the story, this closing scene of initiation into the mysteries by Isis completes a series of motifs that started in Faust I with Doctor Faust's first appearance. Here we see the popular motif of a veiled Isis, who was also identified as goddess and mother of nature: Mysterious, even in broad daylight, Nature won't let her veil be raised: What your spirit can't bring to sight, Won't by screws and levers be displayed. Geheimnißvoll am lichten Tag Läßt sich Natur des Schleyers nicht berauben, Und was sie deinem Geist nicht offenbaren mag, Das zwingst du ihr nicht ab mit Hebeln und mit Schrauben. (672–675) Goethe's statements about Faust II In the context of Act III: I never doubted that the readers for whom I effectively wrote would grasp the principal significance of the portrayal straight away. It is time that the impassioned dispute between classicists and romantics should finally be reconciled. The principal thing is that we should properly cultivate ourselves; the source from which we do so would not matter, if we did not have to fear the possibility of miscultivation by appealing to false models. For it is certainly a broader and purer insight into and around Greek and Roman literature to which we owe our liberation from the monkish barbarism of the period between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Is it not from this high level that we can learn to appreciate everything in its true physical and aesthetic value, both what is oldest and what is newest? – Goethe's letter to K. J. L. Iken September 27, 1827 (translation of Rüdiger Bubner) Rather in the context of Act III: "Yet, ... it all appeals to the senses, and on the stage would satisfy the eye: more I did not intend. Let the crowd of spectators take pleasure in the spectacle; the higher import will not escape the initiated, as has been the case with the 'Magic Flute', and other things beside." – Conversations with Goethe by Johann Peter Eckermann January 25, 1827 (translated by John Oxenford) In the context of Act IV "The Mothers! Mothers! nay, it sounds so strange." (6216–6217): "I can reveal to you no more [...] except that I found, in Plutarch, that in ancient Greece mention was made of the Mothers as divinities. This is all that I owe to others, the rest is my own invention. Take the manuscript home with