The Devil - Giovanni Papini E-Book

Giovanni Papini

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 317

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The Devil is a provocative and philosophical exploration of the nature of evil, written by the Italian author Giovanni Papini. Structured as a fictional autobiography of the Devil himself, the book presents a bold and unconventional narrative in which the Prince of Darkness reflects on his origin, mission, and complex relationship with God and humanity. Through this intimate confession, Papini challenges traditional theological interpretations, delving into metaphysical questions about free will, divine justice, and the paradoxes of good and evil. In The Devil, Papini confronts the reader with unsettling insights into the human condition, suggesting that the presence of evil is not only a rebellion but also an integral part of the divine plan. By humanizing the Devil, he blurs the lines between sinner and savior, punishment and purpose, offering a controversial rethinking of Christian doctrine. The work is deeply rooted in existential thought and spiritual inquiry, reflecting Papini's broader preoccupations with redemption, suffering, and the meaning of faith. Since its publication, The Devil has been recognized for its daring originality and theological depth. Its philosophical provocations and literary audacity have sparked debate and admiration alike, securing its place as a significant, though often overlooked, work of 20th-century religious literature. Through its introspective monologue and moral ambiguity, the book continues to inspire reflection on the complexities of belief, the struggle between light and darkness, and the eternal search for truth  

Leseprobe

Giovanni Papini

THE DEVIL

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

THE DEVIL

I – The Authors Design

II – Origin and Nature of the Devil

Ill – The Rebellion of Satan

IV – The Fall of Satan and the Sorrow of God

V – God and Devil

VI – Christ and Satan

VII – The Devil and The Servants of God

VIII – The Devil and Mankind

IX –  The Friends of the Devil

X – The Devil and Literature

XI –  Foreign Devils

XII – Aspects and Disguises of the Devil

XIII – The Devil’s Usefulness

XIV – The Devil’s Destiny

The Devil’s Temptation

INTRODUCTION

Giovanni Papini

1881–1956

Giovanni Papiniwas an Italian writer, journalist, and philosopher, widely recognized for his provocative ideas and contributions to early 20th-century literature. Born in Florence, Papini was a central figure in Italian intellectual life and became known for his intense, polemical style and spiritual journey from skepticism to fervent Catholicism. His works often explore themes of faith, identity, and the struggle between modernity and tradition, earning him both acclaim and controversy.

Early Life and Education

Giovanni Papini was born into a modest Florentine family. A self-taught intellectual from a young age, Papini became deeply interested in philosophy, literature, and religion. He studied at the University of Florence, where he engaged with a wide range of philosophical currents, from positivism to pragmatism. His early atheism and rebellious spirit were reflected in his first writings, which sharply criticized religious and cultural institutions.

Career and Contributions

Papini quickly gained notoriety in the literary world through his essays and editorials in journals such as Leonardo and La Voce, where he challenged prevailing academic and religious thought. His early works, like Il Crepuscolo dei Filosofi (1906), questioned the relevance of major modern philosophers and sought to disrupt established intellectual norms.

One of his most significant and controversial books, The Devil (1911), blends fiction, theology, and philosophical speculation. In it, Papini presents a fictional autobiography of Satan, offering a bold, imaginative reinterpretation of evil, suffering, and divine justice. The work stands out for its philosophical depth and literary daring, capturing Papini’s capacity to merge metaphysical inquiry with narrative innovation.

Later in life, Papini underwent a radical spiritual transformation, converting to Catholicism in 1921. This marked a turning point in his career. His autobiography, Un Uomo Finito (A Man Finished), and his religious essays, such as Storia di Cristo (The Story of Christ, 1921), reflect his search for transcendence, personal redemption, and the reconciliation between reason and faith.

Impact and Legacy

Papini’s literary voice was singular—at once aggressive and introspective, polemical and lyrical. His works straddle the boundaries between literature, theology, and philosophy, anticipating many of the existential and spiritual crises that would define the 20th century. Though not as internationally celebrated as contemporaries like Kafka or Joyce, Papini was influential within Italian modernism and helped shape intellectual debates in pre- and post-Fascist Italy.

