Term 2 Homework No.2

To me, it seems that Arthur Miller has somewhat a belief that the idea of devil/evil spirits is all in accordance to society's view of the good and bad. The passage mainly talks of how the Devil is portrayed in society, and society's view regarding the Devil. Miller himself believes that a connection with devilish spirits in Salem did indeed happen, as he says, "I have no doubt that people were communing with, and even worshipping, the Devil in Salem, and if the whole truth could be known in this case, as it is in others, we should discover a regular and conventionalised propitiation of the dark spirit." Arthur Miller goes on to list the different examples of proof regarding the practice of witch-craft and connections with the Devil. However, the passage does seem to present a view point in which this may all be close to imagination. He states, "it is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without sky." Continuing, he says, "the concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas." He claims that society needs the Devil in order to make an excuse for anything opposing the good. "Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotion and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer."