Mephistopheles: I am the Spirit that constantly denies!  And rightly so; for everything that's ever brought To life deserves to come to naught.  Better if nothing ever came to be.  Thus all that you call sin, you see And havoc - evil, short - is meant To be my proper element.  I am a part of the part which once was absolute, Part of the Darkness which gave birth to Light  The Lord: Toward your kind I have borne no hate.  Of all the spirits that deny, The scoffer burdens me with slightest weight.  Man's activities can all too easily go slack, He loves to be in ease unqualified; Hence I set a companion at his side to goad him like a devil from the back. Faust I