His controversial alignment with Fascism in the 1930s has sparked ongoing debates about the separation between a writer’s politics and their artistic legacy. Nevertheless, Papini remains a complex figure whose writing continues to provoke and fascinate readers and scholars alike.

Giovanni Papini died in 1956, after years of illness and partial blindness. Despite the fluctuations in his reputation over time, his work endures as a testament to a restless and searching mind. Today, Papini is remembered as one of the most idiosyncratic voices in Italian literature—a writer who relentlessly questioned the world, challenged orthodoxy, and sought meaning in the midst of chaos.

His legacy lies in his fearless pursuit of truth, however uncomfortable or paradoxical, and in his profound engagement with the spiritual and philosophical dilemmas of the modern age.

About the work

The Devil is a provocative and philosophical exploration of the nature of evil, written by the Italian author Giovanni Papini. Structured as a fictional autobiography of the Devil himself, the book presents a bold and unconventional narrative in which the Prince of Darkness reflects on his origin, mission, and complex relationship with God and humanity. Through this intimate confession, Papini challenges traditional theological interpretations, delving into metaphysical questions about free will, divine justice, and the paradoxes of good and evil.

In The Devil, Papini confronts the reader with unsettling insights into the human condition, suggesting that the presence of evil is not only a rebellion but also an integral part of the divine plan. By humanizing the Devil, he blurs the lines between sinner and savior, punishment and purpose, offering a controversial rethinking of Christian doctrine. The work is deeply rooted in existential thought and spiritual inquiry, reflecting Papini’s broader preoccupations with redemption, suffering, and the meaning of faith.

Since its publication, The Devil has been recognized for its daring originality and theological depth. Its philosophical provocations and literary audacity have sparked debate and admiration alike, securing its place as a significant, though often overlooked, work of 20th-century religious literature. Through its introspective monologue and moral ambiguity, the book continues to inspire reflection on the complexities of belief, the struggle between light and darkness, and the eternal search for truth.

PREFACE

Hundreds of books have been written about the Devil. I should not have had the effrontery to write still another, were I not sure that mine differs from all of them. Differs in intent, differs in spirit, differs, in large part at least, in method and in content.

To posit the essential difference at the outset, I believe I can say that this is the first book about the Devil, written by a Christian, in the light of the deepest meaning of Christianity.

This book is not:

a history of opinion and belief regarding the Devil;

a more or less erudite, more or less entertaining ramble among ancient and modern legends about the Devil;

a dry, speculative treatment developed in the copybook manner of traditional Scholasticism;

a moral manual designed to protect men’s souls from the snares and assaults of the Demon;

a collection of pious invective or rhetorical broadsides leveled at the ancient Adversary;

a history of the Devil’s earthly agents, in other words, witches, occultists and such;

a romantic orgy of Satanic literature, with the accessory black masses and other bestial rubbish;

a metaphysical meditation on the problem of evil, such as the Kantian Ehrard produced;

and finally, it is not even, as to a hasty reader it might seem, a defense of the Devil.

Guided by charity and compassion, and freeing myself of prejudices and preconceptions, I have set out primarily to study the following problems:

the true causes of Lucifer’s revolt (which are not those commonly believed);

the true relations between God and the Devil (far more cordial than imagined);

the possibility of an attempt on the part of mankind to have Satan returned to his original status, thus freeing us all from the temptation of evil.

With regard to the first two problems, I have consistently sought to base my observations on the texts of the Old and the New Testaments, the Church Fathers, and Christian philosophers and authors. With regard to the last problem, I have been content to draw attention to conjectures and hopes which, for all that they are not confirmed by dogmatic proofs, seem to me to be in perfect harmony with the concept of a God defined as Absolute Love.

Readers of this book will find in it many new ideas. I must, however, point out that various of these novelties will appear new only to those who are not sufficiently familiar with Patristic philosophy and Christian literature.

