Science versus the supernatural

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, there is a tense relationship between the scientific and the supernatural. Until the final revelation that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are the same person, the novella appears to be an ordinary story about the mysterious relationship between two people. By the end, however, it becomes clear that Dr Jekyll’s scientific experiments have had supernatural results. 

One of the reasons for Dr Jekyll’s “success” in creating Mr Hyde seems to be his openness to the illogical and the mystical: “my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental” (p. 52). His approach is contrasted with Dr Lanyon, who is committed to scientific thinking, valuing logic and rationality. H...