In an ecstasy of embitterment and despair, though fully conscious that such a life can never bring him satisfaction and happiness, Faust exclaims: 'What wilt _thou_, poor devil, give me? Was the human spirit, in its aspirations, ever understood by such as _thou_?... And yet--hast thou the food that never satiates--hast thou red gold--hast thou love, passionate faithless love--hast thou the fruits that rot before one plucks them--hast thou the fruits of that tree of sensual pleasure which daily puts forth new blossoms--then done! I accept.' 'But if,' he adds (and, alas, I must give merely the sense of these noble verses--for all translation is so unutterably flat)--'if I ever lay myself on the bed of idle self-content, if ever thou canst fool me with these phantoms of the senses, if ever I say to the passing moment, _Stay; thou art so fair!_--then let my life be ended. This wager I offer thee.' 'Topp!' ('Done!') exclaims Mephistopheles; and, as you know, the compact is signed by Faust with his own blood.
You will observe that here there is no mention, as in the old legend, of any term of years--the compact is _for life_. Of what may come after this life Faust makes no mention in his wager. He expressly says that all he cares about, all he can know, is _this_ life, and that he will hear nothing about any future life. This may be agnosticism or whatever else we like to call it, but it is not formally selling one's soul, with or without one's body, for a _future_ life and for all eternity.
Moreover Faust has _not_ summoned the devil. The devil has come to him--is indeed a part of him. He does _not_ league himself with a hell-fiend for the sake of worldly power or fame or sensual enjoyment, of which he speaks with contempt. He only offers to come forward into the battle of life and of passions to test the nobler powers and the deeper beliefs and the yet dim aspirations of his better nature against the powers of evil, against what he calls the 'cold devil's-fist' of negation and cynicism and disbelief, against the brute within the man.
Thou hearest me! I do not speak of joy-- I dedicate myself to passion--pleasure--pain-- Enamour'd hate, and rapture of disdain. What's highest or what's lowest I will know, And heap upon my bosom weal and woe.