Third Act, partly prose

LUCIFER: Your striving is good. But it cannot lead to the goal as you imagine. For if I gave you back to Johannes as you were when you were able to show yourself to him years ago, you would only find love in him in a spiritual sense. And this love would only flow into his thinking. He loved only reason and cold knowledge. And his personality, the warm feeling of his individuality, would be lost. That is not my place. I form personalities. As you were years ago, you are not suitable for the strong personality that Johannes is to become. I must transform you myself. And I have already prepared my work. You do not know it yet, but you have become a different person. Johannes will appreciate Maria, but he will no longer love her; instead, he will love with all the passion with which he once loved Maria.