OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD

course aware how vast is the literature dealing with Goethe's version of the Faust Legend. It is a literature of such stupendous dimensions that whole libraries might be stocked with it, and naturally I cannot make it my business to expatiate on the various comments made by these interpreters of Goethe concerning this particular passage. None of the interpretations throw much more light on the sentence than that given by one of the latest commentators, Professor Minor Jakob Minor (1859–1912), a prominent Austrian literary scholar known for his work on Goethe and Schiller.. He, like others, treats it in the light of an ironical remark made by Mephistopheles The demon or primary antagonist in the Faust legend who acts as an agent of the devil., and in this connection he makes the following really very curious observation, and one to which I would ask you to give your best attention; for there is little doubt that you will be surprised to hear what strange conclusions commentators on Goethe are capable of drawing.

    Professor Minor remarks that "the devil is a foe to the blood"; and he points out that as the blood is that which sustains and preserves life, the devil, who is the enemy of the human race, must therefore also be the enemy of the blood. He then — and quite rightly — draws attention to the fact that even in the oldest versions of the Faust Legend — and, indeed, in legends generally — blood always plays the same part.