probably the best passage in Robinson Crusoe

This is from the famous chapter where he sees a footprint. After seriously considering that it may have been left by the Devil, Crusoe finally rejects that theory:

“I considered that the Devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me than this the single print of a foot. That as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea upon a high wind would have defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all the notions we usually entertain of the subtlety of the Devil.”

I love this… the empirical fact of a footprint weighed according to “our usually entertained notions of the subtlety of the Devil.”

I don’t think I’ve ever had the experience of encountering a temptation and literally believing that it was the Devil who set it in my path. But it’s interesting to speculate on what a long lifetime would feel like for those who see the mechanics of the world in that way.