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A STUDY OF DANTE 
 
 BY 
 
 SUSAN E. BLOW 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL.D. 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 Jnicktrboflut Jpress 
 1886 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 SUSAN E. BLOW 
 
 1886 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. Putnam’s Sons 
 
 1886 
 
1 
 
 f 
 
 / 
 
 ) / 
 
 • 4 
 
 1 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i 
 
 f 
 
 Introduction 
 
 iii 
 
 S 
 
 ^4 
 
 Inferno . . 
 
 I 
 
 
 PURGATORIO 
 
 • 32 
 
 
 Paradiso 
 
 . 66 
 
 
 966 1 50 
 

INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The great world-poets, of whom it is usual to 
 reckon four — including Homer, Shakespeare, and 
 Goethe, besides Dante, — hold their supreme place 
 in popular estimation as much on account of the 
 themes they have treated as on account of the per- 
 fection of poetic form which belongs to their great 
 works. They have one and all distinguished their 
 literary work from that of other poets by the pro- 
 found insight with which they have treated the prob- 
 lem of life in its varied aspects. Their poems may 
 be called ethical poems on account of the manner in 
 which they have shown the reaction of the social 
 whole against the attacks of Titanic individuals. * 
 One may write poetry for poets,’' as it is called — 
 such poetry as has attained to the great vision of the 
 correspondence of nature to the soul of Man, — with- 
 out having attained the ethical insight. The ethical in- 
 sight sees the substantiality of institutions — family, 
 state, church, — and does not often come to the poet 
 until he has reached the middle of his life’s journey. 
 But the poetry for poets and poetical natures is true 
 poetry on account of the vision alluded to — that of 
 
 iii 
 
IV 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 insight into the correspondences which furnish us 
 with new expressions for ideas and moods of the 
 soul. It takes rank, however, far below the poetry 
 of a world-poet, for the reason that the latter has 
 used his vehicles of expression to reveal to all in- 
 dividual men their substantial manhood as embodied 
 in the institutions of civilization. 
 
 Dante’s place is that of the earliest literary voice 
 of Christian civilization, coming two millenniums af- 
 ter Homer had sung the first aspirations of European 
 individuality, then newly broken off from the Asi- 
 atic stem. With individuality had bloomed Greek 
 art, republican states, the scientific spirit, and finally 
 it had found the substantial forms of the will in Ro- 
 man law. The adjustment of the individual to the 
 sovereignty of law had broken the necks of all 
 nations, and the fulness of time had come for 
 Christianity, with its doctrine of the divine-human 
 God whose relation to the individual human soul 
 was that of Father to son. The ten silent centu- 
 ries,” which Tieck describes as finding a voice in 
 Dante, were all needed to complete the assimila- 
 tion of the heathen view of the world, which itself 
 was essentially a religious ” view, in the sense given 
 to the word by a great saint of the English Church, 
 Maurice. For the Roman religio was essentially a 
 ritual, and ceremonial to the last degree. 
 
IN TROD UCTION 
 
 V 
 
 Up to Dante’s time Christianity had reacted 
 against pantheistic faiths that it encountered in 
 Western Asia and Egypt, to such an extent that 
 it laid too much stress on the arbitrary will of God, 
 and ignored the laws of nature, and came very near 
 to denying even the rational consistency in the di- 
 vine decrees. A change had set in, which still, after 
 seven centuries, swings towards the opposite extreme 
 in our own time, — a tendency to discover a divine 
 eternal nature of things even superior to God’s will, 
 and to set extravagant value on discovered natural 
 laws.^ 
 
 The Mohammedan world-movement was the im- 
 mediate cause of the change. Its external phase 
 appeared in wars of conquest that finally led Chris- 
 tendom to unite in the Crusades. Its internal phase 
 took shape in Arabian philosophy and natural sci- 
 ence, taught in its schools in Spain, which compelled 
 Christendom to stand on the defensive in scholarship 
 and philosophic thought. These two phases had pro- 
 duced their greatest effects before Dante was born. 
 The eighth and last Crusade, led by St. Louis of 
 France, was begun when he was five years old. 
 Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus died before 
 his fifteenth year, after they had given a scientific 
 form to Christian Theology. 
 
 Coming at this epoch Dante elaborates his great 
 
VI 
 
 A STUD Y OF DANTE, 
 
 poem. Its form is partly theologic. A new literary 
 art had not hitherto emerged from the new religion 
 which had destroyed all of the old. We see now an 
 entirely new literary form invented, not epic nor yet 
 dramatic or lyric. In the ‘‘Divine Comedy’’ the 
 collisions of the individual with institutions are not 
 borne by special heroes whose fate we watch with 
 breathless interest as we follow the caprices of Achil- 
 les or the wanderings of Ulysses. But instead of 
 one collision for the entire poem, we behold hun- 
 dreds of such collisions as we pass through the lower 
 world and climb the mountain of purification. The 
 tragic personalities are so foreshortened in the per- 
 spective in which we see them that their deeds seem 
 to issue forth from their perverse wills and to return 
 immediately upon their persons in the shape of 
 sufferings too grievous to be borne. That the re- 
 sponsible, free agent, man, does to himself whatever 
 he does, that his deeds return to the doer, is made 
 apparent in this poem without the delays of a long 
 life or even the intervention of the incidents of a 
 long epic poem. 
 
 Commentary has accumulated its labors to clear 
 up the philological difficulties of the archaic text. 
 Archaeology and history and biography have also 
 been drawn upon to illustrate the obscure passages. 
 But all these useful, even indispensable instrumen- 
 
IN TROD UCTION. 
 
 Vll 
 
 talities leave us still outside of the mystic unfathom- 
 able song/' We must press through into its heart 
 and soul. The thought, what there is essential in 
 it, must be translated out of the theosophic form of 
 the Middle Ages, to the end that we^ may find 
 nourishment in the poem for ourselves in this our 
 own century. 
 
 Commentary has thrown light on the mythological 
 framework of the poem, as well as on its vocabulary 
 of words and its figures and prosody. But on the 
 perennial significance of the vision as a valid and 
 eternal insight of Dante, there is still room for the 
 best species of commentary. It is confessed that this 
 requires a higher order of talent. Erudition, the 
 result of patient and praiseworthy diligence that 
 searches through the piles of dusty rubbish for the 
 wherewithal to illustrate the great poem and bring 
 us face to face with a long-vanished era of human 
 life, — this, by itself, produces for us the series of com- 
 mentaries that have brought about the resurrection 
 of the body of this poem. But it requires profound 
 thought and subtle poetic gifts to bring back its 
 living soul. ^ 
 
 To those who suppose themselves sufficiently 
 equipped in the possession of the contributions of 
 erudition to the work of illustrating Dante's poem, 
 it may seem a useless task to add a commentary on 
 
A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 viii 
 
 the view of the world therein presented and on its 
 permanent validity. Upon examination, however, 
 we become convinced that there are numerous com- 
 mentators on the great world-poets who find their 
 delight in illustrating their authors by the results of 
 mere erudition, without looking forward to any pos- 
 sible use that may be derived from their labors in 
 unlocking treasures of beauty and truth. And we 
 are even more surprised to learn from their confes- 
 sions that they are profound sceptics in respect to 
 the doctrine, that there is in these works any truth 
 to be found, or any view of life embodied there, that 
 will bear translation into our current forms of state- 
 ment. 
 
 Their theory of the greatest literary productions 
 therefore is hostile to the view that looks upon them 
 as revelations of human nature. Surely, if Homer 
 or Dante saw deeply into human nature, their in- 
 sights are precisely what is most valuable to us, and 
 a commentary unfolding this insight the most profit- 
 able to read. We should need, not one alone of this 
 species of commentary, but rather an entire literature 
 of such, in order to furnish aid to all classes of minds 
 that may be benefited by access to the great poems. 
 
 An objection has been made to commentary on 
 the spiritual contents of the great poems by quite a 
 different class of literary men from those sad seep- 
 
IN TROD UCTION 
 
 IX 
 
 tics who believe the meaning of the great poem has 
 become obsolete forever, and who merely wish to 
 decorate its empty dwelling. I refer to those who 
 say that the poem itself is its best commentary. 
 They admit, however, the first class of commentators, 
 those of erudition, for they see quite plainly that the 
 externalities of costume have grown antiquated and 
 need to be made familiar again. But they do not 
 perceive equally well that the view of the world of 
 one epoch presents itself under a masque that ob- 
 scures it to another. They seem to forget that the 
 great world-poem holds up its mirror to the world of 
 humanity, and reflects its deepest secrets as well as 
 its most open and external fashions and forms. It is 
 not a system of philosophy, nor of theology, nor any 
 form of science or history. It is a work of art, re- 
 flecting the life of the age, and therefore contains all 
 of these elements organically united with the other 
 elements of that life. Hence, if we are to become 
 distinctly conscious of them, we must discover them 
 one by one through analytical labors. And, just as 
 in all successful undertakings, we must avail our- 
 selves of the results of the toil of others to reinforce 
 our own. 
 
 The analysis that points out the treatment of a 
 separate thread in the poem does not destroy the 
 poem by some process of anatomy, as has been 
 
X 
 
 A STUD Y OF DANTE. 
 
 feared. All that is necessary to render analytic 
 studies of the greatest service in helping us to realize 
 the organic unity of the poem is that the commentator 
 shows how the unity of the poem is reflected in the 
 special element treated. The more reflections of 
 the central idea made to appear in the details of the 
 poem, the more its organic wholeness is shown. 
 
 All new students of literature need guides to what 
 is essential. No advanced student of literature can 
 afford to neglect the combined labors of his fellow 
 students. Each individual purifies his own critical 
 judgment through the aid of the brotherhood of 
 scholars. 
 
 In this view, the following essays by Miss Blow, 
 on the significance of the divine comedy as a study 
 of life in its human and divine aspects, must be wel- 
 comed by the large and growing class of thoughtful 
 readers of Dante. They will find, if I mistake not, 
 many new and important reflections on the perma- 
 nent content of the poem, and many hints that will 
 aid in the interpretation of its mythologic forms 
 into valid meanings to the consciousness of the 
 present age. Her sympathetic study has enabled 
 her to reproduce, in a vivid manner, the atmosphere 
 of the three several parts of the poem and assist us 
 to feel the ethical inspiration that fired the poet. 
 The Inferno is shown to us not as a remote and 
 
IN TROD UCTION 
 
 XI 
 
 monstrous product of the faith held by man in his 
 infancy, but as a living reality that surrounds us all 
 — an essential condition of the soul when it sways 
 from harmony with its true nature. The Purgatory 
 is seen as the perennial struggle of the repentant 
 soul for purification. The Paradiso is not a mere 
 future state of blessedness, but also the eternal 
 atmosphere of all right-doing and knowing of the 
 true. Dante’s powerful images are shown to have 
 truth for us, not as literal or prose statements 
 of doctrine, but as figurative statements of the 
 profoundest insights into human life. 
 
 W. T. HARRIS. ' 
 
 Concord, Mass., 
 
 January , 1886, 
 
■-r 
 
 m' 
 
 
 
A STUDY OF DANTE 
 
 INFERNO. 
 
 To know how hard the wind is blowing one must 
 sail against the wind. To measure the force of a 
 stream one must swim against its current. That the 
 tendencies of any given age may be comprehended, 
 they must be surveyed from the standpoint of an age 
 different in its habits of thought. Drifting with his 
 generation, the individual cannot gauge its strength, 
 and sees neither the direction in which it moves nor 
 the goal toward which it tends. 
 
 We live in an age which is rapidly losing the con- 
 sciousness of sin. Equally alien to our feeling are 
 the physical self-scourgings of the mediaeval saint 
 and the spiritual agony of the Puritan. The burden 
 which bore so heavily upon Christian sits very lightly 
 upon us. We hear much of the soul of goodness in 
 things evil, and, reversing the disguise of Satan as an 
 angel of light, we are learning to look on sin as an 
 angel veiled in darkness. The doctrine of the fall 
 of man is interpreted to mean ascent to a more con- 
 scious plane of existence. “ Paradise is a park 
 where only brutes, not men, can remain,*' and it is a 
 
2 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 rise and not a fall which is symbolized in the mythus 
 of the woman, the serpent, and the tree. Out of 
 the depth of Donatello's sin is born the conscience 
 which converts the faun into the man. Faust fear- 
 lessly allies himself with the Devil, and makes him 
 the instrument of his salvation. The poets with one 
 voice teach that by ministry of evil good is clear," 
 that evil will bless and ice will burn," and that we 
 “ rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher 
 things." The scientist assures us that “ men end by 
 going right after trying every imaginable way of 
 going wrong," and the history of the world is shown 
 to be a course of practical logic, through which man 
 is gradually learning wisdom from his mistakes. 
 Thus sin is no more sin, and, instead of groaning 
 with the Apostle, O wretched man that I am ! who 
 shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " we 
 plume ourselves on the secrets wrested from con- 
 quered wrong, and cheerfully condone the wrong 
 that is yet unconquered. 
 
 The thought upon which this view of sin ulti- 
 mately rests is, that man can only learn what he is 
 by finding out what he is not, and that the violation 
 of his ideal nature in its reaction reveals him to him- 
 self. So long as he acted in accord with his nature, 
 there could be neither self-consciousness nor spiritual 
 freedom. There must be contrast before there can 
 
INFERNO. 
 
 3 
 
 be comprehension, and, as we know light through 
 darkness, we can realize good only through the min- 
 istry of evil. 
 
 Whatever else this theory may or may not be, it is 
 distinctly anti-Christian. There can be no sympa- 
 thy between a philosophy which sees in sin the con- 
 dition of a realized self-consciousness and a religion 
 which heralds its founder as the Lamb of God 
 which taketh away the sin of the world.'* The 
 Christian consciousness has always defined sin as 
 rebellion against God, “the act of a traitor who aims 
 at the death and overthrow of his sovereign." Sin, 
 according to the Christian Church, is that which, had 
 it power so to do, would drag God from his throne, 
 and would rejoice could He cease to be. It brings 
 forth no good but only evil, and evil continually, 
 and, far from rising through it to the heights of 
 vision and attainment, man sinks through it to a 
 condition worse than that of the unconscious brute. 
 
 To realize how totally the thought of to-day con- 
 tradicts the Christian theory of sin, one needs but to 
 study that theory as expounded by the great poet 
 of the Church in his “ Divina Commedia." Nowhere 
 shall we find such vital grappling with the universal 
 problem of man as in the utterances of this sternest 
 and tenderest of poets. “ Behold, therefore, the 
 goodness and the severity of God," exclaims the 
 
4 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 inspired writer. ‘‘ Behold the infinite love and the 
 infinite rigor of the man taught of God/' our hearts 
 exclaim as, following Dante, we penetrate to the 
 ultimate depths of sin and misery, and learn at last 
 the genesis, the development, and the outcome of 
 evil. 
 
 Dante has been called the voice of ten silent cen- 
 turies, and certain it is that the truths to which he 
 gave immortal expression had, during these ages, 
 been slowly crystallizing in the consciousness of the 
 Christian world. His poem is not individual, but 
 universal ; he utters not his own thought, but the un- 
 formulated creed of Christendom. Nay, he reaches 
 beyond Christianity and speaks to the universal con- 
 science of humanity — that inward witness which is 
 always calling upon man to rejoice in his freedom 
 and tremble before the responsibility bound up 
 with it. 
 
 The Divina Commedia ” is the outcome of a 
 profound and exhaustive reflection upon the facts of 
 the moral world. Reflection, in all of its forms, in- 
 volves the reduction of the infinitude of particular 
 things to a finitude of classes, and culminates in that 
 philosophic insight which reduces this finitude of 
 classes to the unity of an inclusive process. Ade- 
 quate reflection upon the moral world should there- 
 fore result in the classification of its complicated 
 
INFERNO. 
 
 5 
 
 phenomena, and in the ultimate discovery of the 
 genesis and development both of good and evil. 
 
 It is because Dante has traced this genetic devel- 
 opment that the Divina Commedia '' is an organic 
 whole vitalized throughout by one all-penetrating 
 thought. This fundamental insight is that, as man 
 is a derivative being, the condition of a true develop- 
 ment must be an uninterrupted connection and com- 
 munion with his source. As right relationship to 
 the sun solves the secret of the planetary system, so 
 right relationship to God solves the secrets of life 
 and thought. As a stream cut off from its fountain- 
 head must inevitably dry up, so the soul which sepa- 
 rates itself from God destroys itself. It is a dying 
 soul, which can be restored to life only by the re- 
 newal of its relationship to God. In the substitution 
 of self for God lies the germ of all sin. Because 
 thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said I am God 
 and I sit in the chair of God (whereas thou art a man 
 and not God), and hast set thy heart as if it were the 
 heart of God, therefore I will bring thee to nothing, 
 and thou shalt not be, and if thou be sought for thou 
 shalt not be found any more forever.’' 
 
