My only regret is that my demons did not labor too hard. It was not necessary. There were so few on Terra to challenge them and challenge is necessary to the enjoyment of demons. Strange to say, the little band of the good and the just look upon the faces of my demons—and their reflections on the faces of men—and whisper to themselves, “These do not resemble men in their lineaments and their eyes! They appear to be a New Breed, in their features and their manners, and a terrible puzzle, for the earth never knew them before, these distorted creatures!” They are correct. Even Terra never knew them before, but I am weary of that world and will hasten its destruction.
I listened with amusement while you harangued the beautiful black men and women of Lympia. You appealed to their simplest emotions. Have you forgotten that Our Father gave them superior intelligences? The intelligent are the easiest to seduce, for they can conjure up a thousand arguments against one question, or in behalf of it. Intelligence does not always produce steadfastness and resolution. On the contrary! As it is open to many conjectures and cannot decide among them, it is filled with irresolution. And, unfortunately, tolerance.
So, after your last innocent visit to Lympia I appeared to the busy inhabitants, and they looked upon me startled. I smiled at them, and they became uncertain. Then a young man said to me, “You have the appearance and color of lightning, and your eyes are blue like the eyes of the Lord Michael, the archangel who protects and guides us. Your hair is as black as ours, but you have the stature and the heroic appearance of an archangel, and you are most grand and beautiful. Who are you?”
I said, still smiling, “I am he whom Michael calls the Dragon. Tell me. Am I so formidable and hateful in appearance, so detestable and loathsome, that you must turn from me in disgust?”
The ladies, bless them, replied, “No, you are splendid beyond imagining.”
I said, “I am he whom God called His Star of the Morning. I am indeed an archangel, and I am the most powerful of them all, for God gave me my power, and I stood at His hand and He loved me.”
“Then,” said one lad with dubiousness, “you are good and not evil?”
“That is purely a matter of opinion,” I answered. “It is also a subjective matter. The question has no place in the realm of reality.”
It is delicious to converse with an intelligent race.
“The Lord Michael has warned us against you,” said a young husband, gazing at me with fear, and retreating. But I smiled superbly.
“Michael is my dearly beloved brother,” I said. “He is younger, in time, than I. I was created before him, by God, Whom you honor. There is none dearer to my heart than Michael, save Our Father.”
The intelligent are always seduced by a reasonable manner and a reasonable argument, and especially when one appears to agree with them. So the men, and ladies, of Lympia approached me nearer and looked upon me, enchanted. The ladies were particularly charmed; they cannot resist masculine beauty. I gazed slowly and admiringly about their lovely world and sighed as if rapturous. “What infinite possibilities are here!” I exclaimed.
One young man said to me doubtfully, “We have been warned to hold no conversation with you, Lucifer.”
“Oh, come,” I said with indulgence. “Are you witless children? Your lord, Michael, does not appreciate your intellect, for he is afraid of intellect in men. He would prefer that you remain infants, unable to order your own destiny, and enhance the effulgence of your remarkable world. Do you wish to exist in a garden all your lives, or would you be glorious, beyond all the other races of men on all the other worlds?”
As you have said, Michael, Our Father gave the men of Lympia some innocent vanity, and it was through this gift that I approached them.
“It will not be a small garden perpetually,” said one young man. “We shall create cities of stupendous beauty and grandeur, filled with light and music and happiness and joy and the knowledge of God. Our children will inhabit those cities, and their children’s children, and we will contemplate them and give adoration to God, Who ordained it all.”
“That is quite true,” I replied. “Nothing in all the endless universes will surpass Lympia, if you are willing to accept my help. I love beauty above all things. I love intellect, which, alas, Michael does not. Who can resist you, men of Lympia, who will soon have the means to soar among all the worlds, and give them the fruits of your knowledge? It is your duty; surely, it is your duty! There are multitudes of worlds which dwell in darkness and ignorance and are low in mentality. You will bring to them the mightiness of your minds, your inventions, your insights, your magnificent instincts for majesty and loveliness, your innate passions for art and wisdom and philosophy. Is not Lympia your mother and your joy? How is it possible for you to deny other worlds what your world possesses? Is that not the ultimate in selfishness and disregard for the souls of others?”