Up until the 1600’s, the freedom of interpretation of dogma was much greater than it is today and the reader must not suppose, indeed he must be warned that opinions which fell short of reaching the nexus of the dogma, were not in every case considered heretical by the Church. And it is also to be noted that such freedom of theological and philosophical speculation flowered during the centuries when the Christian Church possessed more warmth and vigor of faith than it does today.

I hope, therefore, that the scrupulous guardians of orthodoxy will not be too greatly scandalized by certain daring expressions of my own Christian hope and that they will attend more to the spirit and intent of what I write than to certain excessses in the writing.

This book is the result of several years’ reading and research. But it is not just recently that my mind has been tempted by the question of relations between the Devil and men. As early as 1905 — when I was only twenty-four — I wrote two mystery plays, entitled The Demon Said to Me and The Temptation of the Demon, which were published in the volume The Daily Tragedy. This idea has never deserted me and indeed, in 1950, I wrote a short drama in three acts, The Devil's Temptation, which was twice broadcast by the Italian Radio and which I am republishing as an appendix to the present book.

Naturally, from 1905 to 1953 my concept of Satan has almost totally changed. Christianity has altered the reasons for my preoccupation, but perhaps my youthful sympathy for the Fallen Angel had in it an element of premonition. The Demon, too, belongs to the supernatural and Christian world.

Man may enter into the Kingdom of God also through the dark portal of sin.

I subscribe to those courageous words of Graham Greene which express my own position: “Where God is most present, there also is His enemy; and, on the other hand, where the enemy is absent, we will sometimes despair of finding God.

One would be tempted to believe that Evil is only the shadow cast by the Good, in its perfection, and that we shall one day come to understand even the shadow.”

This book is dedicated to all those friends who are not secretly somewhat inimical and to all those enemies who could, someday, become new friends.

But I dedicate it above all to those readers, near or far, who are armed with good sense and good faith.

G. P.

THE DEVIL

I – The Authors Design

In the world of the great religions there is a Being apart, who is neither man, nor beast, much less God. And yet this Being utilizes beasts to his own ends, enslaves men, and dares cross swords with God Himself. He is, according to Christian dogma, an angel who commands a legion of angels, but he is a fallen angel, disfigured and damned.

He is hated by those very people who have promised to Jove their enemies; he is feared by those who are most different and most distant from him, that is, by the Saints; he is obeyed and imitated by those very people who do not believe, or who say they do not believe, in his existence.

For some centuries theologians have scarcely spoken of him above a whisper, almost as if they were ashamed to believe in his “real presence” or as if they were afraid to look him in the face, or to fathom his essence. The Church Fathers and the Scholastics used to talk lengthily about him; indeed, they devoted whole treatises to him. But their timid successors of today ’are satisfied to talk about him hurriedly in the chapter on “The Angels and Original Sin,” with a kind of abashed reserve, as if they feared they might scandalize the “free minds” which have banished “medieval superstitions” from the “good society” of the intelligentsia.

The philosophers, in fact, scarcely ever deign to call this Being by his real name, although they cannot avoid talking about him under more abstract and, therefore, more “seemly” names. A famous man among them, Alain, wrote, with evident satisfaction, in 1921: “The devil has suffered the common fate of all apparitions........ Even the war, so far as I have seen, did not revive the devil and his horns.” For the Devil, to this supercilious, peremptory rationalist, was “an apparition,” in other words, something accessible to the senses; because he no longer shows himself complete with grinning mug and cloven goat’s hooves, he no longer exists. As we well know, the imbecility of “profound” philosophers is so immense that it is exceeded only by the infinite mercy of God.

