se tales of the Devil there was the pagan tradition of Pan,
whose upper part was that of a man and his lower part that of a goat.
The devils of one religion are generally the gods of its predecessor;
and the great Pan, whose myth is so beautifully expounded by Bacon,
was degraded by Christianity into a fiend. Representing, as he did,
the nature which Christianity trampled under foot, he became a fit
incarnation of the Devil. The horns and hooves and the goat thighs were
preserved; and the emblems of strength, fecundity and wisdom in the god
became the emblems of bestiality and cunning in the demon.

Heine's magnificent _Gods in Exile_ shows how the deities of Olympus
avenged themselves for this ill-treatment. They haunted the mountains
and forests, beguiling knights and travellers from their allegiance
to Christ. Venus wooed the men who were taught by an ascetic creed to
despise sexual love; and Pan, appearing as the Devil, led the women a
frightful dance to hell.

But as the Christian superstition declined, the gods of Paganism also
disappeared. Their vengeance was completed, and they retired with the
knowledge that the gods of Calvary were mortal like the gods of Olympus.

During the last two centuries the Devil has gradually become a subject
for joking. In Shakespeare's plays he is still a serious personage,
although we fancy that the mighty bard had no belief himself in any
such being. But, as a dramatist, he was obliged to suit himself to the
current fashion of thought, and he refers to the Devil when it serves
his purpose just as he introduces ghosts and witches. His Satanic
Majesty not being then a comic figure, he is spoken of or alluded to
with gravity. Even when Macbeth flies at the messenger in a towering
rage, and cries "the Devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon," he
does not lose his sense of the Devil's dignity. In Milton's great
epic Satan is really the central figure, and he is always splendid
and heroic. Shelley, in fact, complained in his preface to _Prometheus
Unbound_ that "the character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious
casuistry, which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and
to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure." Goethe's
Mephistopheles is less dignified than Milton's Satan, but he is full of
energy and intellect, and if Faust eventually escapes from his clutches
it is only by a miracle. At any rate, Mephistopheles is not an object
of derision; on