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Faust provides a brief account of his father, who is introduced as an
adept of the iatrochemical tradition and who worked hard in the labora-
tory to produce various medicines according to cryptic prescriptions.
However, these medicines killed more people than the pestilence, says
Faust. Despite that, people praised iatrochemists like his father, who
were in fact nothing else than “cheeky murderers”. Unlike Faust, Wag-
ner, who according to standard interpretations represents Goethe's con-
temporary academia, including chemistry, strongly approves of the prac-
tice of Faust's father. What he did, says Wagner, was to apply the knowl-
edge of his time in a conscientious and meticulous manner. Moreover,
Wagner suggests that one should honor Faust's father and take his state
of the art as an important step in the progress of science. For Faust, the
intermediate figure in the genealogy, belief in that progress of science is
a grave error, because such science provides only useless and fragmen-
tary knowledge. The tragic Faust, the poet-philosopher with 'two souls in
his breast', represents the splitting state of romantic natural philosophy
reaching out for a new orientation. The new chemistry, represented by
the famulus with only limited knowledge, is no alternative, since it is al-
lied with blind and unscrupulous applications of former days. Goethe did
not provide optimistic prospects in his tragedy, as he did not argue for a
true alchemy. Instead, his play is full of specific attacks on chemistry,
among which I pick out but one.
In Part II (1832), Faust leaves the university and his former famulus
Wagner, who in the meantime has become a famous doctor of science
(vv. 6643ff.). This scholarly chemist, whom Goethe provided with many
characteristics of the medieval 'puffer' (vv. 6678-82), has been busy for
months with his “great work”. Eventually, the right mixture and process-
ing of “hundreds of substances” yield the intended result, a chemically
created homunculus. Rather than being a Frankensteinian monster, to
which we come back in Section 6, the homunculus is a witty and curious
little man who is soon taking the initiative during the subsequent travels
of Faust and Mephistopheles. The baffled chemist, seeking advice from
his creation about what his job should now be, is told by the homunculus
to stay at home, upon which Mephistopheles sardonically comments that
eventually we all depend on our own creations. The obvious moral is that
chemists, if they successfully apply their skills, lose control over their
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