Faust turns upon Mephistopheles with fierce anger and curses him. 'I meant exchange!' he exclaims. 'I meant to _make it good with money_! I meant not robbery and murder. I curse the deed. Thou, not I, shalt bear the guilt.'
Here I do not find it easy to follow Faust's line of argument. Fair exchange is certainly said to be no robbery--but this theory of 'making everything good with money' is one which the average foreigner is apt to attribute especially to the average Britisher, and it does not raise Faust in one's estimation. I suppose he thinks he is doing the poor old couple a blessing in disguise by ejecting them out of their wretched hovel and presenting them with a sum of money of perhaps ten times its value.
Possibly Goethe means it to be a specimen of the kind of mistake that well-meaning theoretical philanthropists are apt to commit with their Juggernaut of Human Progress. Faust is filled with great philanthropic ideas--but perhaps he is a little apt to ignore the individual. Anyhow his better self 'meant not robbery and murder' and is perhaps quite justified in cursing its demonic companion and giving him the whole of the guilt.
The scene changes. It is midnight. Faust, sleepless and restless, is pacing the hall in his castle. Outside, on the castle terrace, appear four phantom shapes clothed as women in dusky robes. They are Want, Guilt, Care, and Need. The four grey sisters make halt before the castle. In hollow, awe-inspiring tones they recite in turn their dirge-like strains: they chant of gathering clouds and darkness, and of their brother--Death. They approach the door of the castle hall. It is shut. Within lives a rich man, and none of them may enter, not even Guilt--none save only Care. She slips through the keyhole. Faust feels her unseen presence.
Faust defies the phantom. She, standing there invisible, recites in tones like the knell of a passing-bell the fate of a man haunted by Care: how he gradually loses sight of his high ideals and wanders blindly amid the maze of worldly illusions--how he loses faith and joy--how he starves amidst plenty--has no certain aim in life--burdening himself and others, breathing air that chokes him, living a phantom life--a dead thing, a death-in-life--supporting himself on a hope that is no hope, but despair--never content, never resigned, never knowing what he should do, or what he himself wishes.