 Conformably to this theory, the Divina Com- 
 media/’ in its three divisions,, treats ^TTHe dbr- 
 ruption of the will, the purification of the will, and 
 the perfection of the will. The Inferno ” traces 
 
6 
 
 A STUB Y OF DANTE, 
 
 the history of the soul, as, emptied of God, it be- 
 comes progressively filled with self ; the Purga- 
 torio shows us the gradual emptying of self, and 
 the Paradiso the filling of the soul with God. 
 The poem culminates with the rapture of the beatific 
 vision — the steadfast, immovable, attentive gaze of 
 the soul upon that Light, ‘‘ in whose presence one 
 such becomes 
 
 “ That to withdraw therefrom for other prospect 
 It is impossible he e’er consent.” 
 
 It is a truth which is too generally ignored, that 
 all duties arise out of relationships. It is because 
 there are fathers, mothers, children, sisters, and 
 brothers, that there are parental, filial, and fraternal 
 duties; it is because a man has a country that he 
 should be a patriot; it is through friends that we 
 learn the sweet obligations of friendship ; and it is 
 because the world is full of the aged, the poor, the 
 sinful, and the sorrowing, that we are called on to 
 exercise reverence, pity, charity, and sympathy. 
 Finally, it is because our souls are bound up with a 
 material frame that we struggle for the conquest of 
 the flesh by the spirit, and it is because there is an 
 infinite God that our souls yearn towards him with 
 aspiration, and bow before him with awe. Partic- 
 ular relationships are the conditions of particular 
 
INFERNO. 
 
 duties, and all particular relationships are grounded 
 in the fundamental relationship which makes them 
 possible. 
 
 Keeping before us this central thought of the 
 poem, let us now study in detail the problem of sin 
 and punishment as dealt with by Dante in the “ In- 
 ferno.'' Omitting the first two cantos, which relate 
 how the poet came to undertake his arduous pil- 
 grimage, we find ourselves at the beginning of the 
 third canto standing before the gate of Hell. Over 
 the gate is this inscription : 
 
 ‘‘Through me is the way into the doleful city; 
 through me the way into the eternal pain ; through 
 me the way among the people lost. Justice moved 
 my high Maker ; Divine Power made me. Wisdom 
 Supreme and Primal Love." 
 
 The sense of this inscription is so alien to the 
 sentiment of to-day, that it is hard for our minds to 
 grasp. Its implicit argument is this : If man is free 
 he is responsible. If he is responsible, justice 
 requires the return of his deed upon him. To spare 
 him the result of his own activity is to insult his 
 ideal nature by denying his freedom. Hell is the 
 Creator's final tribute of respect to the being he 
 made in his own image ; and, as both Wisdom an^ 
 Love imply recognition of the essential nature of 
 their object, They concur "w^^ 
 the punishment of the sinner. 
 
8 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 It is easy to find fault with this view of man's nat- 
 ure and responsibilities, but it is hard to substitute 
 for it one which is not open to more vital objection. 
 The practical denial of human freedom would be the 
 dissolution of organized society, for our whole inter- 
 course with each other is based upon a recognition 
 of that responsibility which current theories so 
 lightly set aside. It is to me a most significant fact 
 that the false philosophy which denies man’s responsi- 
 bility culminates in denial of his immortality ; and, 
 if it emancipates the sinner from the fear of hell, it 
 destroys for the struggling saint the hope of heaven. 
 In its outcome it is more cruel far than the faith it 
 condemns, for that, at least, has eternal happiness as 
 a set-off to everlasting pains, while this makes all 
 our hopes a lie, and sinks the evil and the good in 
 the same blank annihilation. 
 
 What mainly interferes with our acceptance of the 
 Dantean theory of punishment is the unconscious 
 materialism of our thought. By the average mind 
 penalty is conceived as something external to, and 
 distinct from, the spiritual result of sin. It is some- 
 thing done to the sinner, not something which he 
 through his sin does to himself. Dante’s view (it 
 would seem to me) is that through repeated sinful 
 acts the soul attains a grade of permanence in sin. 
 The long conflict between good and evil comes at 
 
INFERNO, 
 
 9 
 
 last to an end, and the sin in which we have indulged 
 is stamped upon the soul as its eternal form. And, 
 as sin is dominant within, it is universalized without 
 us. The glutton is immersed in his gluttony, and 
 surrounded by other gluttons ; the carnal sinners are 
 driven about in the total darkness of their souls by 
 the fierce winds of their passions, and are cut off by 
 their own limitation from comprehension of any 
 other type of character than their own. By our 
 own acts we determine ourselves, and only what we 
 are can we recognize in others. Our punishment is 
 what we ultimately become mirrored to conscious- 
 ness through our surroundings. 
 
 Throughout the ‘‘ Inferno '' the varying punish- 
 ments are sirnply the external symbols of yarying 
 phases_pf sinful con^sciousness. The wrathful are 
 immersed in boiling mud ; the violent in a river of 
 blood. The hypocrites, a painted people,'' wearing 
 cloaks all gilt without, all lead within, are moving 
 round with steps exceeding slow, and in their looks 
 are tired and overcome." The thieves, whose deed 
 universalized would make it impossible to know 
 ‘‘whose was whose or what was what," are seen in 
 an eternal process of transformation into the ser- 
 pents, who aptly symbolize their creeping stealth. 
 Flatterers are immersed in filth, “ for those things 
 which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the 
 
lO 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 heart, and they defile a man/’ Schismatics, who 
 have made division where there should be unity, are 
 eternally cleft by a sword-bearing devil, and the con- 
 suming flame of conscience swathes the evil counsel- 
 lors who have employed God’s great gift of wisdom 
 to deceive their fellow-men. 
 
 Man is free ! This is the first truth emphasized 
 by our mediaeval poet. Pass now with him through 
 the gate of Hell, and learn how free man makes him- 
 self the slave of sin. “ Our wills are ours to make 
 them thine ” ; rational freedom is the soul’s volun- 
 tary choice of the good. We have said that we 
 should trace through the Inferno ” the progressive 
 filling of the soul with self, and lo ! the first spirits 
 we meet, as we step upon the starless plain, are 
 those who illustrate selfishness in its emptiest and 
 most abstract form. Dante’s description of them is 
 a most scathing one. “ They lived without blame 
 and without praise ; to God they were neither faith- 
 ful nor rebellious. Heaven chased them forth, and 
 the deep hell refused to receive them. Mercy and 
 judgment disdain them, and report of them the 
 world permits not to exist. They have no hope of 
 death, and their blind life is so mean that they are 
 envious of every other lot.” The description con- 
 centrates in the twofold statement that they were 
 for self, and that they never were alive.” They did 
 
INFERNO, 
 
 1 1 
 
 not deny the truth, they simply never thought about 
 it ; they did not rebel against God, they ignored 
 Him ; they did not consciously assert themselves, 
 they merely indulged each passing caprice. They 
 are the representatives of that frivolous class who 
 live only in the moment, and in the moment think 
 only of themselves. Petty passions sting them like 
 wasps and hornets, and, goaded by the capricious 
 love of change, they forever chase a whirling ensign 
 which scorns all pause. In the stage of immediate 
 impulse they have substituted self for God, and 
 indulgence for obligation ; the house is empty, 
 swept, and garnished, all too ready for the evil 
 spirits who will soon rush in. Is it significant that 
 of these souls there is such a long train that 
 scarcely could the poet believe death had undone so 
 many ? 
 
 As the return of man's deed upon him is the Cre- 
 ator's recognition of the creature's dignity, so the 
 fruit of sin in the soul is the denial of personal ac- 
 countability. The victim of caprice is always a 
 fatalist ; he is the slave of his own unconscious 
 self, and he projects this inward necessity as ex- 
 ternal limit. The souls who assemble on the joy- 
 less strand of Acheron blaspheme God, and their 
 progenitors, the human kind, the place, the time and 
 origin of their seed and of their birth." Every thing 
 
12 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 and every person in the universe is to blame for their 
 condition except themselves. 
 
 ^mmin^ up this introductory canto, we have, 
 first, recognition of the source of punishment ifTthe 
 Divine Justice ; second, recognition of the first phase 
 of sin in the blank form of selfishness ; third, recog- 
 nition of the outcome of sin in the repudiation of 
 personal freedom and responsibility. In the remain- 
 ing cantos selfishness will realize itself in an infini- 
 tude of particular manifestations, and culminate in 
 the concrete unity of selfish form and content in the 
 person of Lucifer. 
 
 We have seen that duties arise out of relation- 
 ships, and that all secondary relationships are 
 grounded in the fundamental relationship to God. 
 Man draws from God the power to realize himself. 
 It follows that the progressive realization of his own 
 ideal nature is a progressive approximation to the 
 divine type, and that the complete indwelling of 
 God is the perfection of man. Truth and good- 
 ness are not abstractions — they are the eternal 
 thought and will of God. What God thinks is 
 the true ; what God wills is the good — or, rather, as 
 in Him knowing and willing are one, truth and 
 goodness are but distinctions in the unity of His 
 Eternal Act. 
 
 Some degree of insight into the nature of God is 
 
INFERNO. 
 
 13 
 
 therefore the necessary condition of any understand- 
 ing of what is right or wrong, good or evil. If to be 
 good is to be like God, and to be wicked is to be un- 
 like Him, it is of infinite importance that we know 
 who and what He is. Parallel with the vanishing 
 consciousness of sin has been the disappearance of 
 all definiteness in the conception of the first prin- 
 ciple of the world, and the theory that God is un- 
 knowable has kept even pace with the theory that 
 man is irresponsible. The restoration of a divine 
 ideal would be also the restoration of our guilty 
 sense of alienation from it. I have heard of 
 Thee,’* exclaims Job, ‘‘by the hearing of the ear, 
 but now mine eye seeth Thee, wherefore I abhor 
 myself and repent in dust and ashes.” 
 
 If we try to think the creative principle of the 
 world, we come at once face to face with the idea of 
 self-activity. By self-activity is meant an activity 
 that acts upon itself : as a creative principle logically 
 antedates all creation, it must be self-active, for the 
 obvious reason that there is nothing but itself for it 
 to act upon. Its activity, therefore, begins from and 
 comes back to itself. It is a circular process, and 
 therefore necessarily an eternal process. It has been 
 complete from all eternity, and yet repeats itself in 
 every moment of time. 
 
 Rightly apprehended, a process of self-activity is 
 
14 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 seen to be necessarily a process of thought, for 
 thought alone has the power of acting upon itself. 
 All natural objects and forces are results of an ac- 
 tivity external to themselves. But thought creates 
 itself, embodies itself, realizes itself, and defines it- 
 self. There can be nothing higher, or wider, or 
 deeper than thought, for ‘Mt is the form of an in- 
 finite content ; there can be nothing back of 
 thought, for, whatever we may set up as prior to 
 thought, thought gets back of it through thinking 
 it. In a word, that which exists in thought cannot 
 antedate or include thought. 
 
 The realized form of thought is self-consciousness, 
 and this involves the distinction of the self from the 
 self, and the persistent identification with self of the 
 self thus distinguished. The eternal distinction of 
 the self is the begetting of an eternal object, the 
 eternal identification of this object with self is eter- 
 nal recognition, communion, or love. This is the 
 truth revealed to faith in the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 and which inspired the rapt utterance of Dante when 
 he exclaimed : 
 
 “ O Light eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest, 
 
 Sole knowest thyself and known unto thyself, 
 
 And knowing lovest and smilest on thyself.” 
 
 Self-activity and communion, or spiritual interpen- 
 etration, are therefore the marks of the divine nature. 
 
INFERNO, 
 
 15 
 
 Hence man, made in the image of God, develops 
 through active combination with his fellows. 
 Through organization the individual man avails 
 himself of the strength, the experience, and the in- 
 sight of total humanity. Whatever nullifies activity, 
 or strikes at participation, is evil, and the final out- 
 come of evil must be stagnation absolute and isola- 
 tion complete. 
 
 This insight enables us to understand the grading 
 of sins in the Inferno.'' All sin strikes either indi- 
 rectly or directly at organized society. The less 
 heinous sins are those which attack society indirectly, 
 by destroying in the individual man the qualities 
 through which combination is possible. These are 
 the sins punished in the circles of Incontinence ; the 
 next degree of sin is that in which there is the attack 
 of man upon individual men, as shown in the circle 
 of Violence, and its final phase is that in which the 
 sinner, first by fraud and then by treachery, attacks 
 the social whole. That fraud made universal would 
 cause a relapse into savagism is symbolized in the 
 primeval giants who stand as sentinels over the 
 region of the fraudulent, while the self-exclusion and 
 self-destruction brought about by treachery are 
 strikingly imaged in Lucifer frozen in the bottom of 
 the pit. 
 
 Having defined sin, and indicated its increasing 
 
i6 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 degrees, our next object must be to seek its origin, 
 and trace its gradual development and expansion 
 within the soul. This can best be done by a careful 
 analysis and comparison of the sins punished in the 
 different circles of the ‘‘ Inferno.” If we can dis- 
 cover in them a principle of evolution, and can show 
 that in the process of sin man's essential nature is 
 progressively destroyed, we shall have settled the 
 question as to whether sin is the instrumentality 
 through which man rises out of the condition of un- 
 conscious unity into that of spiritual fellowship with 
 God. 
 
 Limbo, the outermost circle of the Inferno,” is 
 peopled by souls who have perished through defect. 
 Virgil, who is one of them, describes himself as by 
 not doing, not by doing, lost.” Among these souls 
 some have attained to heroic virtue and some to 
 philosophic insight. They have realized the fulness 
 of purely human thought, of human love, and of 
 earthly fame. The great poets have pleasure in 
 each other, and Aristotle, “master of those that 
 know,” sits amid a philosophic family, who all regard 
 and do him honor. But no finite good can satisfy 
 an infinite craving, and if even the highest purely 
 human life be placed under '' the form of eternity,” 
 its honors will show themselves empty and its joys 
 declare themselves vain. Naught but God can 
 
INFERNO. 
 
 17 
 
 satisfy the soul He maketh great/' Hence the great 
 souls in Limbo, without torment, suffer sadness, and 
 without hope live on in desire. 
 
 Following Limbo are four circles in which are 
 punished the souls who subjected reason to lust," 
 the Glutton, the Avaricious and Prodigal, and the 
 Wrathful and Gloomy. The carnal sinners are borne 
 ever onwards in the sweep of a hellish storm ; the 
 gluttons are lying prostrate on the ground ; Cerberus, 
 emblem of their blind voracity," eternally barks at 
 them, and rends them, and down upon them pours 
 unceasing a storm of hail, foul water, and snow. 
 The avaricious and prodigal, those who placed 
 their happiness in gold, and those who placed their 
 happiness in what gold could buy," roll heavyweights 
 and smite them against each other. The prodigal 
 cries to the avaricious : Why boldest thou ? " and 
 
 the avaricious retorts, “Why throwest thou away?' 
 Intrinsically their sin is one. Make avarice universal, 
 and trade and commerce are impossible, the move- 
 ment of practical life ceases, and the social order is 
 destroyed. Universalize prodigality, and the result is 
 the same. In the one case no man can get any thing, 
 and in the other no man has any thing. And as 
 this twofold crime is essentially against society, and 
 society rests upon the principle of recognition, both 
 miser and spendthrift are made unrecognizable. 
 
i8 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 ‘ ‘ Their undiscerning life which made them vile 
 Now makes them unto all discernment dim.” 
 
 Sunk in the marshy Styx, naked and muddy, the 
 souls of those whom anger overcame stand smiting 
 each other, not with hands only, but with head and 
 with chest and with feet ; and beneath the water and 
 fixed in the slime are the gloomy souls forever 
 gurgling in their throats, Sullen were we in the 
 sweet air that is gladdened by the sun, carrying lazy 
 smoke within our hearts, now lie we sullen here in 
 the black mire.'’ Profound insight of the poet, to 
 mete one punishment to the wrath which makes 
 man his neighbor’s enemy, and the melancholy 
 which makes him an enemy to himself ; and subtle 
 the analysis implied in the lazy smoke carried by 
 the gloomy within their breasts. God is Self- 
 Activity ; man is made in his image : hence, all that 
 is active rejoices the soul, and all that is passive 
 palls upon it. Sloth is man’s denial of himself ; its 
 next phase must be sullen gloom, and its final out- 
 come suicide, corresponding to the final outcome of 
 anger, which is murder. 
 
