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Yet, at this distant day, let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that I can recall no occasion when the suggestions of my rival were on the side of those errors or follies so usual to his immature age, and seeming inexperience; that his moral sense, at least, if not his general talents and worldly wisdom, was far keener than my own.
The narrator has this to say of the doppelganger Wilson when describing how he undermines the narrator’s superiority at school. This quotation reveals that Wilson’s interference in the narrator’s schemes at Dr. Bransby’s Academy are really attempts to guide the narrator to moral action and protect him from his worst impulses. In this way, Wilson behaves as the narrator’s voice of conscience. By thwarting the narrator’s attempts at sinning, Wilson keeps him from the life of misery and regret we find the narrator living at the beginning of the story.
Gentlemen, I make no apology for this behaviour, because in thus behaving I am but fulfilling a duty. You are, beyond doubt, uninformed of the true character of the person who has to-night won at écarté a large sum of money from Lord Glendinning.
The doppelganger Wilson has this to say as he stops the narrator from cheating Lord Glendinning out of an exorbitant sum of money. Aside from his dying words, this speech is the most we hear Wilson speak in the story, and it happens right as the narrator enacts the worst scheme he has henceforth confessed to. The fact that Wilson describes his confrontation with the narrator as a “duty” highlights their inextricable link. It is Wilson’s duty to set the situation to moral rights, regardless of the harm done to his reputation. He fulfills this duty in a straightforward manner.
