Student.
I must confess I can’t quite comprehend you.
Mephistopheles.
In this respect time by and by will mend you,
When you have learned the crude mixed masses
To decompose, and rank them in their classes.
Student.
I feel as stupid to all he has said,
As a mill-wheel were whirling round in my head.
Mephistopheles.
After logic, first of all,
To the study of metaphysics fall!
There strive to know what ne’er was made
To go into a human head;
For what is within and without its command
A high-sounding word is always at hand.
But chiefly, for the first half year,
Let order in all your studies appear;
Five lectures a-day, that no time be lost,
And with the clock be at your post!
Come not, as some, without preparation,
But con his paragraphs o’er and o’er,
To be able to say, when you hear his oration,
That he gives you his book, and nothing more;
Yet not the less take down his words in writing,
As if the Holy Spirit were inditing!
Student.
I shall not quickly give you cause
To repeat so weighty a clause;
For what with black on white is written,
We carry it home, a sure possession.
Mephistopheles.
But, as I said, you must choose a profession.
Student.
With Law, I must confess, I never was much smitten.
Mephistopheles.
I should be loath to force your inclination,
Myself have some small skill in legislation;
For human laws and rights from sire to son,
Like an hereditary ill, flow on;
From generation dragged to generation,
And creeping slow from place to place.
Reason is changed to nonsense, good to evil,
Art thou a grandson, woe betide thy case!
Of Law they prate, most falsely clept the Civil,
But for that right, which from our birth we carry,
’Tis not a word found in their Dictionary.
Student.
Your words have much increased my detestation.
O happy he, to whom such guide points out the way!
