Abdiel confronts Satan in Heaven; from Paradise Lost

The Archangel Raphael is telling Adam and Eve the story of Satan's fall and the war in Heaven. After Christ was named lord of the angels, Satan (called Lucifer before he fell) gathered those under his command, amounting to one-third of all the angels, and went to his throne in the north of Heaven. There, he announced his plan to march to the mount of God and throw down the King. His troops all supported him, except Abdiel, who defied him and prophesied that Satan would be utterly destroyed by God. Satan's followers scorned and threatened him, and he left to bring the news to the rest of the angels. He found them already gathered for war, led by the Archangel Michael. The two hosts march to battle. Satan comes forward alone. Abdiel can hardly stand the sight of him, and goes to meet him:

So pondering, and from his armèd peers

Forth stepping opposite, half way he met

His daring foe, at this prevention more

Incensed, and thus securely him defied.

“Proud, art thou met? Thy hope was to have reached

The highth of thy aspiring unopposed,

The throne of God unguarded, and his side

Abandoned at the terror of thy power

Or potent tongue; fool, not to think how vain

Against th' Omnipotent to rise in arms;

Who out of smallest things could without end

Have raised incessant armies to defeat

Thy folly; or with solitary hand

Reaching beyond all limit at one blow

Unaided could have finished thee, and whelmed

Thy legions under darkness; but thou seest

All are not of thy train; there be who faith

Prefer, and piety to God, though then

To thee not visible, when I alone

Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent

From all: my sect thou seest, now learn too late

How few sometimes may know, when thousands err.”

Whom the grand foe with scornful eye askance

Thus answered.

“Ill for thee, but in wished hour

Of my revenge, first sought for thou return'st

From flight, seditious angel, to receive

Thy merited reward, the first assay

Of this right hand provoked, since first that tongue

Inspired with contradiction durst oppose

A third part of the gods, in synod met

Their deities to assert, who while they feel

Vigor divine within them, can allow

Omnipotence to none. But well thou com'st

Before thy fellows, ambitious to win

From me some plume, that thy success may show

Destruction to the rest: this pause between

(Unanswered lest thou boast) to let thee know;

At first I thought that liberty and Heav'n

To Heav'nly souls had been all one; but now

I see that most through sloth had rather serve,

Minist'ring spirits, trained up in feast and song;

Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of Heav'n,

Servility with freedom to contend,

As both their deeds compared this day shall prove.”

To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern replied.

“Apostate, still thou err'st, nor end wilt find

Of erring, from the path of truth remote:

Unjustly thou deprav'st it with the name

Of servitude to serve whom God ordains,

Or Nature; God and Nature bid the same,

When he who rules is worthiest, and excels

Them whom he governs. This is servitude,

To serve th' unwise, or him who hath rebelled

Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee,

Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled;

Yet lewdly dar'st our minist'ring upbraid.

Reign thou in Hell thy kingdom, let me serve

In Heav'n God ever blest, and his divine

Behests obey, worthiest to be obeyed,

Yet chains in Hell, not realms expect: meanwhile

From me returned, as erst thou saidst, from flight,

This greeting on thy impious crest receive.”

So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high,

Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell

On the proud crest of Satan, that no sight,

Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield

Such ruin intercept: ten paces huge

He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee

His massy spear upstayed; as if on Earth

Winds under ground or waters forcing way

Sidelong, had pushed a mountain from his seat

Half sunk with all his pines.

Satan's Second Soliloquy; from Paradise Lost

Satan has been spying on Adam and Eve disguised as a cormorant, sitting atop the Tree of Life. He watches them until evening, speechless, then recovers himself and says:

"O Hell! What do mine eyes with grief behold,

Into our room of bliss thus high advanced

Creatures of other mold, earth-born perhaps,

Not spirits, yet to Heav'nly spirits bright

Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue

With wonder, and could love, so lively shines

In them divine resemblance, and such grace

The hand that formed them on their shape hath poured.

Ah gentle pair, ye little think how nigh

Your change approaches, when all these delights

Will vanish and deliver ye to woe,

More woe, the more your taste is now of joy;

Happy, but for so happy ill secured

Long to continue, and this high seat your Heav'n

Ill fenced for Heav'n to keep out such a foe

As now is entered; yet no purposed foe

To you whom I could pity thus forlorn

Though I unpitied: league with you I seek,

And mutual amity so strait, so close,

That I with you must dwell, or you with me

Henceforth; my dwelling haply may not please

Like this fair Paradise, your sense, yet such

Accept your Maker's work; he gave it me,

Which I as freely give; Hell shall unfold,

To entertain you two, her widest gates,

And send forth all her kings; there will be room,

Not like these narrow limits, to receive

Your numerous offspring; if no better place,

Thank him who puts me loath to this revenge

On you who wrong me not for him who wronged.

