Now, possession of the devil is a very real thing, and though I hold that in the majority of cases--they occur to each one of us every day--the best thing to do is to run away if you possibly can, not stop and argue, there are occasions, and this seemed to me to be one, where you cannot run away, for you are with your back to the wall, and have to fight. So I fought, and I am glad to be able to say that the devil was sorry he spoke. For, as always, he is a very shallow fellow, and though with his loud words--the gale to help him outside--he had seemed very convincing for the moment, I think I never heard a sorrier argument than his. He suggests, so I take it, the repeal of all moral laws: the binding force of them is to vanish. What will happen then? The child crossing the street will be driven over by the first carriage, and left to lie there with broken limbs till the next ends its torture. I shall go out of my house to-morrow and be clubbed by two men, who will rob me, who in turn will be clubbed and robbed by three. In ten days--I wager my immortal soul on this--the kingdoms of the world will be entirely in the hands of a dozen men, all strong, all fearing each other, and desiring to get rid of each other. For reasons of self-preservation they will sign a contract that they will not kill, injure, or rob each other. Moral law has therefore begun again, for it is necessary for the preservation of human life. Next day they will sign another contract to protect their women and children, and before the year is out they will have found it necessary to have in force every human moral law that exists to-day. If it were not so, those laws could never have existed. Once more the spirit of good triumphs over the spirit of evil. God does not punish us; it is our own punishment which we inflict on ourselves each time that we, in ever so slight a degree, do anything which tends towards that chaos which must exist without morality.
The gale has blown itself tired, and now, as I stand on the doorstep about midnight, looking out, an extraordinary peace prevails. The moon is high in heaven, bare of clouds, and the air is utterly calm and windless. It seemed to me impossible only a few hours ago that so serene a tranquillity should succeed the wild riot of to-day. And steadfast remain the stars; they have not, as seemed almost inevitable, been blown, like those heaps of dead leaves, about the floor of the skies, so that one quarter was bare, while in another the Pleiades had been blown against the Twins, and Orion sat on Cassiopeia’s chair.