Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a terrifying story about the duality of man, with good and evil battling within each individual. Jekyll ultimately discovered that his evil side was far worse than he imagined and he could not control it, ultimately losing the battle to his evil self.
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I had a chance to read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. No, I didn't see a movie, I didn't see a Broadway play, I haven't. I was just, I hadn't, you know, most of us think we know the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but we've actually seen productions of it. But when you actually go back and read the original little novella by Robert Louis Stevenson, it's not very long, 80 pages or so. It's a terrifying book.
He says, every day I drew steadily nearer to that truth that man is not truly one but truly two. I saw the primitive duality of man. I saw the two natures contending in the field of my consciousness. If I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.
He called himself, it's a great phrase, he called himself an incongruous compound. And he said, you see, nobody can be happy.
He says the unjust then might go his way, delivered from all the aspirations and remorse of his upright twin. And the just could walk on his upward path, doing good and no longer exposed to disgrace by the actions of his evil other.
He says, this being, Edward Hyde, was inherently maligned, his every act and every thought centered completely on himself. The book says that Edward Hyde is the only unmixed human being on the face of the earth. So that when you came up to him, you found no redeeming characteristics, so nothing but selfishness, nothing but a person who completely, as he said, every act and every thought centered totally on himself.