And should I at your harmless innocence

Melt, as I do, yet public reason just,

Honor and empire with revenge enlarged,

By conquering this new world, compels me now

To do what else though damned I should abhor."

So spake the fiend, and with necessity,

The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.

the Archangel Uriel's description of Creation; from Paradise Lost

Satan has escaped Hell and travelled through the void of Chaos to reach our Universe. He spots Uriel in the sun and disguises himself as a Cherub. Satan tells Uriel that he has left the choir of angels to see Earth for himself, and asks Uriel where it is. Uriel's answer:

"Fair angel, thy desire which tends to know

The works of God, thereby to glorify

The great Work-Master, leads to no excess

That reaches blame, but rather merits praise

The more it seems excess, that led thee hither

From thy empyreal mansion thus alone,

To witness with thine eyes what some perhaps

Contended with report hear only in Heav'n:

For wonderful indeed are all his works,

Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all

Had in remembrance always with delight;

But what created mind can comprehend

Their number, or the wisdom infinite

That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep.

I saw when at his word the formless mass,

This world's material mold, came to a heap:

Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar

Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;

Till at his second bidding darkness fled,

Light shone, and order from disorder sprung:

Swift to their several quarters hasted then

The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire,

And this ethereal quintessence of heav'n

Flew upward, spirited with various forms,

That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars

Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;

Each had his place appointed, each his course,

The rest in circuit walls this universe.

Look downward on that globe whose hither side

With light from hence, though but reflected, shines;

That place is Earth the seat of man, that light

His day, which else as th' other hemisphere

Night would invade, but there the neighboring moon

(So call that opposite fair star) her aid

Timely interposes, and her monthly round

Still ending, still renewing, through mid-heav'n;

With borrowed light her countenance triform

Hence fills and empties to enlighten th' Earth,

And in her pale dominion checks the night.

That spot to which I point is Paradise,

Adam's abode, those lofty shades his bow'r. *

Thy way thou canst not miss, me mine requires."

Thus said, he turned, and Satan bowing low,

As to superior spirits is wont in Heav'n,

Where honor due and reverence none neglects,

Took leave, and toward the coast of Earth beneath,

Down from th' ecliptic, sped with hoped success,

Throws his steep flight in many an airy wheel,

Nor stayed, till on Niphates' top he lights. **

* - bower, n. A dwelling, habitation, abode. In early use lit. A cottage; in later use a poetical word for ‘abode’.

** - Niphates is a mountain chain in Armenia.

note on education from "the Superstition of Divorce" by G.K.C.

Modern education is founded on the principle that a parent is more likely to be cruel than anybody else. It passes over the obvious fact that he is less likely to be cruel than anybody else. Anybody may happen to be cruel; but the first chances of cruelty come with the whole colourless and indifferent crowd of total strangers and mechanical mercenaries, whom it is now the custom to call in as infallible agents of improvement; policemen, doctors, detectives, inspectors, instructors, and so on. They are automatically given arbitrary power because there are here and there such things as criminal parents; as if there were no such things as criminal doctors or criminal school-masters.

A mother is not always judicious about her child's diet, so it is given into the control of Dr. Crippen. A father is thought not to teach his sons the purest morality; so they are put under the tutorship of Eugene Aram. These celebrated criminals are no more rare in their respective professions than the cruel parents are in the profession of parenthood. But indeed the case is far stronger than this; and there is no need to rely on the case of such criminals at all.

The ordinary weaknesses of human nature will explain all the weaknesses of bureaucracy and business government all over the world. The official need only be an ordinary man to be more indifferent to other people's children than to his own; and even to sacrifice other people's family prosperity to his own. He may be bored; he may be bribed; he may be brutal, for any one of the thousand reasons that ever made a man a brute.

All this elementary common sense is entirely left out of account in our educational and social systems of today. It is assumed that the hireling will not flee, and that solely because he is a hireling. It is denied that the shepherd will lay down his life for the sheep; or for that matter, even that the she-wolf will fight for the cubs. We are to believe that mothers are inhuman; but not that officials are human. There are unnatural parents, but there are no natural passions; at least, there are none where the fury of King Lear dared to find them-- in the beadle. Such is the latest light on the education of the young; and the same principle that is applied to the child is applied to the husband and wife. Just as it assumes that a child will certainly be loved by anybody except his mother, so it assumes that a man can be happy with anybody except the one woman he has himself chosen for his wife.

the difference between a dead sentence and a living one

The crowd reacted violently against the police and a riot commenced in the downtown area.

VS

The people rose up and smote the policemen, and they fell upon the city in wrath.

My relationship with her is purely platonic.

VS

Should I lust after my sister, or my father's wife? Neither would I lust after her.

Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.

VS

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.