Diversion

All right , you need no sorcery
And no physician and no dough.
Just go into the fields and see
What fun it is to dig and hoe;
Live simply and keep all your thoughts
On a few simple objects glued;
Restrict yourself and eat the plainest food;
Live with eh beasts, a beast: it is no thievery
To dress the fields you work, with your own dung.
That is the surest remedy:
At eighty, you would still be young. (p 236-237, lines 2352-2359)

My post cites an earlier part of the assignment. I want to again discuss the idea of activity as a means to human happiness, or as a means to reinvigorate "youth" and a zeal for life. The above quote seems to resonate the earlier statements Mephisto makes: "You're in the end--just what you are!" and "Let your reflections rest / And plunge into the world with zest!" The activity Mephisto advocates (as "the surest remedy") is simple; to work hard, to eat plain, and to live "with the beasts." Is this genuine advice, proposing to Faust that he enjoy his human life by always keeping busy? Or is keeping busy a method to distract one's self from such metaphysical drama as that which plagues Faust. In this light, activity would be a means of deterring human tragedy rather than promoting human happiness.