But the poets and the storytellers, in other words, the artists, who are far more sensitive to spiritual currents and who know human and superhuman life more immediately than the jugglers of “concepts,” are not of the same opinion. For several centuries the poets have occupied the position deserted by the theologians and philosophers. For centuries they have been attracted by the terrible image of the great Adversary, by his dark grandeur, by his fearful sorrow. Even today, in the most inspired poems, the most nuanced tragedies, the most introspective novels, in the refined mythologies of the moralists and the immoralists, and even in the films whether serious or trivial, the Stricken Angel makes himself seen and heard in every situation and dilemma. The people remember him unfailingly, they mention his name daily, even if they are not always aware that they live under his domination.

Even thirty years ago, so-called “cultivated people,” the managerial elite of the bourgeois intelligentsia, ignored him or they would receive any mention of him with a snicker of impatience, as if he were some shabby character from the puppet repertoire. Today things have considerably changed. The impresarios of “pure reason,” as well as the literary lackeys of the world of fashion, have stopped smiling. Even the theologians are beginning again to discourse about him openly, without benefit of prudent euphemisms. The Demon has recovered his citizenship rights in the republic of culture. Following the outbreak of two wars, after the saturnalia of hate and violence, after so many repeated proofs and confirmations of his influence and his might, Satan is recognized not only as a poetic creation but as one of the protagonists of history.

In spite of this reappearance in the sphere of the true or the probable, the Devil is still very little known. This infamous yet famous being, invisible yet omnipresent, now denied and now worshiped, now feared and now slighted, who has had his minstrels and his priests, his courtiers and his martyrs, is still more common than comprehended, more often drawn than dissected. He must be looked at with new eyes, approached in a new spirit. No longer with the servility of the witch who wishes to make use of him, or with the terror of the believer who seeks to defend himself against him, but with the eyes and spirit of the Christian who wishes to be Christian, prepared to accept all the consequences — even the most daring — of Christianity.

He is called Satan in Hebrew, that is, the Adversary, the Enemy; the Greeks call him the Devil, or the Accuser, the Defamer. But is a Christian permitted to hate his enemy? Are right-thinking men permitted to defame the defamer?

Christians, until now, have not been sufficiently Christian toward Satan. They fear him, they flee from him, or they pretend to be unaware of his existence. But if fear can, on occasion, save them from his temptations, it is certainly no weapon ofjalvati on for the future and for the jcest of manldnd. Christ, the divine example of the Christian, spoke with Satan for forty days and received the kiss from him whose human form Satan had assumed to lead Him to death.

Still more dangerous than fear is indifference which ends, most frequently, by becoming guilty complicity in the Devil’s offensives. The man who is not on his guard is more easily overcome and captured. Once again it was a poet who divined the truth: “ The Devil’s neatest trick,” Baudelaire wrote, “ is to persuade us that he does not exist.”

Neither through fear nor through obliviousness can we suppress the Prince of This World, who is making his frightful domination increasing ly felt. In order to free Christian people from the Demon, once and forever, it is much more advisable and more compatible with the Biblical commandment to love, that we seek to know him more precisely and profoundly, not in order to become entangled in his snares or to share in his operations, but the better to be on guard against them and to try to have him return to * his original nature.

Understanding is the path to love. The Christian cannot and must not love rebellion, evil and sin in Satan; but he can and must love in him, the most dreadfully unfortunate creature in all creation, the leader and symbol of all enemies, the Archangel who once was nearest to God. Perhaps only our love can help him save himself, help him become again what he once was, the most perfect of heavenly spirits. By saving him from the hatred of all Christians, all men will be forever saved from his hatred.

Christ loved men, even the rebellious and the corrupt and the bestial, to the point of taking upon Himself all our sins, to the point of dying an infamous death for our sakes. Is it not possible that He wished to free us from enslavement to the Demon partly in the hope that, in their turn, men may be able to free the Demon from his sentence? Is it not possible that Christ redeemed men so that, following His precept to love their enemies, they may one day be worthy of conceiving the redemption of the most ominous and stubborn Enemy of all?