They pondered, uneasily. Then I raised my hand and in the golden skies there appeared before them the image of Terra, and I let them dwell for a space on the horrors of that repulsive world. They stared, shrinking and incredulous. I permitted them to listen to the clamor of the mad voices, the clashes of arms, the stupid and intense faces of the leaders, their wild eyes and disordered gestures. I let them study the governments.
Then they cried out, shuddering, and hiding their faces in their hands. “It does not exist! It cannot exist! Such fury and bestiality cannot be in the universe!”
“Unfortunately,” I said, “you have gazed on reality, not only on that tiny world, but on countless other worlds. Does it not move your hearts to compassion, and to the question: ‘Why does God permit such nightmares?’”
One young man dropped his hands slowly, and his eyes were dilated with the dreadfulness of what he had contemplated. “Indeed,” he said, “why does Our Father permit it?”
“To be honest,” I said, “they chose it for themselves. They were created inferior and debased, but why I do not know. Only God can answer that question. Tell me. Has not Michael already told you that it is your duty to increase your race and your accomplishments?”
“True,” said one lady. She was sweating with anxiety, but I noticed with satisfaction that she concealed her sweat from her husband! I thank you, Michael.
“How, then, can you increase your race and your accomplishments? By working ceaselessly. But it is your duty to displace ugliness with beauty, darkness with light, stupidity with wisdom, among all the worlds. Are not your hearts moved by what you have seen? Can you be so cruel as to deny other worlds what you already possess? That is intellectual arrogance, and there is nothing that is so despised by God. Yes, I know that God gave you your intellects. But does He wish that you hold them to yourselves, only? If He made you so, is it not His desire that you give your gifts to others? As you are blessed, are you not worthy to rule other worlds in sanity, justice, peace, grace and enlightenment and happiness?
“You must remember that God has millions of universes. He has endowed some of His worlds with superior souls and minds. Does He expect that you remain idle? No! It is surely His will that you help to improve the grosser worlds.” I paused. “And rule them,” I added in the softest voice. “Surely if you consider a moment, you will know that is God’s intention.”
“It is true that we are superior to what we have seen of that world you have shown us,” said a young man. “Those men, if they be truly men, are like beasts.”
“They are indeed beasts, alas. They have no inspirations. They create no beauty nor splendor. Their voices are like crows; their souls are steeped in error. They wander like mindless sheep, but violent sheep. You have seen only one of these deplorable worlds, ready for your leadership and your intellects. Did you study their ugliness of body, their meanness of feature? You can, with my help, bring sanity to them and nobler stature and grace. Are not your hearts moved to do this?”
“Are you suggesting that when we visit them we must interbreed with them?” asked a girl with loathing.
“You are be
autiful. Is it wrong to raise up these monstrous races and give them your countenances, and your marvelous bodies? Is it to be accounted sinful to lead them with your minds? You have seen their architecture, which is a nightmare in itself. Look upon the temple you have built to God, perfect in all its lines and radiance. Is it not wicked to withhold your arts from other races? You are superior; you are like gods, yourselves. The burden will be heavy, and that I know. But still, it is your duty.”
“Our duty,” repeated some of the young men.
“Unlike Michael, I will help you to enhance what you are,” I said. “You have only to accept my suggestions, for am I not wiser than you, and an archangel? Do I disparage what God made you, and urge you to remain children, as Michael does? He wrongs you! He also wrongs God, for he is of a single mind and does not know God’s intentions.”
“Do you, Lucifer?” asked a young lady with disagreeable sharpness.
