Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Anterior: XV - Sobre os “Poderes do Ar” Seguinte: XVII - Sobre os Deuses
Nº. XVI
CONCERNING THE DEVIL AND DEVILS (1)
BEING unable to reconcile the statement that there is
no personal Devil, but that what is called the Devil is simply the negation of
God, with the evidences of the possession of individuals by devils or evil
spirits, I received in my sleep this explanation.
“There is no supreme personal positive evil existence such as the Devil is
ordinarily supposed to be. There is only the negation of God, which is to God
what darkness is to light, the outermost void to the solar system. But there are
evil spirits, the souls of bad men on their downward road to final extinction.
And these are wont to associate themselves with persons in the flesh for whom
they have affinity, partly in order to gratify their evil propensities by
inciting them to wickedness and mischief, and partly to obtain from them the
vitality necessary to prolong their own existence. Sometimes they are so low in
vitality that a sentence of expulsion from the person in whom they have taken
refuge, involves their immediate extinction, unless they can find
other location, though it be only in an animal. And
this was the case with the devils whom Jesus, on
expelling them, suffered to enter into the herd of swine. For it is the fact
that the disorders of men do in some cases result from their possession by
distinct personal entities as foreign and evil spirits, and are not merely
disorders of their own physical constitution. Evil spirits have no chief, no
organisation, or solidarity, nothing that corresponds to God. The worse they are
the lower they are, and the nearer to extinction. The conditions which attract
them are due to men themselves.”
Footnotes
(46:1)
Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Anterior: XV - Sobre os “Poderes do Ar” Seguinte: XVII - Sobre os Deuses