A true Christian must not be wicked even toward the wicked, must not be unjust even toward the unjust, must not be cruel even toward the cruel, but must tempt to good even the tempter to evil. We must approach Satan in a spirit of mercy and justice, not so as to become his admirers or imitators but with the proposition and the hope of freeing him from himself and ourselves, thereby, from him. Perhaps he awaits only a sign of our mercy to find once again in himself the strength to renounce his hatred, that is, to frees the whole world from the dominion of evil.

This book is not, nor does it seek to be, a defense or an ' apologia for Satan. Nothing revolts and repels me more than the sordid, stupid and perverse phantasies of medieval or romantic Satanism. With all my mind I detest the mouthings of succubi, of the obsessed, and of a decadent riffraff.

This book seeks only to be a more attentive, faithful and serene inquiry into the origin, the spirit, the destiny and the essence of the Devil, equally removed from occultist appreciation and pietist excoriation. It seeks to make the Adversary known for what he truly is, for in the truth lies the preparation for his and our redemption.

Until today Satan has been hated, reviled and cursed, or imitated, praised and worshiped. This book, instead, has a different aim: to make him understandable, in Christian terms, to Christians.

The Christian Tragedy

There is a tragedy which began at the beginning of time and which has not yet come to an end. A vast and mysterious tragedy which, even among Christians, has a small audience.

It has been played on three great and unique stages: the Empyrean, the Earth, the Abyss. It has three lone protagonists: God, Satan, Man. It is, like all tragedies, in five acts.

Act I: Satan revolts against the Creator.

Act II: Satan is banished and cast into the Abyss.

Act III: Satan, seeking revenge, seduces Man and becomes his master.

Act IV: The God Man, through His Incarnation, conquers Satan and equips men with the weapons to defeat him in their turn.

Act V: At the end of time, Satan attempts to snatch victory from defeat through the Antichrist.

We are still in Act IV, possibly its last scenes. When will the fifth open? The portents are already visible. And how will this final act end? In catastrophe or catharsis?

Man is the weakest and most ephemeral of the three protagonists. Yet it is precisely he, Man, who is the supreme -stake in the long and fluctuating ebb and flow of the war between the Creator and the Destroyer, between Love and Hate, between Affirmation and Negation.

Satan lures Man from God; Christ wrests him from Satan; but Satan strives by every device to reconquer him and it seems almost as if he were succeeding; he will make one last attempt and he will be defeated, defeated forever. Defeated because eternally chained in his Abyss, or defeated by the omnipotence of Love which will lead him back to his heavenly throne?

No one, on earth, can answer. But Man, the most defenseless of the protagonists, must speak out before the tragedy is ended.

The Devil, Master of Men

I do not wish to be accused of exaggerating. I am quoting, therefore, textually, the words of one of the most famous modem Catholic theologians, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, from his widely known book, The Mysteries of Christianity,

“It is an article of faith,” writes Scheeben, “that through Adam’s sin humanity became the prisoner and slave of the Demon. Just as in its totality — or rather, in the person of its lineal chief, Adam — by acceding to the Demon’s blandishments, humanity was conquered by the Devil and torn from its union with God, so today humanity is subject to him, belongs to him, and constitutes his kingdom on earth. And so closely is it bound to him, that by itself it can in no way recover the lost liberty of the sons of God, nor again possess the sublime perfection from which it fell. Leaving aside its redemption by the God Man, its imprisonment is absolute and total. . . .”

To support his statements, Scheeben refers to various passages in the New Testament which leave no doubt as to our terrible condition as the prisoners and slaves of the Devil.

It will strike simple minds as unthinkable that a Father, a loving and merciful Father, should hand over to his worst Enemy those who were created and destined by Him for salvation. They will be aghast that the sin, the personal sin of one father and one mother, for all that it was very great, must be paid off by all their posterity, by generation after generation, through thousands of years. And they will be all the more shocked at the thought that, instead of being confined to the abyss, the Rebel, the Adversary, the Evil One has received as his absolute property, as slaves and hostages, all the sons of that man who, through his fault and instigation, so miserably fell.