 In the eleventh canto of the '' Inferno,” the four 
 classes of sins just described are grouped together 
 under the general head of Incontinence, and this 
 Incontinence is said to less offend God, and to 
 receive less blame, than the malice and mad besti- 
 
INFERNO, 
 
 19 
 
 ality met with in the lower circles of the Inferno/' 
 As contrasted with these deeper sins, the sins of 
 incontinence are less conscious and deliberate, and 
 indicate a less extended corruption of man's moral 
 nature. They are sins of feeling rather than sins of 
 thought or will. Their common root is that the 
 man seeks self-gratification. Carnal sin, gluttony, 
 and avarice arise from the excessive indulgence of 
 natural appetites, and anger manifests the exag- 
 gerated self-love of those 
 
 “ Whom injury seems to chafe 
 So that it makes them greedy for revenge.'* 
 
 If it be true that duties arise out of relationships, 
 each special duty may be defined as expression of 
 the feeling which should be stimulated by the 
 relationship. The only knowledge presupposed is 
 knowledge of the relationship jtself. Thus a young 
 child understands little of the distinctions between 
 right and wrong, but from the very dawn of his 
 conscious life has known himself as guarded by a 
 mother's tireless care, and blessed by a mother’s 
 overflowing love. He should meet this love with 
 love expressed in sympathetic obedience. Through 
 obedience to wise commands he will himself become 
 wise, for, as goodness is truth in act, doing the good 
 must culminate in vision of the true. With compre- 
 
20 
 
 A STUD Y OF DANTE, 
 
 hension the child becomes self-directing, following 
 the good of his own independent choice. Indeed, 
 we may say there has been choice from the beginning, 
 but, whereas he first chose the right through faith in 
 his mother, he now chooses it because he has come 
 to know it as the substantial truth of his own ideal 
 nature. The final stage of development is attained 
 when, through repeated activity, he has so deter- 
 mined himself in the image of the good that he 
 rises above choice, and by a sweet necessity of 
 nature is constrained to the right. 
 
 Just as the child shapes himself into goodness 
 through love for his mother, so man shapes himself 
 into goodness through love for God. In tracing 
 backward the history ot man, we may arrive at a 
 point when his mind is empty of all knowledge 
 except the knowledge that he is and that God is. 
 Consciousness of his own existence and conscious- 
 ness of his primal relationship are the conditions of 
 his normal development. And as love should be 
 awakened in the heart of the child by the love of 
 the mother, so love in the heart of man should 
 respond to the love which called him into being. 
 We love Him because He first loved us, says the 
 Apostle, and no student of Christ’s method of train- 
 ing can have failed to observe that he grounds all 
 spiritual graces in a personal relationship to himself. 
 
INFERNO. 
 
 21 
 
 I repeat, therefore, that goodness in man is pro- 
 gressively generated from the love of God. In its 
 first phase empty and abstract, but concreting and 
 defining itself through particular acts of obedience, 
 this love creates in man the image of God. To 
 know God we must be like God, for to comprehend 
 a spiritual Being is to be in substantial identity with 
 Him. Hence, Christ recognizes the attained fellow- 
 ship of his disciples, by declaring that he will call 
 them no more servants but friends, and the yearning 
 soul of the Psalmist refuses to be satisfied until it 
 shall awake in the likeness of God. 
 
 Generalizing our statement, we may say that the 
 starting-point of human development lies in feeling. 
 Feeling rushes into act and act defines man to him- 
 self. By making an external image of himself, and 
 looking at what he has made, man learns what he is. 
 Thus through feeling he rises into thought, and 
 finally expresses the concrete unity of thought and 
 feeling in the acts of the conscious will. 
 
 It follows that any interruption or perversion of 
 the course of man’s normal development must neces- 
 sarily originate within the sphere of feeling. This 
 perverted feeling, rushing into expression, makes for 
 man a false image of himself. Thus his thought is 
 corrupted, and he sees what is 7iot instead of what is, 
 and this results in an activity of the will, which is in 
 
22 
 
 A STUD Y OF DANTE. 
 
 supreme contradiction of his ideal nature, and in 
 supreme violation of all his fundamental relation- 
 ships. There can be no perversion of the intellect 
 and will which does not imply a logically prior per- 
 version of the feelings — no stage of conscious and 
 deliberate sin without an antecedent stage in which 
 the sympathies have become alienated from God. 
 
 It is therefore with profound intention that Dante 
 places in the outermost circles of the ‘‘ Inferno,'' 
 sinners in the unconscious stage of alienated love. 
 This alienation of feeling is discerned by him as the 
 logical condition of the deeper degrees of sin to be 
 punished in the lower hell. Nor does the poet leave 
 us to abstract his theory from the content of the 
 poem, but, in the seventeenth canto of the Purga- 
 torio," he himself traces all sin to the excess, de- 
 fect, or perversion of love." Man has an infinite 
 power of loving. Infinite love demands an infinite 
 object. If man loves God supremely, he will love all 
 other objects in right degree. If he is slack in his 
 love of God, he will love unduly self and finite 
 objects. The excessive love of finite objects giving 
 birth to struggle for their possession, changes into 
 hate the love man should bear to his fellow. Such 
 is the genesis of the seven capital sins. Sloth is the 
 slack love of God ; lust, gluttony, and covetousness, 
 are the excessive love of finite objects ; pride is the 
 
INFERNO. 
 
 23 
 
 distorted love of self ; and envy and anger are dis- 
 tortions of the love which should exist between man 
 and man. Viewed from the standpoint that duties 
 arise out of relationships, lust is rebellion against the 
 ideal of man in his relationship to the family; gluttony 
 is perversion of the relationship between soul and 
 body ; covetousness, envy, and anger, are practical 
 denials of the relationship of the individual to the 
 social whole ; and pride is the supreme negation of 
 man’s relationship to God. Conceived as a develop- 
 ing process, sin begins in the slackening of love to 
 God, and culminates in the supreme love of self. 
 Hence, sloth is the first sin found within the In- 
 ferno,” and spiritual pride is punished in its lowest 
 depth. Conversely, pride is the first sin expiated in 
 Purgatory, because, until the self ceases to be su- 
 preme, there can be no return of the soul unto God. 
 
 The first blessing of the Saviour of men is be- 
 stowed upon the poor in spirit. Humble receptivity 
 is the condition of spiritual growth. The first mark 
 of humility is, that it mourns its own defect ; the 
 second is the meekness which bears lovingly defect 
 in others. Out of the recognition of lack is born 
 that hunger and thirst after righteousness which is 
 the panting of the soul for its God, and mercy is the 
 living sign of the indwelling life of God. To have 
 God’s life dwelling within us is to be like God, and 
 
24 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 hence able to see God ; and as God is Love, and Love 
 is recognition and reconciliation, the vision of God 
 makes the pure in heart the peacemakers of the world. 
 
 The atmosphere in the circles of Incontinence is 
 one of simple darkness, apt emblem of the soul 
 whose light is darkened and at last extinguished by 
 passion. The total darkening of the powers of the 
 soul is the signal for the lighting of the flames of 
 hell — symbols of a consciousness which through its 
 own act has fixed itself in a state of permanent self- 
 contradiction. 
 
 Dante's description of the transition from the 
 circle of the Angry to the sixth circle, which is that 
 of the Heresiarchs, is most vivid. In my ears a la- 
 mentation smote me, whereat I bent my eyes intently 
 forward. And the kind master said : ^ Now, son, 
 
 the city that is named of Dis draweth nigh, with the 
 heavy citizens, with the great company — ' 
 
 “ And I : ‘ Master, already I discern its mosques, 
 distinctly there within the valley, red as if they had 
 come out of a fire.' 
 
 ‘‘And to me he said : ‘ The eternal fire that inward 
 burns them shows them red as thou seest in this low 
 hell.' 
 
 “ And I : ‘ Master, what are those people, who, 
 buried within those chests, make themselves heard 
 by their painful sighs ? ' 
 
INFERNO, 
 
 25 
 
 And he to me : ‘ These are the arch-heretics 
 with their followers of every sect ; and much more 
 than thou thinkest the tombs are laden. Like with 
 like is buried here ; and the monuments are more 
 and less hot.' ” 
 
 n the sins in the circles of Incontinence may be 
 traced to the supremacy of self in the emotions, 
 heresy may be defined as the manifestations of self- 
 love in the intellect. Without an undue love of self 
 a man cannot become a heretic. The perversion of 
 thought is a direct outcome of a perverted state of 
 feeling. It is the recognition and assertion by the 
 intellect of the distorted universe created out of 
 sinful emotion. The man who persistently yields 
 to his fleshly appetite must ultimately lose faith in 
 his own higher powers. The man who lives only for 
 the moment practically denies his immortality, and 
 from the practical to the theoretic denial there is but 
 a step. The man who acts as though God were not 
 is travelling the high-road toward Atheism. 
 
 The important point to be noticed in this connec- 
 tion is, that because heresy is an outcome of sinful 
 feeling it has in itself a sinful character. It is im- 
 possible to divorce what a man thinks from what he^ 
 is, and it is because we have illogically asserted this 
 separation that we have become as careless and inert 
 in our own jAought as we are lazily tolerant of the 
 
26 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 thou^ht^a£-etfeei^. Starting with the assumption 
 that it makes no difference what we believe, we have 
 come to believe in nothing. Ignoring our responsi- 
 bilities, we have drifted into doubt of our power. 
 The saddest sight in a sad world is this universal 
 spectacle, of minds enslaved by their own ignorance 
 and paralyzed by their own inactivity. The one 
 thing in life which to the aroused soul seems worth 
 doing, is, to waken other souls from their death-like 
 sleep ; and the wail of prophet and poet, of saint and 
 Saviour is, that the eyes of mankind are blind, and 
 their ears are waxed deaf. 
 
 The circle of the Heresiarchs is the transition from 
 the sins of feeling to the sins of conscious will. To 
 love self more than God is the sin of feeling. To 
 see self instead of God is the sin of intellect. To cre- 
 ate a world like the false self thus seen is the sin of 
 the conscious will. Throughout all the spheres of 
 sin, the common element is the abstraction of the 
 individual from his relationships. Lust is this ab- 
 straction in the region of feeling. Pride is this 
 abstraction in the sphere of intelligence. Therefore 
 the theologians teach that lust is the pride of the 
 body, and pride is the lust of the soul ; and Dante 
 stigmatizes the rebellion of Lucifer as a proud 
 adultery.'' Finally, covetousness is abstract indi- 
 vidualism in its relationship to material things ; man 
 
INFERNO. 
 
 27 
 
 wanting all for himself refuses to recognize the equal 
 claim of others to the good things of the earth. In 
 the very first canto of the '' Inferno/' Dante is con- 
 fronted by these sins in the forms of the leopard, the 
 lion, and the she-wolf ; and the other so-called car- 
 dinal sins, as well as the deeper wrongs which arise 
 from their combination, are by him always traced 
 directly to these fruitful germs. 
 
 In the circle of the Violent is shown man’s con- 
 scious attempt to realize his abstract individualism 
 as against his neighbor, against himself, and against 
 his God. 
 
 The violent against man are divided into two 
 classes : those who attack life, and those who attack 
 property ; and these two forms of violence are traced 
 to their roots in anger and covetousness. Fix thy 
 eyes upon the valley,” cries Virgil to his follower, 
 
 for the river of blood draweth nigh, in which boils 
 every one who by violence injures others. O blind 
 cupidity ! O foolish anger ^ which so incites us in the 
 short life, and then in the eternal, steeps us so 
 bitterly.” 
 
 In the second division of the circle of the Violent 
 are found sinners who have done to themselves what 
 those in the first division did to their neighbors, i, e., 
 they have wasted their own substance and taken 
 their own lives. That prodigality is covetousness 
 
28 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 turned against self has been already shown, and that 
 suicide is the outcome of that pride whose first de- 
 gree is spiritual sloth grows evident as we read the 
 graphic recital of the fierce soul which, in its dis- 
 dainful mood, thought to escape disdain by death. 
 
 The sins punished in the third division of the 
 circle of the Violent are even more obviously tracea- 
 ble to pride, lust, and covetousness. Supine upon 
 the burning sand, Capaneus shows us that his pride 
 is still unquenched ; while Jacopo Rusticucci and the 
 unrecognizable usurers reveal to us, without need of 
 comment, the genesis of their respective sins. 
 
 In order that we may rightly apprehend the nature 
 of the sins of violence as well as those of treachery 
 and fraud, we must have a clear idea of the relation- 
 ship of will to feeling and thought. Will is that 
 phase of the mind which objectifies — it is the con- 
 crete unity of feeling and thought — that which at 
 once creates and recognizes its image. The corrup- 
 tion of the will is the corruption of man’s total 
 nature, and its result must be negative to that activity 
 and communion which we have throughout recog- 
 nized as the marks of the Divine, Relatively to 
 society, it is the reduction of man to the abstract 
 savagism of the Cyclops, who neither planted nor 
 ploughed, who had no laws and met in no councils, 
 who dwelt alone in vaulted caves on mountain 
 
INFERNO, 
 
 29 
 
 heights, and each man, holding no converse with 
 others, devised apart his wicked deeds/’ Relatively 
 to the individual, it is his reduction to the condition 
 of Lucifer, a condition of ignorance, impotence, and 
 absolute loneliness. He may flap his bat-like wings, 
 but the only result of this vain activity is to fix him 
 more firmly in his ice. 
 
 In external correspondence to the total corruption 
 of the soul, in the circle of Fraud pestilence is added 
 to darkness and flame. Here all the senses are as- 
 sailed ; the sight by murky air ; the ear by lamen- 
 tations ‘ that have arrows shod with pity ’ ; the 
 smell by stench of putrid limbs ; the touch by hide- 
 ous scurf ; and the taste by thirst that craves one 
 little drop of water.” And as we are repelled by 
 these symbols of sin, so our souls are repelled from 
 the panders and flatterers — the simonists, sorcerers, 
 and peculators ; the hypocrites, thieves, evil counsel- 
 lors, schismatics, and falsifiers, who inhabit Male- 
 bolge. We find it hard to analyze their conscious- 
 ness, for where corruption has become universal the 
 distinctions of sin are lost. The root of theft, for 
 instance, is certainly covetousness, but before covet- 
 ousness issues in theft it has allied itself with all the 
 other cardinal sins. The poison of sin has so spread 
 within the soul that there can be left in it no power 
 of normal action. Hence Virgil blames Dante when 
 
30 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 he weeps over the sorcerers, exclaiming : Art thou 
 
 too like the other fools ? Who more impious than 
 he that sorrows at God’s judgment ? ” 
 
 The imagery of the last circle of the '^Inferno” 
 forcibly sugge s ts the self-destruction which is fhe 
 final outcome of selfishness. Lust has conceived 
 and broug ht fo r^sin, and sin being finished brings 
 
 forth death. ^Out of the sphere of darkness into the 
 
 sphere of fire — out of the region of fire into a region 
 of fire and blood — out of this into the loathsome pit 
 of fraud, where pestilence is added to the darkness 
 and the flame, and finally down from the pit of fraud 
 towards frozen Cocytus, wherein are fixed the spirits 
 of those who have committed the supreme sin of 
 treachery. 
 
 Formed by the union of all the rivers of Hell, 
 Cocytus stagnates because there is no lower depth 
 towards which it can flow. Upon its frozen surface 
 stand the giants. Nimrod, a dull and confused 
 spirit, speaks a language no man can understand, 
 and all other languages are incomprehensible to 
 him. Ephialtes has his right arm pinioned down 
 behind and the other before, and a chain holds him 
 clasped from the neck downwards.” The sinners, 
 immovable in the ice, have power only to weep, and 
 as the tears gush from their lids they freeze, and this 
 closes their eyes. The only other activities men- 
 
INFERNO, 
 
 31 
 
 tioned are butting, champing of the teeth, and the 
 flapping of Lucifer's wings, which makes the winds 
 that freeze Cocytus. 
 
