If we read the final chapter of this fascinating story,
which gives us Dr. Jekyll's own account of all of his past and the relationship between
himself and Mr. Hyde, we see that once he had began to take the transforming potion, it
became incredibly hard to stop it. Even when Dr. Jekyll makes a conscious choice to
choose "the elderly and discontented doctor" over the evil Mr. Hyde, and embarks on a
determined course of action to note take the potion, it is clear that the temptation to
embrace his darker, evil side is too powerful:
For two months, however, I was true to my
determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity that I had never before
attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at
last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow
into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde
struggling after freedom; and at last, in a hour of moral weakness, I once again
compunded and swallowed the transforming
draft.
Dr. Jekyll likens his
cravings for the potion to an alcoholic thirsting after drink, and we see that having
experienced the evil side of his personality, this part of his identity increasingly
overpowers the good side of himself. Dr. Jekyll admits that he completely underestimated
the "complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil" of Mr. Hyde and thus
he recognises that he is fighting a losing battle.
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