But the holy writings and the teachings of the dogmatics allow no tergiversations. The astonishment of simple people carries no weight before the mysteries of inscrutable divine law. M. J. Scheeben states it explicitly: “It is an article of faith that . . . humanity became the prisoner and slave of the Demon.” Every Catholic, subject to the Church’s teaching, must believe that men are prisoners and slaves of the Devil, that earth is the Kingdom of Satan. Durus est hie sermo, but there is no help for it: he who does not firmly believe himself subject and slave of the Demon cannot call himself a Catholic.

For this imprisonment, this enslavement of ours was not effectually done away with by the Redemption, Before the coming of Christ all men were, of necessity, prisoners and slaves of the Demon. After the coming of the God Man, only those were redeemed, unchained and freed who were intimately joined to Christ, who became, through faith and deeds, one with Him. But on this earth Christians are still a minority and among those who call themselves Christians, how many are there, in reality, who are Christians in name only or by virtue of some outer ceremony? Every Christian, thanks to the baptismal water, declares that “he renounces Satan, his work and his pomps” and is virtually cleansed of the stain of original sin. But the majority of those baptized, having reached adulthood, do not keep faith with the promise made in their name by their baptismal godfather, and in one way or another, they give in to the blandishments and temptations of Satan. Very few, very rare, even among Christians, are those who manage to preserve intact the virtue of the baptismal font. Very few, very rare are those who succeed in making themselves one with the Saviour, in uniting themselves with Him in the agonies of His Passion and in the warmth of His love, and thereby succeed in being really released from vassalage to the Devil.

As a result, even today almost all of humankind — all those who do not accept Christ, plus the greater number of so-called Christians — is the slave and prisoner of Satan. Scheeben himself does not refuse to note this: “today [humanity] is subject to him, belongs to him.”

The drama of human life, even after the Redemption, frighteningly confirms this tremendous truth of Catholic theology. St. Augustine knew it when he stated that the world is “positus in MaIligno it is confirmed a thousandfold by what is happening in the world today, where the heralds and couriers of the Antichrist have already appeared.

But if this is true — and certainly it is completely true —  why do the slaves and prisoners of the Devil care so little to become familiar with and to study the nature and form of their master and jailer? It seems to us that especially for Christians, such a study is essential, urgent, of primary necessity. For those who still remember that they possess a soul, the love of God counts before all else. But, second only to that, it is necessary to know him who, by the will of God, possesses and rules us: the Devil.

Diabolology and Demonology

In his Letter to the Theologians, Pope Celestine VI — against whom one can level only one reproof, i.e., that he never existed — exhorted the tenders of the science of God to undertake a renewal of the dogmatics. Naturally not in order to abolish or alter dogmas, for that would be a work of the devil, but to steep them more deeply in the spirit of inspiration and revelation, to shape them and exhibit them in new ways, more appropriate to modern minds which cannot or are unwilling to accept the schemata of medieval Scholasticism.

If only on one theological point, this little book of mine would satisfy the wish of the Holy Pontiff Celestine.

The fall of the rebellious angels and the influence of Satan on human life cannot properly be called dogmas, but are pure articles of faith connected with the dogma of original sin. And since the Devil, according to the same theologians, has a considerably greater share in the affairs of the world and of the human spirit than is usually believed, it should not seem in any way incongruous or impertinent to try to create, side by side with theology, a diabolology. In the works of the dogmatics — especially of the Church Fathers and the great Doctors of Scholasticism — there is speculation about the Devil and his war on mankind but certainly one cannot expect the science of God to include, under the same name, the science of the Devil. Yet, as we have said, a more diligent and persuasive study of the great Enemy our master seems increasingly necessary, because the effects of his power over the existence of individuals and peoples are day by day more manifest.

