.
As he returns victorious battle, puffed up with self-love which demands ever-increasing recognition of his greatness, the forces of evil suggest to his imagination the splendid prospect of attaining now the greatest mutable good he has ever desired. These demons in the guise of witches cannot read his inner-most thoughts, but from observing his facial expressions and body language, they surmise what passions drive him and what dark desires lie in wait. Realizing that he desires the kingdom, they prophesy that he shall be king. They cannot thus compel his will to evil, but they do arouse his passions and stir up a vehement apprehension of the imagination, which so perverts the judgment of reason that it leads his will toward choosing means to the desired temporal good. .
Indeed his imagination and passions are so vivid under this evil impulse from without that "nothing is but what is not"; and his reason is so impeded that he judges, "These solicitings cannot be evil, cannot be good." Still, he is provided with so much natural good that he is able to control the apprehensions of his imagination and decides to take no step involving crime. His decision not to commit murder, however, is not in any sense based upon moral grounds. .
Without denying him still a complexity of motives, as kinsman and subject he may possibly experience some slight shade of unmixed loyalty to the King under his roof. We may even say that the consequences which he fears are not at all inward and spiritual. It is to be doubted whether he has ever so far considered the possible effects of crime and evil upon the human soul. His later discovery of horrible ravages produced by evil in his own spirit constitutes part of the tragedy. He is mainly concerned, as we might expect, with consequences involving the loss of mutable goods which he already possesses and values highly. After the murder of Duncan, the natural good in him compels him to acknowledgment that, in committing the unnatural act, he has filed away his mind and has given his eternal jewel, the soul, to those demonic forces which are the enemy of mankind.
