Art of the Devil

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Bewitched Man, a scene from El Hechizado por Fuerza (‘‘The Forcibly Bewitched’’), 1798. Oil on canvas, 42.5 × 30.8 cm. The National Gallery, London, United Kingdom.

Anonymous, The Monstrous Spirit, 5000 to 3000 B. C. Tassili-n’Ajjer, Algeria.

Every one is familiar with the poetic myth of the rebellion and fall of the angels. This myth, which inspired in Dante some of the most beautiful lines of the Inferno and in Milton an unforgettable episode of Paradise Lost, was, by various Fathers and Doctors of the Church, variously fashioned and coloured; but it has no foundation other than the interpretation of a single verse of Isaiah[1] and of certain rather obscure passages in the New Testament.[2] Another myth, of far different but no less poetic character, accepted by both Hebrew and Christian writers, tells of angels of God who, becoming enamoured of the daughters of men, sinned with them, and in punishment for their sin were thrust out of the Kingdom of Heaven and from angels turned into demons.[3] This second myth received lasting consecration in the verses of Moore and of Byron.4[4] Each of these myths represents the demons as fallen angels, and connects their fall with a sin: pride or envy in the first case, criminal love in the second. But this is the legend, not the history, of Satan and his companions. The origins of Satan, considered as the universal personification of evil, are far less epic and at the same time far more remote and profound. Satan is anterior, not only to the God of Israel, but to all other gods, powerful and feared, that have left a memory of themselves in the history of mankind; he did not fall headlong down from heaven, but leaped forth from the abysses of the human soul, coeval with those dim deities of earliest ages, of whom not even a stone recalls the names, and whom men outlived and forgot. Coeval with these, and often confused with these, Satan begins as an embryo, like all things that live; and only by slow degrees does he grow and become a person. The law of evolution, which governs all beings, governs him also.

No one possessed of any scientific training any longer believes that the ruder religions have sprung from the corruption and decay of a more perfect religion; but he knows very well that the more perfect ones have developed from the ruder, and that in the latter, therefore, must be sought the origins of that gloomy personage who, under various names, becomes the representative and the principle of evil. If what we call the Tertiary Period in the history of our planet already saw man, perchance it saw him in so far like the brute that no religious feeling, properly speaking, could be discerned in him. The earliest Quaternary man is already acquainted with fire and understands the use of stone weapons; but he abandons his dead – a certain sign that his religious ideas, if he has any at all, are at best scant and rudimentary. We must come down to what is called by geologists the Neolithic Period, to discover the first sure traces of religious sentiment. What was the religion of our forefathers, in that age, we cannot know directly; but we can infer, by observing that of many savage races that still live upon the earth and faithfully reproduce the conditions of prehistoric humanity. Whether fetishism precedes animism or the latter precedes the former in the historic evolution of religions, the religious beliefs of those forefathers of ours must have been altogether similar to those still professed by tribal communities throughout the world. The earth, which, together with the traces of their dwellings, with their weapons and utensils, has also preserved their amulets, offers us proof of this. They conceived of a world crowded with spirits, souls of things and souls of the dead, and to these they attributed all things that befell them, whether good or evil. The thought that some of these spirits were beneficent, others maleficent, some friendly, others hostile, was suggested by the very experience of life, wherein profits and losses are constantly alternating, and alternating in such a fashion that, if not always, at least very often, the causes of profit and of loss are recognised as diverse. The sun that gives light, the sun that in springtime makes the earth once more green and blooming, that ripens the fruits, must have been regarded as a power essentially beneficent; the whirlwind that fills the sky with darkness, uproots the trees, tears apart and sweeps away the flimsy huts, as a power essentially maleficent. The spirits were gathered into two great hosts, according to men’s observation of whether they received from them benefit or bane.

But this classification did not constitute a true and absolute dualism. The beneficent spirits were not yet the sworn and irreconcilable foes of the maleficent; neither were the former always beneficent nor the latter always maleficent. The believer was not always sure of the disposition of the spirits that held him in sway; he feared to offend the friendly ones no less than the unfriendly, and with like practices he sought to render all favourable to him, not putting too much trust in any one of them. Between good and evil spirits there was no moral contradiction, properly speaking, but only a contrast in their works. They could not possess a moral character that was as yet lacking in their worshipers, scarcely yet emerged from the state of animalism; and only in so far can they be called good and evil as to primitive man everything seems good that helps him, everything evil that harms. Their savage worshipers conceived them as in all respects like themselves, inconstant, subject to passions, sometimes kindly, sometimes cruel; nor did they regard the good spirits as higher or worthier than the wicked.