Books do exist, of course, which bear the title Demonology, but when one opens them, one realizes that these books busy themselves much more with his infernal and earthly servants than with the Devil himself. The early treatises were written, initially, for the use of lay and ecclesiastical judges who presided over the witchcraft trials and therefore, instead of examining the essence, nature and fall of Satan, they are in large part dedicated to recounting the arts of the magicians and sorcerers, and especially the customs and crimes of the witches, wizards, necromancers, and such. They discourse widely on spells and witchcraft, incubi and succubi, sabbat and the black mass, diabolic seizures and pacts with the devil, Satanists and their attendants. But the mighty and tremendous figure of Lucifer, from whom all that witches’ brew of mysteries and turpitude takes its origin, appears only in the background, like one of those Eastern potentates who show themselves rarely and who govern only through their slaves and ministers.

Demonology, therefore^ with its hoard of documents and anecdotes, attracts the fanciers of human psychology and, above all, the dilettantes of the sensational, but it tells us little or nothing about the origins and fate of Satan.

Diabolology, on the other hand, deliberately sets aside all the fictional or fictionalized curiosities regarding magical arts and satanic seizures in order to turn its attention to the terrible protagonist whom God caused to be cast from heaven to earth. Diabolology seeks to sound out in what the soul and sin of Satan consist,.what were the causes of his fall, what were his relations with the Creator and with the God Man, what have been his incarnations and his operations, what can be understood about his current power and his future destiny. Diabolology is distinguished from Demonology because, in that fearsome drama which is the life of man, it sets itself the task of coming to know thoroughly one of the authors of the drama and not only the deeds of his assorted subalterns.

I must warn the reader that this little book does not claim to be a true and proper treatise on Diabolology but only a first draft, necessarily incomplete and imperfect. This is a matter of notes and notions for that future Suvrma Diabolo-gica which, one of these centuries, a new St. Thomas will have to write.

II – Origin and Nature of the Devil

The Inner Devil

Quite common, all too common among those who deny today the “God-hypothesis,” is the idea that the Devil exists only within the human soul. Such people cannot deny the perennial conflict, which they see and hear between what seems Good and what seems Evil, but would be mortified to put any credence in their personification in beings above and beyond ourselves. In the interests of clarity, they consent to call those two antagonists by the old names of “popular mythology,” but on the premise, and with the understanding, that it is a question of opposing factions within man.

I have found one of the most explicit statements of such a theory in a youthful letter of Paul Valery to his friend Pierre Louys, dated December 21, 1896:

Briefly, I think — and this is my entire metaphysical and moral credo — that God exists and the Devil, too, but within us. The worship we owe this latent divinity is nothing more than the Respect we owe .ourselves and I mean: the Search for a Better by our Intelligence as directed by its innate capacities. Here is my formulation: God is our individual ideal; Satan is all that tends to deflect us from it.

Young Valery had probably not read the works of Feuerbach but it is not hard to recognize the Hegelian tinge to this ingenuous theory. Just as Hegel reabsorbed all being in the Idea — in other words, in the human spirit which recognizes the idea inasmuch as it is its ultimate and maximum incarnation — so Feuerbach had reabsorbed all theology in psychology: God would be the projection of man’s desires, wishes, thoughts. And, of course, the same can be said of the Devil.

Valery attempts, feebly, to determine the significance of the two opposed principles. But the word “Better” which the young poet uses is meaningless, unless it refers to a superior model to be imitated, to a scale of values to be achieved. The ingenuous Valery defines God as an individual ideal, that is, devoid of any fixed or universal quality whatsoever. The search for this “Better,” for this “ideal” is to be understood in the sense of “innate capacities” and at this point the muddleheadedness of the Cartesian-to-be is downright scandalous. To develop one’s native capacities means to accept one’s own nature, whatever it may be, while the aim of religions, and of Christianity above all, is to reform, emend, correct, transform human nature according to the intent of a superior, divine law.

According to Valery’s theory, a man who possessed in supreme measure the “innate capacity” to take the Eves of others — and unfortunately, such men are not lacking —  would have, in obedience to that rule, to develop “better” his vocation of homicide.

