Macbeth Consulting the Witches

Title: The history of the devil and the idea of evil: from the earliest times to the present day. ATLA monograph preservation program. Author: Paul Carus. Publisher: Open Court, 1899. Original: from Harvard University. Digitized: Nov 28, 2007. Length: 496 pages. Image by Godefroy Engelmann (August 17, 1788 - April 25, 1839) The Protestant Devil became somewhat more cultured than the Catholic Devil, for the advancement noticeable in the civilisation of Protestant countries extended also to him. Says Mephistopheles in Faust:

"Culture which smooth the whole world licks

Also unto the Devil sticks."

To note the progress, let us compare Wyntoun who wrote early in the fifteenth century and Shakespeare. Wyntoun's witches are ugly, old hags; Shakespeare's, although by no means beautiful, are yet interesting and poetical; they are " so withered and so wild in their attire that look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth and yet are on it." It is a poetical fiction representing temptation. And in this same sense the very word Devil is frequently used by Shakespeare. We are told, "'tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted Devil," and one fiend, as we read in Shakespeare, is the invisible spirit of wine. "The Devil," we read in Hamlet, "hath power to assume a pleasing shape." And the meaning of this sentence is plainly psychological, as we learn from another passage in which Polonius says to his daughter:

"With devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The Devil himself."

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