Faust, like men my age, is impatient and restless. He has mastered all the major branches of knowledge and is not in any state of material want, yet he feels an insatiable thirst, a "boundless striving" for knowledge and power - the Faustian spirit. In a quest for the supreme moment of happiness so beautiful that he will wish for time to stop, he bets his soul with Mephistopheles in exchange for supernatural powers while on earth. The Faustian spirit, however, is ultimately doomed to failure. Indeed, he lives to a hundred years and dies without finding that moment of inner peace, and is, therefore, ultimately saved.
Does Goethe imply that man is condemned never to be happy and to always feel discontented? And is the lack of satisfaction the path to salvation?
In the Faustian spirit, I see what are likely to be the roots of Nietzsche's self-conquering overman. A perfect moment is perhaps an impossible dream, but that is as it should be for that is the end of the will to power; that is the end of the will to life.
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