 Sin has done its work ! Made for combination^ 
 with his fellows, each man throu^h^iyn has isolat ed 
 himself from all others. Made for activity, he has 
 lost all Jjower to act. The ^dulgence, the assertion, 
 and the con-ujptioji of self, have issued in_selL 
 destruction.^ Lo Dis, and lo the place where it be- 
 hooves us arm ourselves with fortitude." 
 
 It may be asked : If this view of sin be true, what 
 hope can there be for sinful man? If the iogrcal 
 movement of sin is not towards good but towards 
 greater evil, how can the eff e ct of even a single si n 
 be undone ? The answer to this question we shall 
 find in the study of the “ Purgatorio." Meanwhile 
 let us carry from the Inferno " the assurance that 
 not until the Ethiopian changes his skin and the 
 leopard his spots can he do good that is accustomed 
 to do evil. 
 
PURGATORIO. 
 
 The theme of Dante’s Purgatorio ” is the purifi- 
 cation of the soul. It describes not a place, but a 
 process ; not a future possibility, but an ever-present 
 reality. It represents the eternal transition from 
 evil to good, and all struggling souls may find in it a 
 reflection of their conflict and a sure prophecy of 
 their final victory. Wherever there is spiritual de- 
 velopment, there is Purgatory. 
 
 The theory of the poem is that goodness is not a 
 dower, but an achievement. This second kingdom 
 is one in which by effort the human spirit doth 
 purge itself.” Man is a worm born to bring forth 
 the angelic butterfly.” Paradise is at the top of a 
 precipitous mountain. The climbing in the begin- 
 ning is tiresome and painful, but aye the more 
 one climbs the less it hurts.” There is nowhere in 
 the poem a trace of the heresy which confounds 
 what man is with what he may become, and which 
 paralyzes * effort by ignoring the significance of 
 choice. 
 
 The sin which must be overcome is described vari- 
 32 
 
PURGATORIO. 
 
 33 
 
 ously as mist, slough, scum, blindness, and smoke, 
 and as paralysis, langor, malady, weight, crookedness, 
 and knot. As mist, slough, scum, blindness, and 
 smoke, it is that which prevents us from seeing the 
 true ; as langor, weight, malady, and paralysis, it 
 is that which impedes our pursuit of the good ; as 
 crookedness and knot, it represents the deed 
 which must be undone before there can be any right 
 doing. 
 
 The source of all goodness is God. Man becomes 
 good by opening his heart to receive the stream of 
 influence always pouring towards him from God. 
 Holiness is not an evolution, but a revealed and 
 communicated life. Sin in its last analysis is the 
 substitution of self for God ; the assertion of an ab- 
 stract individualism as against a universal life ; the 
 futile effort of a withering branch to maintain its be- 
 ing apart from the vine to which it properly belongs. 
 In the fifteenth canto of the ‘^Purgatory'' Dante 
 sets forth this view with great clearness, explaining 
 that the goodness, infinite and ineffable, which is 
 above, ^‘always gives of itself so much as it finds 
 ardor.” In the Convito ” he illustrates the same 
 truth by suggesting how differently the light of the 
 sun is received by the dull clod of earth, by pure 
 gold, by precious stones which refract its rainbow- 
 colors, and by the mirror through which it is con- 
 
34 
 
 A STUB Y OF DANTE. 
 
 centrated into a burning-point. Finally, in the 
 Paradiso '' he again repeats that the brightness is 
 proportioned to the ardor, the ardor to the vision.’’ 
 In this view of the relationship of the soul to God 
 is grounded the true conception of human freedom. 
 Man is free when he knows, loves, and wills the 
 good. Until then his freedom is ideal, not actual — 
 something he may conquer but does not possess. 
 He wins liberty by renouncing caprice ; or, in other 
 words, achieves selfhood by crucifying self. He be- 
 comes a freedman of the universe only by a self- 
 emancipation from the slavery of ignorance and sin. 
 Hence Virgil introduces Dante to the stern warden 
 of Purgatory as one who is seeking liberty. Statius 
 declares that only after five hundred years of pain 
 has he felt a free volition for a better seat.” Not 
 until he is near the summit of the purgatorial mount 
 does Dante feel for flight within him the pinions 
 growing,” and it is when they stand upon the top- 
 most step of the long stairway that Virgil declares 
 to him, 
 
 “ Free and upright and sound is thy free-will, 
 
 And error were it not to do its bidding : 
 
 Thee o’er thyself I therefore crown and mitre.” 
 
 Man rises above choice through long exercise in 
 right choosing. Holiness becomes an impulse only 
 when it has long been a habit. Spontaneity in good- 
 
PURGATORIO, 
 
 35 
 
 ness is the final triumph of persistent and painful 
 conflict with besetting sin. 
 
 The coin fresh from the mint of thought shows 
 clearly its character and value. Circulation dims its 
 lustre, wears away its substance, and blunts its edge. 
 We pass it from hand to hand, careless of its lessen- 
 ing weight, and not even glancing at its fading 
 image and superscription. Familiarity with a truth 
 is generally in inverse proportion to its comprehen- 
 sion, and in the end there comes a time when men 
 know it so well that they cease to think it. 
 
 Such has been in our day the fate of the truth 
 which declares the relationship of each individual life 
 to the life of God. As a real thought it seems to 
 have almost died out of the minds of men. From a 
 quickening principle it has shrunk into a formula ; 
 from a burning conviction it has faded into a senti- 
 ment, and we are now admonished that we assail its 
 sanctity when we try to think it. Such admonition 
 ignores the fact that thought conditions feeling by 
 supplying the object which feeling demands. Even 
 in the animal it is vision which arouses desire, as it is 
 desire which stimulates to act. Thought, feeling, 
 and will are not independent, but each lives in and 
 through the others. If we do not see how God's 
 grace is poured out upon us, we shall soon cease to 
 feel the outpouring. 
 
36 
 
 A STUD Y OF JDANTE, 
 
 To really re-think our relationship to God we 
 must consciously expand our faith in revelation. A 
 living God is acting on our living souls. He has not 
 once spoken and then forever relapsed into silence. 
 He has not once shone on the world and left to it 
 only this remembered light. Day by day He is 
 shining to our eyes and speaking to our hearts. The 
 infinite universe is His self-revelation, and by its re- 
 action defines to us His perfection and our defects. 
 
 In the scientific doctrine of modification through 
 environment we have the beginning of a true thought 
 of relationship to God. To complete it we need 
 only recognize that environment is spiritual as well 
 as physical, and that it is not fixed but infinitely ex- 
 pansive. In a word, it stands for the totality of 
 influence bearing upon the individual object, and it 
 has the beneficent quality of widening and deepening 
 to meet increasing need. In it resides the fulness by 
 appropriating which the individual develops. Evo- 
 lution, therefore, truly conceived, is not the thought 
 of a less by its own inherent power becoming a 
 greater, but the far deeper thought of actual nothing- 
 ness lifted into being by the communication of life. 
 
 By the rewards and penalties of nature man 
 learns physical laws, and through the reaction of or- 
 ganized humanity upon the individual is developed 
 the sense of moral law or the ideal of duty. All 
 
FURGATORIO. 
 
 37 
 
 spiritual development is grounded in man's existence 
 in the species. Culture is the process through which 
 the individual reproduces within himself the experi- 
 ence of the race. Its goal is the complete realiza- 
 tion of the species within the individual, and its 
 essential condition such an attitude of man as shall 
 render him accessible to the influence of mankind. 
 This insight enable us to define goodness as perfect 
 self-activity, realized in the perfect communion of 
 each man with all men. Communion must be per- 
 fect in order that experience may be shared, activity 
 must be complete in order that it may be repro- 
 duced. Hence, in sloth and selfish exclusion may be 
 found the seeds of every vice. Still deeper con- 
 sideration reveals sloth as the paralysis resulting 
 from self-exclusion, and thus reduces the infinite 
 variety of the poisonous growths of sin to the single 
 fatal germ of spiritual pride. 
 
 We hide from ourselves the reality of God's action 
 on our souls by blinding our eyes to the truth of 
 mediation. We practically forget that, though the 
 source of inspiration is the Divine Spirit, its instru- 
 ments are men, and its organ is the Church. What 
 truth do we know to-day which has not been declared 
 to us by the voice of man ? What man who has 
 declared truth has not proclaimed that to him it was 
 given by inspiration of the Spirit ? The Spirit is the 
 
38 
 
 A STUD Y OF FAJVTE, 
 
 indwelling life of that great Church which, in the 
 profoundest sense, is the “ Mother of the Soul/’ and 
 this Church is organized humanity, ever revealing to 
 individual man the divine ideal which, as soon as 
 recognized, he identifies with his own deepest self. 
 Because there is One Spirit in all men, man can com- 
 bine with man ; because this Spirit is divine there is 
 the possibility of communion with God. 
 
 Instruments of grace ” are the mighty institutions 
 which, revealing and enforcing ideal standards, en- 
 able the individual to measure his own defect and 
 inspire him to overcome it ; a store-house of grace” 
 is that great deposit of faith,” the true litera- 
 ture of the world ; a means of grace ” is every 
 work of art in which is incarnate a spiritual truth ; 
 ‘‘ channels of grace ” are all honest experiences of 
 sorrow or joy ; ministers of grace ” are the strong 
 thinkers who redeem our feeble thought — the heroes 
 who spur our languid wills and the saints whose ardor 
 fans into fresh flame the dying embers of our devo- 
 tion. The revelation is manifold and yet one ; the 
 inspiration from of old and yet ever new ; the grace 
 thus variously bestowed (as the old theologians truly 
 taught) prevenient, co-operant, and illuminant — for 
 it comes to us before we seek it — it fortifies our 
 feeblest endeavor, and crowns our persevering strug- 
 gle with the beatific vision of final truth. 
 
FURGATORIO. 
 
 39 
 
 Only with this thought of universal mediation 
 in our minds can we understand the symbolism of 
 Dante throughout the Purgatory/’ Virgil, his 
 Guide, personifying human reason, describes himself 
 as an instrument of Grace. ‘‘ I came not of my- 
 self,” he declares, but a Lady from heaven de- 
 scended, at whose prayer I aided this one with my 
 company.” Purgatory has a warden, for defect de- 
 mands guidance, and laggard spirits must be spurred 
 to run toward the purifying mount. When night 
 falls and danger threatens, angels descend to guard 
 the praying shades. By the divine Lucia, Dante is 
 borne in his sleep to the presence of the angel who 
 guards the gate of Purgatory. Only at the entreaty 
 of the three celestial Virtues does Beatrice turn upon 
 the poet her holy eyes and unveil to him the beauty 
 of her face, and only as reflected in her eyes ” can 
 he behold the mystic Griffin shining, ‘‘ now with 
 the one now with the other nature.” Throughout 
 the sevenfold realm mediation is the central truth 
 recognized by the repentant Spirits. Make known 
 my state to my good Costanza, for those on earth 
 can much advance us here.” Tell my Giovanna 
 that she pray for me.” I pray thee to pray for me 
 when thou shalt be above.” Thus speedily has led 
 me to drink of the feweet wormwood of these tor- 
 ments my Nella with her overflowing tears.” Such 
 
40 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 are the petitions and such the acknowledgments of 
 the soul who, as Dante himself tells us, 
 
 “ Only pray that some one else may pray, 
 
 So as to hasten their becoming holy.’^ 
 
 Prayer is the expression of spiritual life. The 
 more spiritual life there is in the world, the more 
 swiftly is the individual borne forward on its strong 
 currents. The more people there are who love well, 
 says our poet, the more can each one love, for as a 
 mirror the one reflects the other.'’ Conversely the 
 good of one is the good of all, and hence when a 
 single soul in Purgatory has prevailed over its sin the 
 whole mountain shakes with joy and rings with a 
 psalm of thanksgiving. 
 
 Having restored ourselves to participation in 
 Dante's vitalizing thought, that man achieves good- 
 ness by appropriation of the divine life which is 
 always offering itself to him, we may follow him in 
 his journey through the realm of purification. This 
 realm is figured as ‘‘ the hill which highest toward 
 the heavens uplifts itself." It rises from an island, 
 and its base forms an Ante-Purgatory where souls 
 are detained until they have atoned for delay in 
 repentance. Around the mount of Purgatory proper 
 run seven terraces whereon are punished the seven 
 deadly sins. Stairways rough and steep lead up 
 from terrace to terrace, and upon the summit of the 
 
FURGATORIO, 
 
 41 
 
 mountain is the Earthly Paradise. Around the shore 
 of the island grow the rushes, which symbolize 
 humility, because they alone of plants yield to the 
 shock of waves. With them must Dante be girt be- 
 fore he can enter Purgatory. The cord of humility 
 must take the place 6f that cord of mere human 
 strength with which h^ had once thought to catch 
 the leopard of the painted skin,'’ and which in his 
 journey through the Inferno he had resolutely cast 
 into the pit of fraud. Proud self-confidence, by ex- 
 cluding the soul from influence, paralyzes its powers, 
 while humility, which makes man teachable, is the 
 antecedent condition of all mental and spiritual 
 growth. 
 
 The changed attitude of the soul is the significant 
 distinction between the Purgatory and the Inferno. 
 The spiritual universe is always the same, but it is 
 differently reflected in the mirror of individual con- 
 sciousness. The soul steeped in sin has become a 
 distorting mirror which gives back love as hate, and 
 heaven as hell. Each denizen of the Inferno might 
 echo the despairing cry which Milton puts into the 
 mouth of Lucifer : What matter where, if I be still 
 
 the same ? ” The consciousness of the penitents in 
 Purgatory is a mirror which reflects truly but feebly 
 — a glass over which there is a mist which must be 
 removed. The repentant spirit knows its own sin, 
 
42 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 but at first defines goodness negatively as simply the 
 opposite of itself. In the recoil of pain it recognizes 
 the antagonism of its evil deed to the spiritual whole 
 and resolves on amendment ; but the true spiritual 
 ideal hovers before it dimly, being obscured by the 
 clouds and smoke of its own sinful passions. There 
 is, in a word, still indwelling sin, but there is no 
 longer a consent of the will to sin. 
 
 How the change is brought about, who can say? 
 Not through sinning, for sin is refusal to learn the 
 lesson which grace is teaching through the ministry 
 of pain. To me it seems that each soul should 
 tremble in mingled rapture and fear before its own 
 blessed and yet so often fatal power of choice. 
 Grace may constrain, but it cannot coerce. Love 
 may appeal, but it cannot compel. Two things are 
 sure : Against his own will and without his own 
 effort no man can be made holy or wise : to in- 
 fluence his will nothing will be left untried. How 
 will the struggle end ? I do not know. May man 
 forever defy influence ? I cannot tell. What I do 
 know is that every committed sin sinks the soul into 
 deeper darkness — fires it with more burning an- 
 tagonism — freezes it in a more stagnant isolation. 
 Sin is a help never, a hindrance always, to the prog- 
 ress of the spirit. 
 
 As the poets stand among the bending rushes on 
 
PURGATORIO, 
 
 43 
 
 the island shore, there arrives a boat steered by an 
 angel and bearing souls to Purgatory. In contrast 
 to the blasphemies of the spirits who assemble on 
 the joyless banks of Acheron,’' these shades are 
 chanting the great psalm which, under the veil of the 
 deliverance of Israel from Egypt, declares the deliv- 
 erance of the soul from sin. Not unto us, O Lord ! 
 not to us, but to thy name give glory,” is the refrain, 
 and hope in the Lord,” the burden of the song. 
 Sin projects internal limit as external fate, and curses 
 not itself, but God and the human race.” Repent- 
 ance sees that evil lies not in the universe but in 
 self, and thus converts even the inward limit into 
 vanishing defect. With the sense that we are slaves 
 who may achieve freedom, emancipation has begun. 
 What matters present ignorance to the heir of all 
 knowledge ? In foretaste of the joy which shall 
 come with the morning, what becomes of the sorrow 
 of the night ? 
 
