We are told that every man has his attendant evil genius, or tutelary
spirit, to execute the orders of the master demon--that the attending
evil angel sees every move we make upon the board; witnesses all our
actions, and permits us to do mischief, and every thing that is
pernicious to ourselves;--that, on the contrary, our good spirit,
actuated by more benevolent motives, is always accessary to our good
actions, and reluctant to those that are bad. If this be the case, it
may be fairly asked, how does it happen that those two contending
spirits do not quarrel and give each other black eyes and broken heads
during their rivalship for pre-eminence? And why does the evil tempting
spirit so often prevail?
Instead of literally answering these difficult questions, it may be
resolved into a good argument, as an excellent allegory to represent the
struggle in the mind of man between good and evil inclinations. But to
take them as they actually are, and merely to talk by way of natural
consequence--for to argue from nature is certainly the best way to get
to the bottom of the devil's story,--if there are good and evil spirits
attending us, that is to say, a good angel and a devil, then it is no
unjust reproach to say, when people follow the dictates of the latter,
that _the devil's in them_, or that _they are devils_! or, to carry the
simile a point farther, that as the generality, and by far the greatest
number of people follow and obey the evil spirit and not the good one,
and that the power predominating is allowed to be the nominating power,
it must then of course be allowed that the greater part of mankind have
the devil in them, which brings us to the conclusion of our argument;
and in support of which the following stanzas come happily to our
recollection.
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