Mephistopheles

mef-is-tof'e-lez, in medieval legend, a demon or devil. The companion and attendant of Faust during his twenty-four years of pleasure. The name has been spelled variously, but Goethe's spelling in his drama of Faust is the one universally adopted at present. The etymology of the word has also been explained variously. Bayard Taylor is of the opinion that the word was formed irregularly from the Greek words: Phos, light, and Philos, love, with the negative me, and means "not loving the light." Goethe not only gave a new spelling to the old word, but he gave a new character to this evil spirit. Marlowe's Mephistopheles, in his Dr. Faustus, was a melancholy, servile creature; but Goethe's is a cold, intellectual, scoffing fiend. While his name is used frequently to designate the devil, to one who has read Faust or seen it well presented, Mephistopheles is a distinct personality with little in common with the old conception of Satan. See Faust

He is the devil not of superstition but of knowledge. Such a combination of perfect understanding with perfect selfishness, of logical life with moral death, so universal a denier both in heart and head, is undoubtedly a child of darkness, an emissary of the primeval Nothing, and may stand in his merely spiritual deformity, at once potent, dangerous, and contemptible, as the best and only genuine devil of these latter times.--Carlyle.

Mercator (1512-1594), a celebrated Flemish geographer. He studied at the University of Louvain and devoted himself to lectures on geography. He was noted for his skill in constructing charts and apparatus wherewith to make his lectures clear. He attracted the attention of Charles V and was made for a time a member of his household. While in the emperor's employ he constructed two celebrated globes of great size, one of glass, representing the heavens, the other of wood, representing the earth. In 1578 he published an edition of Ptolemy's Geography, accompanied by an atlas. Some of the geographical views advanced were condemned by the church as heretical. Mercator is known to the schoolboy chiefly for the invention of the socalled Mercator's map or projection. In these maps the meridians cross the parallels at right angles, instead of approaching each other as they recede from the equator. This method is sufficiently accurate for a map of a county, but, when applied to large areas, the end which is farthest from the equator is widened unduly from east to west. See Geography