 Traversing the region of Ante-Purgatory, the poets 
 meet four classes of penitents whose common char- 
 acteristic is that they have deferred repentance until 
 the end of life. The differences between them are 
 very suggestive. The first throng seem to be moving 
 their feet and yet seem not to move forward, thus 
 suggesting effort without advance. These souls 
 have died in contumacy of Holy Church,” and are 
 
44 
 
 A STUB Y OF BAJVTF. 
 
 condemned to wait outside the bank thirty times 
 told the time that they have been in their presump- 
 tion.’' The spirits of the second class stand listlessly 
 in a shade behind a rock, and Belacqua, who is their 
 typical representative, sits embracing his knees, 
 holding his face down low between them, and shows 
 himself more careless than if Sloth herself his sister 
 were.” These are the simple procrastinators, and 
 their condemnation is to remain outside the gate of 
 Purgatory for a time as long as the time of their 
 procrastination. The third throng are moving slowly 
 forward and singing the Miserere, These are they 
 who have been slain by violence, but, admonished 
 by a light from heaven, repented at the last hour, 
 and, '' both penitent and pardoning,” issued from 
 life, reconciled to God. The fourth class embraces 
 kings and princes who deferred repentance through 
 the pressure of temporal cares. It is near sunset 
 when the poets come upon them in a valley bright 
 with grass and flowers, and fragrant with the sweet- 
 ness of a thousand odors. These spirits sing a song 
 of praise, and follow it with a prayer for protection 
 during the rapidly descending night. 
 
 We understand Dante just so long as we keep 
 constantly in mind that all his descriptions are ex- 
 ternal images of spiritual states. With him sin is 
 not one thing and penalty another external to it, but 
 
P URGA TORIO. 
 
 45 
 
 the inevitable reaction of sin is the penalty of sin. 
 So salvation is ceasing to be evil and becoming 
 good. Ante-Purgatory, as a whole, signifies that 
 initial phase in the process of transition in which the 
 soul simply turns away from evil. It represents a 
 state of aspiration which has not yet deepened into 
 energy — a sympathy with good which precedes its 
 ardent pursuit. Souls in this state of development 
 do not see God, but are quickened by a desire to see 
 Him. The hovering ideal is not defined, but is a 
 substance of things hoped for and an evidence of 
 things not seen.’’ During this part of the journey 
 the one injunction of Virgil is, to be steadfast in 
 hope,” and the witness of the spirits is, that return 
 to good is possible so long as hope has any thing 
 of green.” 
 
 As the progressive emptying of self is the condi- 
 tion of a progressive recognition of the ideal, those 
 souls who are most steeped in selfishness have be- 
 fore them the longest and most painful struggle. 
 The four groups of spirits we have just considered 
 typify four different grades of character. The pre- 
 sumptuous pride which excludes itself from influence 
 condemns itself to movement in which there is no 
 progress. The man who will not combine with 
 other men cannot advance. He who will hear no 
 teacher and read no books must remain in his igno- 
 
46 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 ranee. He who defies the laws and penalties of 
 society crystallizes his own defect. Not listening to 
 the voice of the great spiritual church, he makes 
 himself an heathen man and a publican.’' His is 
 the supreme violation because holiness is the com- 
 plete interpenetration of the individual and the uni- 
 versal life. Therefore, by every act he retrogrades, 
 and with profound insight the poet declares that to 
 undo his deed will require thirty times told the 
 time that he has been in his presumption.” 
 
 For every moment of slothful procrastination man 
 pays the penalty of loss of power, and persistent in- 
 action must result in paralysis of the will. He who 
 refuses to climb shall surely be brought to ask, 
 “What ’s the use of climbing?” Nor is inertia 
 acknowledged inertia overcome. Only by seeking 
 the whip and spur of active influence, and by effort 
 kept up in spite of pain, can the supine sluggard lift 
 himself — he who sits crouching rise to his feet, and 
 he who stands listless begin a forward march. 
 
 The penitents slain by violence illustrate a higher 
 grade of character. By the act of pardoning their 
 slayers they have entered into the divine life of 
 forgiveness. This new light dawning within them 
 makes their darkness visible, and they pant and pray 
 for the cleansing fire and the purifying stream. So 
 through care for the welfare of their subjects the 
 
PURGATORIO, 
 
 47 
 
 princes in the valley have promoted their own. 
 They have achieved a virtue which points to its own 
 consummation. Reaching down to give help, they 
 have learned to reach upward to receive it. The 
 true King is himself a type and prophecy of the 
 King of Kings, and, by reflecting the divine ideal, he 
 begins to aspire toward it. 
 
 In the Valley of the Princes, Dante falls asleep 
 and dreams that an eagle with feathers of gold 
 swooping upon him snatches him upward to the fire. 
 Out of this dream he wakes to find himself at the 
 gate of Purgatory, and is told by Virgil that during 
 his sleep he was borne thither by Lucia. That the 
 dream is a shadow of coming events,’’ the poet 
 himself tells us, declaring that in sleep the mind 
 almost prophetic in its visions is ” — as in a related 
 passage he affirms that ‘‘ oftentimes before a deed is 
 done sleep has tidings of it.” 
 
 In a valuable appendix to his translation of the 
 ‘‘ Purgatory,” Butler points out that the eagle was 
 from the earliest Christian times an emblem of the 
 soul which most aspires to meditate on divine things, 
 and as such was adopted for the special cognizance 
 of St. John ; ” and he notices also that the fire up 
 to which the poet is borne is the Empyrean Heaven 
 or abode of that Perfect Deity who alone perfectly 
 sees and knows himself.” In plain words, the dream 
 
48 
 
 A STUD Y OF DANTF, 
 
 anticipates a revelation of the Divine ideal, and im- 
 plies that through contemplation of this ideal the 
 soul shall be changed into its likeness. “ Beholding 
 as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed 
 into the same image from glory to glory.” 
 
 The vision discerned is matched with the momen- 
 tum acquired, for the poet wakes to find himself be- 
 yond the negative region of Ante-Purgatory, and in 
 view of the true entrance to the cleansing mount. 
 Herein is mirrored a universal fact of spiritual expe- 
 rience. How often after what has seemed like fruitless 
 search for truth do its premonitions dawn upon the 
 mind apparently unsought ! How often after a 
 moral struggle in which we seem to be growing 
 worse instead of better do we suddenly find our- 
 selves transported to a region of purer moral aspira- 
 tion ! The essential fact is the preceding struggle. 
 Only he who persists in moving his feet, even when 
 he seems not to move forward, shall dream of the 
 eagle or be borne upward by Lucia. Grace can be- 
 stow only so much of ardor as it finds,” and thus, 
 though all good is a gift, it is also a conquest. 
 Yielding to passion, the unconscious transition is to 
 a lower depth, as Dante swooning on the banks of 
 Acheron wakes to find himself upon the brink of 
 Hell. 
 
 All true representations of the origin and progress 
 
FURGATORIO. 
 
 49 
 
 of moral development have implied more or less 
 clearly that only an inward vision of the ideal con- 
 victs of sin and inspires to effort. Whatever view 
 may be taken of the history of the Jews, two things 
 are certain. Of all ancient nations they had the 
 clearest consciousness of God and the deepest sense 
 of their own sin. The total revelation of the books 
 of Exodus and Leviticus may be compressed into 
 the two declarations — I am the Lord your God,'' 
 and Ye shall be holy, for I am holy." Immedi- 
 ately following this attained consciousness of truth 
 and duty come the record of the sedition of Miriam 
 and Aaron, the rebellion of Korah, the repeated 
 murmurings of the whole people, the plague of fiery 
 serpents, and the elevation of the symbolic serpent 
 of brass. Translated from figurative representation 
 into direct statement, the lesson taught is that the 
 vision of truth defines existing defect. Sedition, 
 rebellion, and complaint were not new in the world ; 
 what was new was the sense of their exceeding 
 wrong. Sin was in the world," says Paul, before 
 the law, but I had not known sin but by the law." 
 The sting of conscience results from perception of 
 what we are, in the light of what we should be. 
 
 In accord with this view of moral progress, 
 Dante's dream of the Empyrean is followed by his 
 profound self-abasement at the gate of Purgatory. 
 
so 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 Three stairs lead up to the gate. The first is marble 
 white, and in it the poet mirrors himself as he ap- 
 pears ” ; the second is dark and uneven, and cracked 
 lengthwise and across ; the third is flaming red, as 
 
 blood that from a vein is spurting forth.'’ These 
 stairs symbolize that candid self-recognition which 
 issues in heart-broken sorrow for sin and ardent con- 
 secration to God of the life-blood of body, soul, 
 and spirit." Drawn over them by Virgil, the poet 
 prostrates himself at the feet of the angel, who 
 guards the gate and whose gray robe symbolizes the 
 “ashes of repentance." He smites upon Dante's 
 forehead with a sword, describing thereon seven 
 “ P's," marks of the seven germinal sins which must 
 now be purged from the penitent soul ; plies the 
 lock first with the silver key, “ symbol of the science 
 which discerns the true penitent," then with the 
 golden key, “ image of absolving power," and at last 
 pushes open the gate with the significant exclama- 
 tion : 
 
 “ Enter — but I give you warning 
 That forth returns whoever looks behind.’* 
 
 The song of the Te Deum falls upon the ear, 
 and thus “ praising God and acknowledging him 
 to be the Lord," the poets cross the boundary-line 
 which separates regret from repentance, aspiration 
 from energy, mere desire from consecrated resolve. 
 
FURGATORIO. 
 
 51 
 
 In Purgatory proper is represented the gradual 
 elimination of that indwelling sin against which the 
 soul in Ante-Purgatory has entered its protest. Evi- 
 dently, therefore, we must expect to find upon the 
 ascending terraces diminishing degrees of sin and in- 
 creasing degrees of participation in the divine life. 
 The process is not one in which the soul is left 
 empty and garnished,’’ but one wherein evil is 
 crowded out by expanding good. 
 
 As holiness is living in the universal life, those 
 sins are most heinous which most consciously re- 
 pudiate existence in the species and assert a naked, 
 defiant, and self-destroying individualism. Hence, 
 farthest from the Earthly Paradise is the terrace of 
 the proud, as deepest in the Inferno is the frozen 
 circle of the traitors, in whom pride reigns supreme. 
 The characteristic of pride is that it applies to things 
 spiritual the law of the unspiritual, and desires mo- 
 nopoly where the very nature of the object desired 
 demands division. The belief that there may be, 
 the desire that there should be, or the resolve that 
 there shall be an unshared excellence constitutes the 
 first degree of pride. In its second degree pride re- 
 joices in another’s lack ; and in its final phase it repu- 
 diates the spiritual good which will not be monopo- 
 lized. 
 
 Envy, which is punished upon the second terrace. 
 
52 
 
 A STUD Y OF DANTE, 
 
 may be crudely distinguished from pride through the 
 fact of a different relationship to its object. The 
 proud man (in his own estimation) already excels his 
 neighbor, but the envious man perceives that his 
 neighbor excels him. To himself the latter seems 
 only seeking equality ; the former is consciously in- 
 sisting upon monopoly. Envy asks for itself more 
 and for its neighbor less; pride demands for itself 
 all and grants to its neighbor none. 
 
 Anger differs from envy and pride both in the 
 degree and the permanence of its insistence upon 
 self. As its supreme type, Dante chooses Haman, 
 who, because Mordecai bowed not nor did him 
 reverence,'’ prepared a gallows and sought to have 
 him hanged ; and he describes the angry man as one 
 who through injury appears so to take shame that 
 he becomes gluttonous of vengeance.” Thus anger 
 would seem rather an inability to sustain an imagined 
 wrong, than a deliberate desire to inflict wrong, and 
 we may trace its root to that undue self-esteem 
 which, insisting upon a recognition beyond its de- 
 serts, conceives itself injured when such recognition 
 is withheld. 
 
 The common characteristic of pride, envy, and 
 anger is distorted self-love, but the supremacy of 
 self is greatest in pride and least in anger. Advanc- 
 ing to the terrace of Sloth, we find self subordinated. 
 
FURGATOIUO, 
 
 53 
 
 but not overcome. The soul accepts as its ideal the 
 universal life, but, clogged by the impediment of 
 self, cannot at once create its image. The heart has 
 turned to its true object, but its love is still a feeble 
 flame. It must be fanned into a fervent heat which 
 shall burn out all lesser loves and thus accomplish 
 the soul's emancipation from appetite in its three 
 forms of covetousness, gluttony, and lust. This work 
 is achieved upon the higher terraces, and then the 
 soul, ‘‘ purified through suffering," is welcomed by 
 the song of angels to the kingdom prepared from the 
 foundation of the world. 
 
 So long as the soul contradicts the spiritual uni- 
 verse it must feel the recoil of the universe as pain. 
 Hence, upon each terrace of Purgatory is imaged 
 the suffering which is the reaction of sin. The bod- 
 ies of the proud are bent double by the burdens on 
 their backs ; the eyelids of the envious are sewn up 
 with iron thread ; the angry are involved in thick 
 smoke, and upon the terrace of the slothful the 
 power of the legs is put in truce." Prostrate and 
 immovable the avaricious purge their sin ; in hunger 
 and thirst is punished the gluttony which beyond 
 measure followed appetite, and in purifying flame is 
 burned away unholy love. 
 
 The symbolism of the punishments is apparent. 
 The principle of spiritual life is to grow by giving 
 
54 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 and by sharing to increase. This principle re-enforces 
 the humble man but presses with intolerable weight 
 upon the proud soul which has repudiated it. Noth- 
 ing blinds the eyes like envy, and anger creates a 
 smoky moral atmosphere in which all duties are ob- 
 scure. The inevitable outcome of slothful disuse is 
 loss of power, while avarice, loving supremely earthly 
 things, lifts not the eye toward heaven, and, by ex- 
 tinguishing the love of good, destroys the stimulus 
 to action. Thus, in the truest sense, the avaricious 
 man is prostrate and immovable. The reaction of 
 unbridled appetite is craving, associated with satiety, 
 and through burning shame the souls of carnal sin- 
 ners must press forward toward the benediction of 
 the pure in heart. 
 
 The recoil of the spiritual universe is, however, 
 not the characteristic mark of the purgatorial state. 
 This is even more clearly defined in the Inferno,’' 
 where the violation is supreme. Thus, as against the 
 slow and painful progress of the proud in Purgatory, 
 we have their stultification in the Inferno ” ; the 
 purgatorial smoke of anger becomes in the Inferno” 
 boiling mud and a river of blood, while the craving 
 and satiety of penitent gluttons are in the impeni- 
 tent intensified into the rending of voracious Cerbe- 
 rus and the descent of the Eternal accursed cold 
 and heavy rain.” What the Inferno lacks, and Pur- 
 
FURGATORIO, 
 
 55 
 
 gatory possesses, is the vision of the Ideal. It is 
 this which incites the activity through which alone 
 defect can be cancelled, and the effort to actualize it 
 is rewarded by its clearer revelation. 
 
 Upon the rock-walls which bound the terrace of 
 the Proud are carved typical examples of humility. 
 This is the most external representation of the Ideal 
 in Purgatory, and follows Tirst upon its symbolic 
 prophecy in the dream of the Eagle. To the envious 
 the ideal of mercy is proclaimed by a passing voice, 
 implying thus an internal sense which makes possible 
 its immediate recognition. Meekness is revealed in 
 an inward vision, and when we reach the terrace of 
 the Slothful we find that the spiritually discerned 
 ideal has become a conscious inciting motive. 
 ‘‘ Quick, quick '' — cry the eager spirits — so that the 
 time may not be lost by little love,’' and they spur 
 themselves to fresh ardor by recalling how ‘‘ Mary to 
 the mountain ran, and Caesar, that he might subdue 
 Ilerda, thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain.” 
 In the souls of those who mourn their avarice the 
 ideal has become so clearly defined that they them- 
 selves discern the logical relation between their sin 
 and its punishment, and begin to comprehend the 
 fundamental principle of recoil. To the self-con- 
 victed glutton even temptation is turned into warn- 
 ing, and from amid the very branches of the tree for 
 
56 
 
 A STUD Y OF jDANTE. 
 
 whose fair fruit he hungers comes the voice which 
 bids him pass on farther without drawing near. The 
 souls upon the final terrace have attained a higher 
 sanctification, for they have learned that subordina- 
 tion of the lesser to the holier love which destroys 
 temptation and emancipates the soul from the dan- 
 ger of a fall. The meeting penitents do not need to 
 avoid each other, but" they kiss one with one, 
 without staying, content Avith short greeting.'' 
 Moreover, both the gluttonous and incontinent have 
 come to love their purifying pain, and have pene- 
 trated into the divine depths of the worship of 
 Sorrow." The former declare that the same wish 
 leads them to the tree which led the Christ rejoicing 
 to say Eli " ; and of the latter we are told that they 
 vanish in the fire like fish in water going to the 
 bottom." Thus, in each advancing stage of devel- 
 opment, the ideal becomes a more internal, inclusive, 
 and inciting power. 
 