“I know that God wishes all men in all the worlds to be more worthy of Him,” I said. “But Michael does not understand that. He adores the innocence of children, and would keep you bound and ignorant in your snug cradles of ease. Does God wish perpetual nurseries, filled with infants? You denigrate God, if you think so!”
I pointed to some of the girls. “You are with child. Are not your children entitled to domains and principalities, because they are superior to others? Will you deny them the rule of universes, which are prepared to bless you for your labors among them? The inheritances of your children are boundless. Would you enslave them only here?”
One young man stared at me thoughtfully. “Michael has said that you are evil,” he remarked, “and that you can make evil appear as the ultimate good.”
“Yes!” cried the others.
“But what is good, and what is evil?” I asked with reason. “Ponder on that. Consider your lives. They are happy and sweet and filled with dreams of the future. But Michael would tell you that only his designs for the future are good. Is he wiser than I, who was created before him and stood at Our Father’s hand and listened to His thoughts? God gave you not only intellect but the means to employ that intellect. He gave you free will. You are indeed like angels. Therefore, you must employ that free will not only for your own glory but for the glory of other-worlds. When Michael denies you that he denies the Godhead, Itself.”
“He has said that if we listen to you, O Lucifer, we will bring death and disease and pain and sorrow upon us.”
I smiled again. “He is fearful that he will lose his rule over you, for wisdom dislikes rulers and dislikes slavery. You are the slaves of Michael, his amiable little servitors. But I respect you more! I honor you for what God has made of you. I bow before you as one of His noblest creations. Does Michael so honor and bow before you? No! He would direct your every thought, your every plan. He would guide your hopes. Are you silly children, who have no wills of your own, no desires of your own? Are you without inspiration and manliness? To the wise, mindlessness and utter obedience are evil. To the stupid, any direction of self is evil, and any exercise of free will is error and obedience is not to be questioned. Are you wise, or are you stupid? That is a question you must answer in your hearts.”
“Then, the only evil is stupidity and the refusal to use the full potentialities of your being?”
“True,” I said. “You have said it.”
“We have no right to refuse the depths of our souls to others?”
“You have no such right. It is an insult to God.”
One young man said in bewilderment, “I am confused! I do not know the difference now between good and evil!”
I concealed my total and triumphant hatred of them, and smiled benignly. “What is good and what is evil? You must decide that for yourselves. I ask only that you have reservations when you listen again to Michael, who will have mere threats for you, and who will try to deny you what you truly are.”
I left them in their confusion. You will see, Michael, that I have won again. I am more persuasive than you. You inspire only the fear of God in men. I inspire men with the possible glorification of man. What man can resist that? What man can resist the illusion that he has been called by God, Himself, to improve the lot and the lives of others? You call that presumption vanity, and evil. I call it my victory over the animal races of men.
I departed from Lympia, and could not refrain from a last glance at her perfection. She will soon be mine, if not in this generation then in the next, or the next. For though the men of Lympia do not know it as yet I have given them the desire for power, and ambition. I have taught them to regard other races as inferior to themselves, and needful of their efforts to improve and rule them. I have given them exaltation in their own potentialities.
If this generation resists me the lustful dream will still pass on to their children and their children’s children, until the poets sing of that dream and it will become a good and not an evil, desirable and not detestable. I have sowed confusion, and the beginnings of war and hatred.
I have prepared death and ruin and fall for them, and have raised up my hand between them and the hope of Heaven. Congratulate me! But give my commiserations to Our Father.
Forgive me if I inflict boredom on you for a moment. Two of my scientists have invented a new weapon for the men of Terra. It can be launched in a twinkling and can be held in the palms of one’s hands. Yet it has the power to evaporate all mammals within the range of three thousand earthly miles, all mammals of a blood temperature between ninety-two degrees and ninety-nine. It can be entirely directed by a machine, which itself can be placed anywhere, so light it is and so maneuverable. It will not kill the worthy insects or the mammals of a lower or higher temperature than man, nor the fish in the seas nor the birds and other valuable creatures. It will extinguish only man.
