Jekyll’s Statement is an important part of the novella as it is the first time we find out the whole story and see events from Jekyll’s point of view. In this passage, Jekyll states one of the main themes of the book: ‘those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature.’ This second aspect of a person is sometimes called their ‘alter ego’ – the aspect which Jekyll names Hyde.
Jekyll’s scientific work leads him to a solution to his own ‘double-dealing’ life. He can make a potion which separates out the ‘bad’ and gives it independent life. But all he is really doing is making an ‘even deeper trench’ between the parts of his personality. He says that his scientific studies ‘led wholly toward the mystic and the transcendental’. This is the point over which he first falls out with Lanyon. The science/supernatural duality is presented through the contrasting characters Jekyll and Lanyon. Lanyon sees science as being the wholly rational, considering anything else to be ‘balderdash’, a word that dismisses Jekyll’s view without giving it any dignity. Jekyll’s choice of words, ‘mystical’ and ‘transcendental’, make his interests sound elevated and superior. The two areas of knowledge, the scientific and the mystical or supernatural, are another aspect of ‘the double’ in the novel.
The last line suggests there might be more than two aspects to human nature but Jekyll doesn’t know because his explorations did ‘not pass beyond that point’ – he only experimented with two. This would mean a character could have more than one alter ego. But Jekyll’s conclusion – which comes too late to help him – is that it is natural to be composed of conflicting parts: ‘man is not truly one, but truly two.’ Trying to drive out the evil, to separate it in the personality of Hyde, is his downfall. The separation is not sustainable. Although Jekyll decides to give up Hyde and stops taking the potion, he cannot – Hyde breaks through, because he is ‘truly’ part of Jekyll.