His “individual ideal” could only be the search for better ways to take the lives of more people and since, he says, the only thing which deflects us from our individual ideal is no other than Satan, one would reach the conclusion that the temptations not to assassinate — pity, scruple, remorse —  which might arise in the soul of our murderer would be nothing less than the reprehensible temptations of the Devil.

But let us take a more innocent and common example. An artist whose dominating passion is art should consider as Satanic impediments all those ties and obligations which deflect him from his “innate capacity,” as, for example, filial love, his responsibilities as father, friend, citizen.

In such cases, and they are by no means impossible, the Devil would be playing the role of prompter of everything our moral systems judge “good,” and he would be the brake on all that is universally reputed to be “bad.” Satan, in other words, would be in the position of performing the office attributed to God. These are the absurd and capricious corollaries that Valery’s highly ingenuous theory leads to.

Christians, too, sense and experience how the human soul is the daily battlefield between God and Satan but they believe and know that these two beings — the Emperor of the Universe and the Prince of This World — cannot be reduced to purely human elements. Both find allies and accomplices in us, but in proportion as they raise havoc in that soul, which is at once the dwelling of the Divinity and the target of the Evil One. Anyone with a little experience in spiritual introspection hears within him “voices” which are not his voice, hears promptings and seductive urgings which a moment before were unknown, unforeseeable and unbelievable.

At the end of his life Paul Valery began to write a Faust

 — My Faust — which he was unable to finish but in which he made Mephistopheles and his demon associates talk in such a way as to lead one to think they are personalities distinct from man. Perhaps it was a poetic motive and the Goethe tradition which compelled him to that, but there is also the chance that, as an old man, he recognized the weak superficiality of his youthful theology.

A French priest, a friend of mine, has told me that Valery’s widow had had him read the last pages from the rationalist poet’s diary. The final lines read: “It must be confessed that Jesus was the first to conceive of God as Love.” Death prevented his carrying the thought further.

Satan Creator of Himself?

In one of the less famous works of the famous Christian poet, the Spaniard Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, whose life bridged the fourth and fifth centuries, we find a very strange theory regarding Satan’s unthinkable insolence.

In his Latin poem, Hamartigenia which is devoted to the question of the origin of evil, Prudentius affirms — and to the best of my knowledge, for the first time — that the Devil attempted to convince the other Angels that he was author and creator of himself and that he therefore did not owe his existence to God. Indeed, and this still according to Prudentius, he boasted of having created matter, bringing it forth from his own body. This opinion was picked up again, in the eleventh century, by Rupert von Deutz, in his treatise De victoria verbi Dei, but only as regards the first part, that is, that Satan was the creator of himself.

But from Prudentius’ text one clearly understands that Lucifer did not really believe his own boast: he was neither so dull-witted nor so mad as not to know that he, like all his brothers, was a creature that the Creator had brought forth from nothing.

His absurd claims, if indeed they were ever made, as the poet Prudentius believed, were merely impudent lies to swell the number of his partisans and, in their eyes, to justify his ingratitude toward God and his revolt. In this event, the Devil would have shown rather less cunning than tradition attributes to him. He would have been asking too much of the stupidity and credulity of his companions. Is it possible that the Angels, endowed with such spiritual power, could ever have believed Lucifer’s vain fables? Did they not also know with absolute certainty that he, like themselves, had been created by God?

If many Angels did follow him, it was certainly not because they were persuaded by that bragging. In all probability, it is the fruit of the fervid, Iberian imagination of the early rhetorician, Prudentius.

Only those Agnostics who saw in the Demiurge of the Old Testament a demonic and malign power, could have believed that Satan was the Creator of matter.

The Devil Is the Son of Man?

In one of his early short stories, Maxim Gorki has old Stefan Ilyich speak as follows:

The Devil does not exist. The Devil is an invention of our evil imagination. Men have invented him to justify their sinfulness and also in the interest of God, in order not to wrong him. Only God exists, and man, and no one else. Everyone who resembles the Devil — for example, Cain, Judas,