 Increasingly illuminated by the truth, the soul 
 realizes more profoundly the sin that contradicts it. 
 Hence, the revelation of ideal types of character is 
 complemented by vivid presentations of the seven 
 deadly sins. The humility of the Virgin throws into 
 relief the pride of Lucifer, and the love of Orestes 
 accentuates the envious hate of Cain. For the same 
 reason, with decreasing sin comes increasing sensi- 
 
FURGATORIO. 
 
 57 
 
 tiveness of repentance. O noble conscience and 
 without a stain/’ sings the poet, how sharp a sting 
 is trivial thought to thee ! ” By the souls who are 
 being purged of avarice we are told that no more 
 bitter pain the mountain has.” Nowhere does Dante 
 manifest such shrinking as in view of the cleansing 
 flames of the topmost terrace ; and it would even 
 seem that the crowning moment of his anguish is 
 that in which, arraigned and condemned by Beatrice, 
 he falls swooning upon the bank of Lethe. So the 
 final judgment comes for each one of us when, with ^ 
 awakened eyes, we gaze upon Him whom we have 
 pierced. Seeing what He is, we see all we are 
 not. 
 
 Twice in the course of his progress from the gate 
 of Purgatory to the Earthly Paradise does Dante 
 sleep and dream. The first dream comes to him 
 after he has painfully circled around the terrace of 
 Sloth, the second after he has issued from the flame, 
 and, wearied in his ascent toward the summit of the 
 mount, '' of a stair has made his bed.” In the one 
 he has a vision of a deceiving Siren, who, seeking to 
 allure him, is put to flight by a '' Lady saintly and 
 alert in the other he beholds a beautiful woman 
 walking in a meadow, singing and gathering flowers. 
 Her song is a key to Dante’s theory of the method 
 of spiritual development : 
 
58 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 “ Know, whosoever may my name demand, 
 
 That I am Leah, and go moving round 
 My beauteous hands to make myself a garland. 
 
 To please me at the mirror ; here I deck me ; 
 
 But never does my sister Rachel leave 
 Her looking-glass, and sitteth all day long. 
 
 To see her beauteous eyes as eager is she 
 As I am to adorn me with my hands : 
 
 Her seeing and me doing satisfies.” 
 
 Taken in connection with the vision of the Eagle, 
 which anticipates the poet's transition to the gate of 
 Purgatory, the inner meaning of these dreams be- 
 » comes clear. As the flight to the Empyrean was a 
 symbolic presentation of the soul’s ascent to God 
 through contemplation of his nature, so the Siren 
 shows the fleshly sins which must be overcome be- 
 fore the Divine Ideal can become incarnate in the 
 man ; and the Lady saintly and alert ” typifies the 
 will, now purged of sloth, and sanctified by the 
 vision of the truth. It is worthy of note that after 
 the ascent from the terrace of Sloth sin is no longer 
 described as obscuring vision, but only as impeding 
 progress. We hear no more of ‘‘ the smoke-stains of 
 the world,” though much still of the malady which 
 all the world pervades,” the need of unloosing the 
 knot of debt,” and the obligation to circle around 
 the mount which straightens those whom the world 
 made crooked.” 
 
 The third dream is a synthesis of the other two. 
 
PURGATORIO. 
 
 59 
 
 If vision reacting upon desire incites to effort, so 
 effort crowned with achievement makes possible 
 clearer vision. To be good is to see the good, and 
 only in identification with the divine is the divine 
 fully revealed. When development is complete 
 there is no real distinction between the active and 
 the contemplative life. Leah may still gather flowers, 
 but she does so that she may please herself at the 
 mirror ; or, in prosaic statement, activity is to her 
 simply the condition of insight. Dante's waking 
 experiences correspond, moreover, with the pre- 
 monitions of his sleep, for when he comes into the 
 Earthly Paradise it is by Matilda (identified by 
 all commentators as the type of sanctified activity) 
 that he is drawn through Lethe and led to Beat- 
 rice. 
 
 In order to understand the spiritual state figured 
 by Dante in the Earthly Paradise we must keep 
 clearly in mind the thought of Purgatory as a purify- 
 ing process. Progress through the sevenfold realm 
 means the gradual elimination of selfishness, and, as 
 correlative to this, increasing degrees of spiritual 
 fellowship. It is worthy of note that throughout 
 this second division of the Divine Comedy references 
 to God are few and indirect. The vision of God is 
 the blessedness of the Heavenly Paradise. The 
 Earthly Paradise is a transition toward this joy, and 
 
6o 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 represents a state of mind in harmony with the 
 Church, or, differently expressed, entrance into the 
 life of God as incarnate in the world. 
 
 The order of Dante’s experiences in the Earthly 
 Paradise is very suggestive. Declared by Virgil king 
 over himself and free either to sit quiet or to walk 
 among the beauties which surround him, he feels 
 eager to search in and around the heavenly forest,” 
 and moves forward until his progress is barred by a 
 stream so clear that by comparison ‘‘ earth’s most 
 limpid waters seem obscure.” Upon the opposite 
 bank he sees Matilda gathering flowers, and learns 
 from her that this stream is Lethe, which, issuing 
 from a fountain safe and certain, descends with virtue 
 which takes away all memory of sin.” Then sud- 
 denly warned to look and listen, the poet ‘‘ beholds 
 a lustre run athwart the spacious forest, and hears a 
 delicious melody in the luminous air.” This light 
 and music herald the revelation of the Church, 
 imaged as a triumphal chariot drawn by Christ under 
 the form of the Griffin ; a mystic animal which, 
 being half-lion and half-eagle, symbolizes that union 
 of the divine and human which neither confounds 
 the natures nor divides the person.” Preceding the 
 chariot are seven apparently self-moving candle- 
 sticks, representing the seven gifts of the Spirit ; and 
 the books of the Old Testament personified as 
 
FURGATORIO, 
 
 6i 
 
 twenty-four elders clad in the white garments and 
 crowned with the lilies of faith. Surrounding the 
 chariot are the four apocalyptic beasts, crowned with 
 green, the color of hope, and representing the four 
 gospels; four nymphs robed in purple, who personify 
 the moral virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, 
 and fortitude ; and three nymphs clad in white, 
 green, and red, and denoting the theological virtues 
 of faith, hope, and charity. In the rear follow 
 seven elders, robed in white but crowned with the 
 roses of love, and representing the remaining books 
 of the New Testament. 
 
 Very evidently we have here the representation of 
 a visible institution, and not a revelation of its in- 
 visible life. But suddenly out of the midst of the 
 great procession arises a solitary cry — ‘‘ Come with 
 me, my spouse, from Lebanon." Shouted three times 
 by ‘‘one from heaven commissioned/' it is echoed 
 by all, and then, “ in the bosom of a cloud of flow- 
 ers, covered with a white veil, wrapped in a green 
 mantle and vested in color of the living flame," 
 Beatrice descends upon the Chariot of the Church. 
 Spontaneously the mind reverts to the apocalyptic 
 vision of the Holy City, the new Jerusalem coming 
 down from God, “ prepared as a bride adorned for 
 her husband," and recognizes in this descending Be- 
 atrice an image of the indwelling Spirit of that great 
 
62 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 heavenly Church of which all churches on earth are 
 but types and symbols. 
 
 Dante’s treatment of Beatrice gives us the key 
 both to his poem and his poetic method. For obvi- 
 ously the Beatrice of the Divine Comedy is prima- 
 rily the woman Beatrice Portinari. In the Vita 
 Nuova,” describing the moment when he, a child, 
 first met her, a child, Dante affirms: ‘‘At that in- 
 stant the spirit of life which dwells in the most 
 secret chamber of the heart began to tremble with 
 such violence that it appeared fearfully in the least 
 pulses, and tremblingly said these words : ‘ Behold a 
 God stronger than I, who coming shall rule me.’ ” 
 There is an echo of this description in the passage of 
 the “ Purgatory ” which narrates the descent of Be- 
 atrice. The spirit of the poet trembles with awe, 
 and, through the occult influence proceeding from 
 “ the fair and saintly Lady of his heart,” feels “ the 
 mighty influence of an ancient love.” It is a revival 
 of “ the power sublime that had already pierced him 
 through in boyhood,” and he “ quenches ten years 
 of thirst ” in the “ light of the eyes whence love 
 once drew his armory.” Yet though truly the 
 woman, Beatrice is not the woman alone. “ Sitting 
 with ancient Rachel,” she suggests the contempla- 
 tive life, and, “ gazing like an eagle at the sun,” she 
 indicates its perfection. Still more profoundly ap- 
 
FURGATORIO, 
 
 63 
 
 prehended as One who withdrew from singing Hal- 
 lelujah to rescue the wanderer from the dark wood 
 — as one whose stern salutation caused Dante to fall 
 prostrate in contrite shame, and as one whose eyes 
 reflect the Griffin and are themselves ‘‘ the splendor 
 of the living light eternal '' — she shines forth the 
 image of that grace which seeks and convicts the 
 sinner, illuminates the penitent, and, by giving itself 
 to the soul, makes the soul like itself. The Beatrice 
 of Dante is thus one with the Eternal Womanly '' 
 of Goethe, and represents that divine principle 
 which always energizes to draw up the imperfect into 
 the blessedness of its own perfection. 
 
 The vision of Beatrice is followed by Dante's pas- 
 sage through Lethe ; or — if we may translate the 
 poet's figure — being quickened by a higher revela- 
 tion, he is pricked with a thornier penitence and thus 
 made susceptible of a further purification. Having 
 crossed the stream that takes away the memory of 
 sin, he joins the procession of the Church, and then, 
 in deeper communion with her who is light 'twixt 
 truth and intellect," his spirit grows prophetic. 
 With penetrating eyes he scans the history of the 
 Church and beholds worldly power bringing forth 
 spiritual pride with its triple progeny of heresy, 
 schism, and moral corruption. Upon his quickened 
 ear falls the mournful music of the angelic chant — 
 
64 
 
 A STUD Y OF DANTE, 
 
 O Lord ! the heathen are come into thine inherit- 
 ance ; thy holy temple have they defiled.” Thus he 
 passes out of the communion of the visible into that 
 of the invisible Church, and, regenerated by the 
 waters of Eunoe, becomes ‘‘ pure and disposed to 
 mount unto the stars.” 
 
 Contrasting with the Inferno,” which pictures 
 the outcome of selfish individualism in the stultifica- 
 tion of the individual, Purgatory ” traces the re- 
 demption of man out of individualism into social 
 communion. It treats of the soul’s relation to God, 
 not directly but as mediated by the Church, and its 
 lesson is that in the organic relationship of the indi- 
 vidual to the social whole is grounded the possibility 
 of spiritual development. Hence the supreme sin is 
 ‘‘ Contumacy of Holy Church ” ; and upon the car 
 of the Church descends Beatrice, the immortal image 
 of divine grace. How, through the Church, the in- 
 dividual is lifted into participation with the divine, is 
 the theme of the Paradise,” whose consummation 
 is reached when the soul, inspired by abundant 
 grace,” presumes to fix its own sight upon the 
 Light eternal.” 
 
 The only obstacle to spiritual growth lies in our- 
 selves. Goodness divine, which spurns from itself 
 all envy,” is forever shining in ideal beauty and draw- 
 ing the soul with cords of love. If we do not see the 
 
PURGATORIO, 
 
 65 
 
 heavenly vision, it is because we are blinded by sin ; 
 if we do not press forward toward it, it is because we 
 are clogged by sin. Well, therefore, shall it be with 
 us if we take to ourselves the stern rebuke and ex- 
 hortation of the grave warden of Purgatory : 
 
 “ What is this, ye laggard spirits ? 
 What negligence, what standing still is this ? 
 Run to the mountain, to strip off the slough 
 That lets not God be manifest to you ! 
 
PARADISO. 
 
 Of the three divisions of the Divine Comedy, the 
 “ Paradiso '' is the most elusive to sympathy and the 
 most baffling to comprehension. Its difflculties 
 arise from the fact that it pictures, in unfamiliar 
 images, a transcendent range of spiritual experience. 
 We know what it is to sink from less to greater sin, 
 and easily translate the symbolism of the deepening 
 and narrowing circles of the “ Inferno/' We know 
 something of the struggle through which evil is 
 overcome, and can sympathize with the painful 
 climbing of the tiresome mount. But our minds re- 
 construct with difflculty that vanished theory of the 
 physical universe from which are drawn the images 
 of the “ Paradiso," and its blessedness finds few illumi- 
 nating analogies in our experience. Hence, having 
 stated his sublime theme in the first canto, the poet, 
 in the second, warns all those who have been lightly 
 following him to turn back, adding the grave words : 
 The sea I sail has never yet been passed." 
 
 With the warning, however, comes encourage- 
 66 
 
FARAniSO. 
 
 67 
 
 merit. We are reminded of Glaucus, who, eating 
 of the food of the gods, became himself divine. 
 
 Thirst for the realm deiform '' has power to bear 
 us on, and fervent desire is at once the pledge and 
 prophecy of attainment. Dante’s thought is the 
 same so wonderfully elaborated by Goethe in 
 “ Faust,” that aspiration measures man and de- 
 cides his destiny. The highest gifts we crave are 
 ours by right of the power to crave them. 
 
 The key-note of all Christian thought is recogni- 
 tion of the double truth of man’s present abasement 
 and his exalted destiny. This consciousness formu- 
 lates in theology the related doctrines of total de- 
 pravity and the incarnation. It inspires the scrip- 
 tural paradoxes that when weak we are strong; 
 when dead to self, most alive to God. It is the 
 vital breath of prayer which asks for all things be- 
 cause it knows it lacks all things. Man is poor, 
 naked, helpless, blind, yet he confidently expects to 
 be redeemed into the likeness of God because he 
 knows that the Giver of all good cannot withhold 
 the greatest of all gifts — Himself. As in his giving 
 there can be no stint, the largeness of his gift is 
 measured only by the capacity of the recipient. In- 
 creasing capacity is expressed in enlarging desire. 
 Hence, God requires of man no fitness save a felt 
 sense of need, or, as our poet puts it : 
 
68 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 “ Regnum coelorum suffereth violence 
 F rom fervent love and from that living hope 
 That overcometh the divine volition ; 
 
 Not in the guise that man o’ercometh man, 
 
 But conquers it because it will be conquered ; 
 
 And conquered, conquers by benignity.’* 
 
 The insight which gives unity to the Divine 
 Comedy is, that the generic is the Divine. The na- 
 ture common to all men is the Deity immanent in 
 each man. Organized society is the incarnation of 
 this universal Spirit. Conscience is the pledge of its 
 indwelling. Sin is violation of the tie which binds 
 the individual to the social whole and its recoil, as 
 imaged in the Inferno,'' is the exclusion of the sin- 
 ner from that organic life which he has attacked. 
 The climax of the purgatorial process is reached 
 when the penitent, finally surrendering self, enters 
 into the communion of the Church. The burden of 
 the ‘‘ Paradiso " is the relationship of the Church to 
 its head. It celebrates the eternal quickening of the 
 immanent by the self-communication of the trans- 
 cendent God, and images the joy of redeemed 
 humanity in its increasing ability to receive and 
 hold in itself the fulness of the divine life. 
 
 The transition from earth to heaven is marked by 
 the reversal of natural laws. Contrary to earthly 
 precedent the poet finds himself rising through the 
 realm of fire, and marvels in what way he transcends 
 
PARADISO. 
 
 69 
 
 these bodies light/' Beatrice explains to him that 
 in the heavenly world the downward gravitation of 
 earth is overcome by the upward gravitation of 
 spiritual desire. In like manner the material law 
 that one thing excludes another is reversed in 
 heaven, for Dante is received into the moon ‘‘ as 
 water doth receive a ray of light, remaining still un- 
 broken," and learns to his astonishment that one 
 dimension may tolerate another." This hint pre- 
 pares us for the farther revelation that the spiritual 
 world is not in space nor turns on poles," and that 
 there ‘‘ near nor far nor add nor take away." And 
 as it is beyond space so it is outside of time, for time 
 is exclusive through the succession of its moments. 
 Therefore we read that neither after nor before 
 proceeded the going forth of God upon these waters." 
 The confines of heaven are ‘‘love and light," and 
 even these mingle and conjoin in “ light intellectual 
 replete with love." For such a realm there can be 
 no other where “ than in the mind Divine," and en- 
 trance into it is its entrance into us. Thus heaven 
 is not a place but a spiritual state. Paradise is the 
 triumph of grace which doth “ imparadise the mind." 
 