It will not injure or mar any of the works of man, nor his cities. But it will erase him between one breath and another, silently, lethally, so that whole nations will depart as a puff of smoke. Is that not ingenious? I am proud of my scientists. The weapons they devised for other worlds, and for Terra also, are nothing compared with this, and were somewhat more gory. Also, they were more spectacular. I adore spectacles. Yet I must admire this weapon. I would that even the blood and bones of men be obliterated from Terra, and leave not one hideous stain behind.
I think I will give this weapon to one of the barbarian nations, the greatest of them all, for she not only possesses the substance of the weapon in vast quantities, but it is easy to devise and is not intricate. I prefer the barbarian nation, for at least it is manly and has a brute thrust for power and is therefore honest. The “civilized” nations, on the other hand, are simpering liars who mask their own thrust for power in benevolent language, and with affectionate smirkings. The barbarians do not speak of Brotherhood. They are not ashamed of their country; they honor her. They make no pretense of loving their fellows, as the hypocrites of the “civilized” nations do. They are boldly for empire, and I prefer bold men to effeminate and sentimental weaklings who devise their evil with delicate tears and protests that they love every man. If one nation must rule Terra—until I have accomplished her death—then it must be the barbarian who is less mad than his posturing brother who uses the words of virtue and even the Words of God to accomplish his far more wicked purposes.
The barbarian, throughout the ages of Terra, has never been wholly mine, for deep in his melancholy soul there is a drop of clarity and realism. It is only when he becomes civilized—and how the word delights me!—that he becomes corrupt, and a liar, and a weaver of fantasies, all of them morbid and delusionary and insane. The barbarian is a wild tree, and his fruit, though bitter, can give sustenance. But the man of culture plants nothing of value, and his mind is mephitic, and where he moves he leaves devastation. At his best, or his worst—you may choose the word—he is a eunuchs.
You will agree with me that there can be no hesitation of choice between a eunuch and a barbarian. The latter is a man of parts.
Your brother, Lucifer
Greetings to my brother, Lucifer, who himself is deluded when he persuades himself that he can discern the future:
Our Father has received your commiserations in His behalf—for He knows that in that you are sincere—and thanks you for them. He has said to me, “Inform My son, Lucifer, that if he invents the means of death for all of Lympia, and seduces My children on that graceful planet, it is possible, as it was before, that I have already devised the means for their salvation. Have I ever abandoned My children anywhere? Let My son, Lucifer, remember that.”
I must confess that I agree that the barbarian is the least offensive among men and that civilizations produce enormities, for as good expands so does evil. The barbarian asks only that men’s bodies obey the laws he invents—and they are usually simple laws and of no torturous subtlety. But the “civilized” man, when completely corrupt, as he is now corrupt on Terra and other worlds, seeks more than the quiet obedience of men’s bodies. He demands to rule their minds and their souls. They will think as he wishes them to think, or he will kill them in one way or another, each one more hellish than the last! He will have dominion over their hearts and their thoughts, over their comings and their goings, over their buying and their selling, over their secret religions, over the minutest manifestations of their activities, over their children and their wives and even what they put into their pots. For the “civilized” man is ineffably vulgar, and a pryer, and he would not permit another man privacy for the slightest imaginings of his heart. He must always direct and counsel. He is an unspeakable practicer of the dubious art of voyeurism. In short, he is an obscene creature, and in this I do not dispute you. There have been earlier obscene civilizations on Terra, but none so spiritually lewd as these, none so colorless and essentially fruitless, none so drab and without true imagination. It is almost incredible to believe that my brother, Lucifer, so beautiful and so admiring of beauty, could have visited this dreariness and inanity on a world. As for myself, I prefer the barbarian’s splendor and savage love of drama to the modern man’s dusty and lascivious books and his bloodlessness. As you have said, one is a man and the other is not, and Our Father loves men.
Dialogues With the Devil Page 16