Goethe's Faust - A Warning To Great Thinkers

This week we are discussing Faust.
It is a story much older than Goethe. The first version was published more than four hundred years ago based on a German magician, Johan Georg Faust.
You know the story right: man sells his soul to the Devil. Wrong. Faust does not make a deal with the Devil there is no Faustian pact. He in fact makes a wager.
Faust is bored. He is a man of science and reason. As he says two souls dwell in his breast: one clings to the world, the other reaches for the divine. He curses hope and belief.
Faust longs for the thrill of it all. He makes a bet with Mephistopheles: show me the world’s pleasures if I tire of it, my soul be damned.
“If I ever lay me on a bed of sloth in peace,
That instant let me for existence cease.”
It is no spoiler to say, that tragedy awaits.
Why does this book still resonate? Because it is a magnificent work of art. Goethe is considered a rival to Shakespeare as the greatest of all writers. Goethe himself, was indebted to the Bard. Whatever. There is room for both.
For those who have never read Goethe, please do. For those who have, read again. For all of our technology. For the obscene number of books published each year, none rival this.