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550. What is the meaning of the fantastic legends of persons selling their soul to Satan in order to obtain from him certain favours?
"All fables contain a teaching and a moral; your mistake is in taking them literally. The one you refer to is an allegory that may be thus explained:--He who calls evil spirits to his aid, in order to obtain from them the gifts of fortune or any other favour, rebels against Providence. He draws back from the mission he has received, and from the trials he was to have undergone, in his earthly life; and he will reap the consequences of this rebellion in the life to come. By this we do not mean to say that his soul is condemned to misery forever; but as, instead of detaching himself from matter, he plunges himself deeper and deeper into it, his enjoyment of earthly pleasures will only have led to his suffering in the spirit-world, until he shall have redeemed himself from the thraldom of evil by new trials, perhaps heavier and more painful than those against which he now rebels. Through his indulgence in material pleasures, he brings himself under the power of impure spirits, and thus establishes between them and him a tacit compact which leads him to his ruin, but which it is always easy for him to break with the assistance of higher spirits, if he have the firm determination to do so."