 As a whole the universe is good and good only. 
 Evil resides not in the nature of things but in their 
 partial interpretation. Placing himself through self- 
 ishness in antagonism to a creation rooted and 
 
70 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 grounded in love, the sinner concludes that the uni- 
 verse is in antagonism to him. To the apprehension 
 of Caliban the motive of creation is spite. Touched 
 by Mephistopheles the roses of love become consum- 
 ing flames. And as sin is grounded in selfishness, 
 which is refusal to seek the good of each through the 
 good of all, so intellectual error is grounded in the 
 attempt to explain an infinite universe by its finite 
 parts and to find in time the solution of an eternal 
 process. 
 
 It is a suggestive law of spiritual progress that we 
 begin by defining good as the negative of evil, and 
 end by defining evil as the negative of good. Thus 
 the prohibitions of the Decalogue vanish in Christ’s 
 positive command of love. So thought advances 
 from the Hindoo Brahm to the Christian Trinity, or 
 from the apprehension of the infinite as mere nega- 
 tion of the finite to the definition of the finite as a 
 vanishing phase in the process of the infinite. In a 
 word, we begin by making our nothingness the 
 measure of the universe, and learn very gradually to 
 make the universe the measure of our nothingness. 
 Increasing insight is progressive reversal of opinion, 
 as increasing holiness is progressive crucifixion of 
 self. The reversal is complete when we see that 
 where God immediately doth govern the natural 
 law in naught is relevant.” Thought is not condi- 
 
FARADISO. 
 
 71 
 
 tioned in time and space, because time and space 
 have vanished in thought. It cannot be circum- 
 scribed, because it is the ‘‘ all circumscribing.'' The 
 stainless spark " of perfect light only seems enclosed 
 by what itself encloses. 
 
 The ten heavens of the Paradiso " image cumula- 
 tive degrees of insight into the nature of the universe 
 as a spiritual whole, and increasing freedom of the 
 individual in its reflection of the generic will. Ad- 
 vance from a lower to a higher state is symbolized 
 in greater light and speed and in more complete 
 unity and interpenetration. The questions discussed 
 become more subtle as we recede from earth, and show 
 profounder grasp of that haunting problem of free 
 will to which the poet's thought seems ever to return. 
 
 In the heaven of the Moon Dante places the spirits 
 of those whose allegiance to the Divine will is formal 
 and uncomprehending. This type of character is 
 illustrated by nuns torn from the cloister and forced 
 to marry. It is not assumed that they were recon- 
 ciled to the violation of their vows, but only that 
 through fear of death they acquiesced in it. Of one 
 we are expressly told that she was never divested of 
 the heart's veil ; yet she is blamed because she had 
 not the perfect will which kept Lawrence fast upon 
 the gridiron and strengthened Mucius to hold his 
 hand in the devouring flame. 
 
72 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 Like the moon in which they are placed, such 
 spirits have no light in themselves. The truth 
 shines upon them but not in and through them. 
 They recognize the divine as a binding law, but do 
 not feel it as a quickening impulse. Therefore they 
 change with changing circumstance, as the moon 
 rounds into a circle or contracts into a crescent 
 through receiving more or less fully the light of the 
 sun. 
 
 Men do not freely die to carry out the will of an- 
 other, even though the other may be God himself. 
 Men die for that without which life would be no life 
 to them. It is only when we have re-created in our- 
 selves the Spirit by whom we were created, that we 
 are able to subdue the limitations of temperament, 
 defy the coercion of circumstance, and triumph over 
 the suggestions of fear. God, as an external ruler, 
 will always be disobeyed ; God, as an internal in- 
 spirer, makes his will supremely our own. 
 
 Dante’s description of the spirits in the moon 
 throws into relief the limitation of their conscious- 
 ness. In your miraculous aspect,” he says to 
 Piccarda, there shines I know not what of the 
 divine ” ; or, as we may paraphrase his words: ‘‘ In 
 you the divine is not recognizable.” All the moon 
 spirits appear as mirrored semblances,” not real, but 
 faintly reflecting reality ; they are blessed in the 
 
PARADISO. 
 
 73 
 
 “slowest sphere '' and they vanish “ as through deep 
 water something heavy/' In prosaic statement, 
 allegiance to an alien will can neither overcome the 
 gravitation of earthly passions nor quicken a zealous 
 love. 
 
 The spiritual state symbolized by any given 
 heaven is suggested not only in the description of 
 the spirits to whom it has been assigned as a dwell- 
 ing-place, but also in the questions discussed by 
 Dante in his approach to and transit through it. 
 He cannot enter the heaven of the Moon until 
 Beatrice has revealed to him that the universe as a 
 whole resembles God. Her brief but conclusive 
 argument is, that order among things implies rela- 
 tionship between things, and universal relationship 
 presupposes a unity in which the things related are 
 included. Hence each thing exists not for itself 
 alone but for all things, and in contributing to the 
 beauty and blessedness of the whole, accomplishes 
 its individual destiny. 
 
 To each man is reserved a work which he alone 
 can do. He must find his happiness in doing it, and 
 in the thought that lacking even his feeble effort the 
 universe would be incomplete. This insight enables 
 Piccarda to affirm that “ as we are station above 
 station in this realm, to all the realm 't is pleasing " ; 
 it inspires the “ golden sentence " of Bonaventura, 
 
74 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 that the best perfection of a religious man is to do 
 common things in a perfect manner'' ; and its echo 
 may be heard in those touching lines of devout 
 George Herbert, which have been the life-long com- 
 fort of many a household saint : 
 
 ‘ ‘ A servant with this clause 
 Makes drudgery divine ; 
 
 Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws 
 Makes that and th’ action fine.” 
 
 The candle may shed but a feeble light, yet with- 
 out it its own corner were dark. Intent on shining 
 there, it never remembers to mourn that it is not 
 the sun. 
 
 It is evident, however, that we may grasp the uni- 
 verse as an including totality, and yet apprehend very 
 faintly its nature and end. We may know that organ- 
 ized society reveals the ideal which is binding on the 
 individual, and yet fail to define to ourselves in what 
 this ideal consists, and to identify it with our own 
 inward aspiration. In such a state of mind we shall 
 inevitably ask with Dante how man can be respon- 
 sible for broken vows when circumstances have made 
 it impossible to keep them ; we shall doubt if each 
 soul has not a definite limit beyond which it cannot 
 pass, — some star whence it came and to which it 
 must return, and weighing in an external balance 
 good and evil, fondly imagine that with particular 
 
PARADISO, 
 
 75 
 
 deeds of virtue we may atone for a faltering and dis- 
 loyal will. A formal view of the universe converts 
 spiritual degree into rigid caste, and conceives man 
 not as self-limiting but as limited from without. The 
 solutions of Beatrice affirm freedom in degree. 
 Throughout the heavenly realm the spirits of the 
 redeemed have sweet life in different degrees,'' 
 through feeling more or less the eternal breath." 
 The spirits in the moon are in one heaven with the 
 seraphim most absorbed in God," and they appear 
 where they do merely to give sign of the celestial 
 which is least exalted." Good cannot be quantita- 
 tively measured, and circumstances cannot force 
 will. We are what we are through inward defect, 
 not outward coercion. Environment is never ob- 
 structive to the individual, but the individual may 
 obstruct the influence of environment. 
 
 From the heaven of the Moon to the heaven of 
 Mercury Dante passes like an arrow which strikes 
 upon a mark ere the bowstring quiet hath become." 
 It is interesting to note that this is the last planetary 
 transit which the poet is able to measure by time. 
 Hereafter he knows that he is translated to higher 
 salvation ‘‘ only by the enkindled smiling of the 
 stars " and the growing beauty of Beatrice. At each 
 stage of his ascent creation seems more glorious and 
 grace more divine. In his praises of the lady fair. 
 
76 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 who makes him strong for heaven/' the poet exhausts 
 the resources of human speech, amply fulfilling his 
 early hope to say of her what never was said of 
 any woman." Gazing upon her he is strengthened 
 to rise. Type of illuminating grace, which shines 
 more brightly as the soul is changed into its image, 
 she is seen to pass from good to better so suddenly 
 that not by time her action is expressed." In the 
 heaven of Mercury she lights the poet with a smile 
 ‘‘ such as would make one happy in the fire." In 
 ardent Mars her eyes so burn that gazing into them 
 the poet feels he has touched the bottom of his 
 grace," and ascending to Jupiter she conquers him 
 with a radiance so wonderful that he needs the re- 
 minder that not in her eyes alone is Paradise." In 
 crystal Saturn her beauty has become so resplendent 
 that she dares not shine upon him lest he be con- 
 sumed to ashes, and when in the eighth heaven his 
 sight has become strong enough “ to tolerate her 
 holy smile," he affirms that to sing it all the tongues 
 of all the poets would not avail. In these wonder- 
 ful passages are inextricably interwoven the man's 
 love for the woman and the poet's rapture in that 
 divine beneficence which, forever creating in man a 
 sacred hunger, forever satisfies him with celestial 
 food." 
 
 More than any other planet. Mercury is veiled by 
 
PARADISO, 
 
 77 
 
 the rays of the sun. It is thus symbolic of that 
 type of character which is inspired to great achieve- 
 ment by the love of fame. Fame may be defined as 
 the reflection of the good in the consciousness of 
 men, and he who makes it his supreme motive values 
 not light but the mirror which gives back light. To 
 him the ideal is still external, — a type in the minds 
 of others to which he conforms. Hence he has no 
 true individuality, but loses himself in alien thought 
 and will, as the light of Mercury is lost in the light 
 of the sun. He lives not for what he sees to be 
 highest and best, but for the best as it appears to 
 others. 
 
 While the spirits in the moon know only that 
 there are degrees of blessedness, those in Mercury 
 see justice as the spiritual principle which determines 
 degree. Our joy,’' says Justinian, ‘‘lies in corn- 
 mensuration of our wages with our desert.” We 
 rejoice in justice, though through it we are excluded 
 from higher joy. Let God be true though every 
 man is a liar. Let us trust him though he slay us. 
 Far better bear defect in ourselves than arbitrariness 
 in the order of the universe. 
 
 The application of the principle of justice to all 
 particular cases which may arise under it is the work 
 of law ; hence, the typical spirit in the heaven of 
 Mercury is Justinian, to whom the world is indebted 
 
78 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 for the famous code by which all free nations are 
 governed. The execution of law demands the State, 
 which thus becomes the instrument for carrying out 
 the divine will, and for this reason Dante celebrates 
 in the discourse of the typical lawgiver the glory of 
 the typical empire. In the history of Rome, as 
 rapidly reviewed by the poet, is shown the signifi- 
 cance of organized society, which, by returning upon 
 each man his own deed, fulfils towards him the 
 righteous judgment of God. 
 
 To know God as justice, is to have in so far a posi- 
 tive thought of him. To rejoice in justice, is to 
 begin to be like him. Therefore the spirits in Mer- 
 cury are said to be ‘‘ kindled with the light which 
 through the whole of heaven is spread.’’ There is 
 light in them as well as around them, and they not 
 only reflect it, but as effulgence clear it issues 
 from them.” 
 
 To capacitate Dante for ascent from Mercury to 
 Venus, Beatrice shows him the limitation of the 
 principle of justice, and prepares him to enter into 
 the profounder insight of the third order of spirits. 
 A just God reigneth, but clouds and darkness are 
 round about him, and a fire goeth before him and 
 burneth up his enemies. At sight of his lightnings 
 the earth trembles, and in his presence the hills melt 
 like wax. How shall the imperfect stand in the 
 
FARADISO. ' 
 
 79 
 
 presence of the perfect ? How shall the sinner ever 
 become emancipate from sin? Justice explains de- 
 gree, but not transition from a lower to a higher 
 degree. It can reward, but not redeem ; it can 
 punish, but not develop. Its stern demand is that 
 the sinner shall fill up where transgression empties 
 with righteous pains for criminal delights.'’ When 
 suffering shall have balanced sin, which can be never, 
 then, and not till then, will justice be satisfied. 
 
 The verdict of justice is final in fixing the recoil of 
 the absolute type upon each grade of character an- 
 tagonistic to it. Even in material things,” says 
 Thomas Aquinas, pressure causes reaction. Each 
 violated order vindicates itself through recoil upon 
 that which violates it, and this recoil is punishment. 
 Sin violates a threefold order (which yet is one), the 
 order of reason and the orders of human and divine 
 law. Hence its recoil in the pains of conscience, in 
 the penalties of human society, and in the punish- 
 ment of God.” Written in sombre color upon the 
 gates of the city dolent shall always be read the 
 words: Justice incited my sublime creator,” — and 
 
 I eternal last. To the consciousness of the sinner 
 heaven itself were hell. The mind which is unlike 
 the Good supreme cannot be blanched with its light. 
 
 Insight into justice, as that which vindicates man’s 
 freedom through the return of his deed, shatters for- 
 
8o 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 ever all theories of salvation not grounded in charac- 
 ter. God himself can save man only by producing 
 in man a type of character conformed to his own. 
 Faith in a redemption wrought for us is efficacious 
 only as the instrument by which redemption is 
 wrought in us. Hell and purgatory and heaven — 
 what are they but different attitudes of the in- 
 dividual towards a blessed universe, which, in the 
 already quoted words of the poet, resembles God ? 
 
 But justice cannot itself be just, unless it capaci- 
 tates man for the conformity it requires. The impli- 
 cation of justice therefore is grace. Only by giving 
 himself to man can God enable man to be like him- 
 self. In the words of our poet, — 
 
 “ All the other modes were insufficient 
 For justice, were it not the Son of God 
 Himself had humbled to become incarnate.” 
 
 Creation is not a kingdom, but a school ; its aim is 
 not to govern, but to educate ; its end is not obedi- 
 ence but freedom, and its consummation not alle- 
 giance to but identification with the divine. 
 
 Oh, happy fault,’' exclaims the Church, on Holy 
 Saturday, referring to Adam’s sin, — oh, happy fault, 
 which has brought us so great redemption.” Ani- 
 mated by the same spirit, Milton’s Adam declares : 
 
 “ Full of doubt I stand 
 
 Whether I should repent me now of sin 
 
FARADISO. 
 
 8i 
 
 By me done and occasioned, or rejoice 
 
 Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring. 
 
 To God more glory, more good-will to men 
 From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.” 
 
 The lost silver inspires the ardent search ; the 
 wandering sheep calls forth the shepherd's tenderest 
 care ; the prodigal son learns most of the father’s 
 love, and there is more joy in heaven over the sinner 
 that repenteth than over ninety and nine just 
 persons who need no repentence. The problem of 
 evil is solved to the penitent who, in his own experi- 
 ence, has learned to know God as the conqueror of 
 evil. He remembers his slavery only to praise his 
 deliverer ; he thinks of his sin only as the occasion 
 of God’s higher revelation to his soul. Victory in 
 himself is the pledge of victory everywhere, and his 
 own history, seen in perspective, interprets all history 
 as the subjugation of sin by love. In this sense, 
 Folco, speaking for the spirits in Venus, declares 
 that 
 
 “ Here is no repenting, but we smile 
 
 Not at the fault which comes not back to mind. 
 
 But at the power which ordered and foresaw.” 
 
 In the description of the planet Venus, stress is 
 placed upon its epicyclic movement. According to 
 the system of astronomy which lies at the basis of 
 Dante’s symbolism, the inferior planets revolve 
 primarily round the sun, and to the circle which 
 
82 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 they describe in this movement is given the name of 
 epicycle. By the sun they are carried around the 
 zodiac ; hence they perform the true celestial revolu- 
 tion, not of themselves, but as constrained thereto by 
 their desire to follow the sun. 
 
 What the sun is to its dependent planets, such is 
 human love to hearts swayed by its influences. It 
 causes the life of the lover to circle around the 
 object loved, and in so far destroys the selfishness 
 which makes each man his own centre. Moreover, 
 in seeking the good of another, man enters into the 
 divine activity, or, as imaged by Dante, revolving 
 about the sun, the planet must needs sweep around 
 the zodiac. In Venus, therefore, are to be seen the 
 spirits who on earth found their supreme joy in 
 human affection. Loving, they learned the nature 
 of love, and penetrated beyond justice into the 
 secret of grace. 
 
