"[1] But it was the
lesser devils, not the greater, that came into close contact with
humanity, who therefore demand careful consideration.
[Footnote 1: p. 361.]
40. All the lesser devils seem to have possessed a normal form, which
was as hideous and distorted as fancy could render it. To the conception
of an angel imagination has given the only beautiful appendage the human
body does not possess--wings; to that of a devil it has added all those
organs of the brute creation that are most hideous or most harmful.
Advancing civilization has almost exterminated the belief in a being
with horns, cloven hoofs, goggle eyes, and scaly tail, that was held up
to many yet living as the avenger of childish disobedience in their
earlier days, together perhaps with some strength of conviction of the
moral hideousness of the evil he was intended, in a rough way, to
typify; but this hazily retained impression of the Author of Evil was
the universal and entirely credited conception of the ordinary
appearance of those bad spirits who were so real to our ancestors of
Elizabethan days. "Some are so carnallie minded," says Scot, "that a
spirit is no sooner spoken of, but they thinke of a blacke man with
cloven feet, a paire of hornes, a taile, and eies as big as a bason."[1]
Scot, however, was one of a very small minority in his opinion as to the
carnal-mindedness of such a belief.
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