“The image of the devil in human history has provided the simplest answer to the problem of evil in all its forms. How is it that human beings, capable of acts of self-sacrifice and moral magnificence, are also able to perpetrate the greatest of horrors? One answer has been the power of an evil, dark force that has helped to corrupt us from the beginning of time—a devil that embodies all of our aggression and rage without any of our capacity for moral imagination ... A Tempter, but also a creative sadist, the monotheistic West’s image of the devil has given us an embodiment of violence. Our dark impulses are us, but they are also not us, according to traditional beliefs about Satan. We act on our most vicious impulses, the logic of the diabolical tells us, because a Tempter pulls us into them, makes us live in our darkness, causes us to forget ourselves or even become a new, wretched self.”