as these three primal beings appear in Pherecydes, they point back to the ideas of predecessors of this personality, the so-called Orphics. These are proponents of a type of imagination that still lives entirely in the old imagery. They also have three primordial beings, Zeus, Chronos and Chaos. In addition to these three “primal mothers,” those of Pherecydes are a degree less pictorial. Pherecydes tries to grasp more through his thought life what the Orphics still fully understood. That is why he appears as the personality in whom one can speak of the “birth of the life of thought”. This is expressed less through Pherecydes' mental version of the Orphic ideas than through a certain basic mood of his soul, which can then be found in a similar way in many of Pherecydes' philosophizing successors in Greece. Pherecydes sees himself forced to see the origin of things in the “good”. He could not connect this term with the “mythical worlds of gods” of ancient times. The beings of this world had soul characteristics that were not compatible with this term. Pherecydes could only think of the concept of the “good”, the perfect, into his three “original reasons”.
This is connected with the fact that the birth of the life of thought was associated with a shock to mental feeling. One should not overlook this spiritual experience where the mental worldview begins. One could not have felt any progress at this beginning if one had not thought that one could grasp something more complete with the idea than was achieved with the old image experience. It is quite self-evident that within this stage of world-view development the feeling referred to here was not clearly expressed. But what was felt was what can now be clearly expressed looking back at the ancient Greek thinkers. It was felt that the images experienced by the immediate ancestors did not lead to the highest, most perfect origins. In these pictures only less perfect primal reasons appeared. The thought must rise to the even higher primal reasons, of which what is seen in images are only the creatures.