. . but torture without end still urges"( Rostrevor, 54 ). This is an atmosphere unlike the one from which Satan came. He was willing to give up everything because of envy. .
Milton's Satan continues to fascinate critics because he is more complex than the Devil of the Christian tradition. Satan's rebelliousness, his capacity for action, particularly unconventional action, endeared him to certain types of minds, even if their viewpoint might be considered theologically misleading.
Milton often follows the "road of meaning and definition" ( Rostrevor, 47 ) for his character of reasoning. In the presentation of Satan, Milton is dealing with a specific difficulty. He is not presenting a human person, but an angelic one. This is almost impossible for the human mind to comprehend. Milton simplifies the matter by making spiritual intelligence "more refined versions of human intelligence"( Linn, 15 ). He is still left with one problem, that of introducing a flaw in these refined beings; because of this refined intelligence, these creatures should incline solely to good, "So farwel Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear, Farwel Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good" (IX, 109-111). In this dramatic statement, Satan renounces everything that's good, "His is not a lack of intelligence, or weakness, very simply an acceptance of evil. It almost justifies C. S. Lewis' observation . . . .
What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything." Although the statement "Evil be .
thou my Good," makes no sense on the surface, it has a symbolic meaning as an .
expression of Satan's will to reject the hierarchy of values set before him" ( Linn, 25 ). .
In doing so, he creates an illusory world that reflects his adopted values, which he accepts as reality. It is based on hatred, "His hatred is him dependant on what he hates, thus making it greater" (34).