 The defect of this grade of character is that by 
 imposing limits upon love, it degrades love into a 
 form of selfishness. It will sacrifice self for another^ 
 but not for all others. Its type is the lover finding 
 his heaven in his lady’s eyes, not the saint filled 
 with the enthusiasm of humanity and burning with 
 desire to quicken in the most degraded sinner the 
 flickering spark of divine life. In so far as it is in- 
 spired by love, it has true individuality ; therefore 
 
PARADISO, 
 
 83 
 
 Venus cannot be veiled, like Mercury, in the rays of 
 the sun. But as its love is limited, its individuality 
 is really dependent upon the object loved. With- 
 draw its idol, and you paralyze its activity. Its true 
 selfhood is in its other self, and, like Venus, which 
 WOOS the sun, now following, now in front,'' it is 
 forever moved by an external influence, and not im- 
 pelled by an indwelling energy. 
 
 In the heaven of Venus ends the “ shadowy cone 
 cast by the world." The spiritual realm through 
 which we have passed is characterized by increasing 
 insight into the nature of the divine. The spirits in 
 the moon perceive that there is an eternal order. 
 This insight delivers the intellect from the fluctua- 
 tions of opinion, and the will from the restlessness of 
 caprice. There is no coercion in the subjunctive, 
 nor can peace ever be the fruit of perhaps. But the 
 certainty of a divine order is the entrance into para- 
 dise. In Mercury this order is defined as justice, 
 and in Venus as redeeming grace. In the higher 
 heavens we shall find not deeper definitions of the 
 divine, but a progressive identification of the divine 
 and human. There can be nothing higher nor 
 deeper than love, but we have yet to see that love 
 must make all things like itself. 
 
 Ascending from the heaven of Venus to that of 
 the sun, a wondrous change comes over the poet. 
 
A STUD Y OF DANTE. 
 
 84 
 
 Henceforth the reader must feed himself, for Dante's 
 interest is now diverted wholly to “ the theme of 
 which he has been made the scribe." His love is so 
 absorbed in God that even Beatrice in oblivion is 
 eclipsed." His joy is in contemplating the mas- 
 ter's art " ; his ear is attent only to the heavenly 
 choir who sing 
 
 “ Not Bacchus nor Apollo, 
 
 But in the divine nature persons three, 
 
 And in one person the divine and human." 
 
 Here for the first time he comprehends that crea- 
 tion is a rising process whose consummation can 
 only be in God. Man interprets nature ; he is her 
 crown and king, the reason of her being, the reward 
 of her struggle, and the solution of her contradic- 
 tions. But how solve the contradictions in man 
 himself ? A worm of the dust, yet with thought 
 that reaches into eternity, and longings which can 
 be quenched only in God. As nature is redeemed 
 in him, shall he not be redeemed in God, and is not 
 the incarnation the goal towards which all history 
 strives ? The truth reflected in the moon is thus 
 revealed in the sun, and the two dimensions which 
 may tolerate " each other interpreted as the union 
 in one person of the human and divine." 
 
 The spirits in the sun are theologians who have 
 lived to elucidate the wonderful doctrines of the 
 
PARADISO. 
 
 35 
 
 trinity and incarnation, or saints who have borne 
 witness in their lives to the indwelling of their God. 
 Here Thomas Aquinas is a vivid and triumphant 
 light, and Bonaventura is made fair by love. Here 
 flames the burning breath of Beda,” who was great 
 in contemplation ; and here is the ‘‘ lustre of that 
 taper which in the flesh looked most into the 
 loving ministry of angels. All glow with inward 
 light and burn with inward ardor, for to them the 
 eternal order of the universe has been transfigured 
 into an eternal act, and spiritual degree has vanished 
 in spiritual transition. Before them shines the hope 
 of infinite progress, and they know that 
 
 “ Will increase whate’er bestows on us, 
 
 Of light gratuitous, the good supreme — 
 
 Light which enables us to look on Him. 
 
 Therefore the vision must perforce increase — 
 
 Increase the ardor which from that is kindled — 
 
 Increase the radiance which from this proceeds.” 
 
 This glad confession of the spirits in the sun 
 interprets much of the symbolism of the Divine 
 Comedy. Through it we understand the mystic 
 dance of the theologic virtues led now by the white, 
 now by the red, — now by Faith as she gains a clearer 
 vision, now by Love as she glows with the ardor the 
 vision kindles. It clothes with meaning the sugges- 
 tion that the two wheels of the chariot of the 
 Church are Francis, who is all seraphic in ardor,” 
 
86 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 and Dominic, who is a splendor of light cherubi- 
 cal”; and teaches us why the merit of Francis 
 should be extolled by Thomas Aquinas, a Domini- 
 can, and the glory of Dominic celebrated by the 
 Franciscan Bonaventura. The three concentric cir- 
 cles formed by the sun spirits, and of which the 
 second seems born of the first, while the third van- 
 quishes Dante with the ‘‘ incandescent sparkling of 
 the Holy Spirit,'' stand revealed in its light as sym- 
 bols of the higher hope and more perfect love, 
 quickened by profounder insight into the mystery of 
 God. Finally, it helps us to learn from the ladies 
 who stop their dance, in silence listening till they 
 have gathered the new melody," that the alternations 
 of paradise are between new revelations of the divine 
 and new creations of the divine within ourselves. 
 The doubt which ‘‘ springs up in fashion of a shoot 
 at the foot of truth " is nature's impulsion to a 
 greater height, and sight is vanquished in increasing 
 light only that the eye may be made more trans- 
 parent to it. 
 
 The relationship between insight into the divine, 
 aspiration towards the divine, and self-identification 
 with the divine, is ever present to Dante's thought. 
 The three acts are shown, not as separate and suc- 
 cessive, but as phases of an inclusive energy, and are 
 identified with the theologic virtues of faith, hope. 
 
PARADISO. 
 
 87 
 
 and charity. Charity, or love, is the realization 
 within one's self of the ideal perceived by faith, and 
 thus implies faith as its logical antecedent, or rather 
 as the initial phase of its own activity. In this 
 sense “ blessedness " is truly said to be rooted in the 
 faculty that sees, and not in that which loves and 
 follows after. No ideal, no effort ; no effort, no 
 character. Self-identification with a perceived ideal 
 expands the soul to the measure of a fuller gift, and 
 therefore, until man has become wholly one with 
 God, each heaven attained will but spur the hope of 
 higher attainment. 
 
 As the spirits in the sun are the first to recognize 
 the identity of the ideal human and the divine, so 
 those in Mars are the first who consciously take on 
 the form of the universal life. God is love, love is 
 self-giving; self-giving is renunciation of self. Its 
 supreme symbol is the cross, as its supreme historic 
 type is the sacrifice on Calvary. Therefore, the fifth 
 star is '' ruddy with love," while its blessed spirits 
 glow with a red lustre," and constellated in its 
 depths describe the venerable sign that quadrants 
 joining in a circle make." The appearance of the 
 cross is ‘‘ of a precious jewel set with gems " ; the 
 individual spirits move freely upon it from top to 
 bottom, and from the right horn to the left, but from 
 the ribbon which binds them to it they are never 
 
88 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 dissevered. Their running is upon the radiant 
 fillet, and their seeming is of fire behind alabaster.’' 
 Through the renunciation of self man is bound for- 
 ever to the living whole of humanity. Within this 
 unity he moves, and through him, as through a 
 translucent medium, shines the light of the indwell- 
 ing spirit. Not only is the divine revealed to him, 
 but he has become its revelation to others. 
 
 Mars is the heaven of brave thinkers, who gladly 
 bear the world’s scorn to declare to the world re- 
 deeming truth, — of the heroes who lead the forlorn 
 hope of good against the serried ranks of evil ; of the 
 martyrs whose joy is in the death which proclaims 
 eternal life. Here Dante’s ancestor, the great cru- 
 sader, promises him, as reward of patriotic virtue, the 
 martyrdom of banishment and dependence, and the 
 absolute loneliness of truth in a world of lies. Here, 
 too, we learn, as never before, the struggle of the 
 poet’s soul. He had craved power and influence 
 among men, and had needed the fearful vision of 
 evil counsellors swathed in flames to teach him so to 
 curb his genius that it might not run where virtue 
 did not guide.” To the lust of power he added the 
 vainglory of genius, and, because he craved for him- 
 self an unshared eminence of fame, was constrained 
 to ‘‘go all bowed down” around the first cornice of 
 the purgatorial mount. Finally, craven fear had 
 
PARADISO. 
 
 89 
 
 blanched his cheek at the mere thought that his 
 mission was to penetrate the hidden mysteries of 
 good and evil, and show them forth to men, and, 
 shrinking from the gate of hell, he had sought to 
 evade his destined work. Now, taught by grace 
 that, which if he tell again will prove a savor of 
 strong herbs to many,*' he must conquer the coward- 
 ice which might make him a timid friend to truth, 
 and, though it cut him off from all the friends to 
 whom his torn heart clings, proclaim from the house- 
 top what he has learned in the closet. The voice of 
 the old crusader bids him lay aside all falsehood 
 and manifest his vision utterly,” while from the 
 spirits upgathered on the cross there comes to him 
 the stirring cry, ‘‘Arise and conquer!” The last 
 battle is fought, the last victory won, and crucifying 
 selfish fear as he had crucified ambition and vain- 
 glory, the poet enters into the communion of the 
 fifth heaven. 
 
 To the cross of Mars succeeds the eagle of Jupiter, 
 for the outcome of self-surrender is self-realization in 
 the organic whole. To the ruddy hue of Mars suc- 
 ceeds the silver light of Jupiter ; to the ardor of love 
 concentrated in sacrifice, the radiance of love as dif- 
 fused in just and beneficent rule. 
 
 Dante's description of the eagle is full of significant 
 hints of the truth symbolized by it. In this beautiful 
 
90 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 image, the interwoven souls are made jubilant in 
 sweet fruition '' ; the meaning of which would seem 
 to be that each man finds in total humanity the 
 realization of his own highest self. Of the perpetual 
 flowers here blossoming the poet perceives as one 
 the odors manifold '' ; and when the eagle speaks, 
 it 
 
 “ Utters with its beak, both I and 
 When in conception it is we and our'^ 
 
 The spirits in this realm, themselves once merciful 
 rulers, find their never-failing joy in the mercy of 
 God. Their song is of the Good that draws them to 
 itself ; their vision of grace that “ from so deep a 
 fountain wells that no eye has ever reached its pri- 
 mal wave.” Questioned by Dante how the justice 
 of God may be reconciled with the condemnation of 
 righteous heathen who never heard of Christ, the 
 eagle boldly avows the doctrine that wherever right- 
 eousness is found its source is God, and its end, delight 
 in Him, and declares that one of its own brightest 
 lights is the Trojan Ripheus, to whom ‘‘the maid- 
 ens three were for baptism, more than a thousand 
 years before baptizing.” The eagle of Jupiter be- 
 lieves in salvation by faith, but its faith is that spirit- 
 ual one through which the Ethiop shall condemn the 
 merely technical Christian, and souls who never heard 
 of Christ shall at the judgment be nearer to him than 
 many who are loudly calling on his name. 
 
PARADISO. 
 
 9‘i 
 
 It will be remembered that the spirits in the moon 
 came to peace through the knowledge that each 
 thing exists not for itself alone but for all things. 
 To the saints stationed in Jupiter is revealed the 
 complementary truth that all things exist for each 
 thing. The whole to which the individual surrend- 
 ers himself returns him to himself enriched with its 
 completer life. Man is not merely an instrument 
 used to carry out a work. He is himself the perfect 
 work which all creation is striving to accomplish. 
 We have an image of the reaction of the whole 
 upon the individual in human institutions. Through 
 the family he is protected in feeble infancy and 
 guided in ignorant childhood. Through the school 
 he is prepared to enter into the experience of the 
 race. Through the organization of labor he receives 
 the ripe results of united endeavor. Through the 
 State justice is dealt to him and as an ideal de- 
 veloped in him. Through the Church the feeble 
 spark of his spiritual aspiration is fanned into liv- 
 ing flame. How greatly each man is shaped by man- 
 kind is seen in the fact that we define ourselves first 
 as Christians ; second, as Europeans or Americans ; 
 third, as citizens of a given state ; fourth, as belong- 
 ing to a particular community ; fifth, as members of 
 a special family ; and finally as individually distin- 
 guished from its other members. Insight into the 
 
92 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 rich return which mankind makes for each man’s 
 paltry gift, transforms the peace of acquiescence into 
 the rapture of self-creative activity. It enables the 
 least of men to share the triumphs of the greatest, 
 while holding up to the greatest the ideal of service 
 to the least. The true king is the servant of all ; the 
 humblest subject may see his servant in his king. 
 The divine Saviour washes the feet of his disciples, 
 and in the alien, the pauper, and the criminal com- 
 mands them to look upon Him. As the achieve- 
 ment of each redounds to the advantage of all, we 
 look upon seers, heroes, and saints not envying them 
 for what we lack and they have, but grateful that 
 through them our lack may be supplied. Without 
 the seer’s vison where were our revelation? With- 
 out the hero’s struggle where were our freedom ? 
 Without the saint’s devotion where were our sancti- 
 fication ? 
 
 In the conception of each man as a centre to 
 which all influence returns, is implied the perfecti- 
 bility of the individual. As every dewdrop may 
 reflect the sun, so every man may reflect the divine 
 ideal. It is not enough that humanity as a whole 
 should resemble God, but each man must as a per- 
 fect mirror give back his perfect image. Man must 
 not only find himself in the world, but the world in 
 himself. The cross of Mars and the eagle of Jupiter 
 
FARADISO. 
 
 93 
 
 are but symbols of the renunciation through which 
 the individual gives himself to the whole, and of the 
 perfect organization through which the whole returns 
 its influence to him. Ascending with the poet into 
 the golden glory of Saturn, we behold each spirit 
 shining as ‘‘ a sphere complete in itself,’* while all 
 the spheres with mutual rays each other more 
 embellish.” 
 
 According to the celestial hierarchy of Dionysius, 
 from which Dante borrows much of the symbolism 
 of the ‘‘ Paradiso,” the heaven of Saturn is ruled by 
 that order of angels known as the Thrones. Dante 
 describes them as ^‘thrones of the countenance 
 divine, and mirrors from which shine our God judi- 
 cant.” Dionysius himself affirms that these angels 
 are called thrones because, as the chair receives the 
 sitter, so they receive God in themselves, and in a 
 certain sense carry him to others. The heaven of 
 Saturn would seem therefore to typify that consum- 
 mate moment of heavenly experience when the 
 individual soul expands to the measure of the divine 
 fulness, and enriched by the total experience of 
 humanity, incarnates total humanity within itself. 
 Each man is now himself plus all other men. He 
 here becomes the teacher, at whose feet he sat ; 
 the poet, at whose burning words he marvelled ; the 
 State, which kindled his patriotic fervor ; and the 
 
94 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 Church, through whose sacraments he learned to 
 feed on God. The perfect Son of God, for whose 
 manifestation the whole creation waits, groaning and 
 travailing in pain, — his education is complete, and 
 his Maker shall dwell with him forevermore. 
 
 Small wonder, therefore, that, ascending to Saturn, 
 Dante looks in vain for the smile of Beatrice. Small 
 wonder that in this wheel the dulcet symphony of 
 paradise is silent, and the single cry which smites 
 upon the poet’s ear stuns him with holy fear. His 
 sight must be disciplined before he may behold 
 grace in her consummate beauty ; his ear must be 
 strengthened to bear the hosannas of the happy 
 spirits who chant her perfect gift. Only in the 
 remotest sphere shall he see Benedict, with coun- 
 tenance unveiled, and know the denizens of Paradise 
 even as he is known by them. 
 
 In Saturn show themselves the contemplative 
 spirits who, freed from the illusions of sense, saw 
 even while on earth the things invisible. Up and 
 down the golden ladder, which is uplifted beyond all 
 power of mortal vision, they move, and as the poet 
 gazes they vanish from his sight like a whirlwind 
 that is upward rapt.” This is the ladder where, 
 without re-ascending, none descends. Bringing to 
 others the truth it has learned, the devout spirit 
 rises to higher truth. It is Emerson’s stairway of 
 
FARADISO. 
 
 95 
 
 surprise/' — each step a new insight upon which 
 thought mounts toward its goal. 
 
 As in the heaven of Saturn is completed the long 
 education of the individual, it is meet that from 
 hence he should look back over the path he has 
 travelled. Retracing his history he will more truly 
 know himself, and will be prepared to gaze with 
 vision unclouded and acute upon the last salvation. 
 At the bidding of his celestial guide the poet looks 
 down upon the vast world he has put beneath his 
 feet. He sees his native earth and smiles at its 
 ignoble semblance. The moon shines to him now 
 without a shadow; Venus and Mercury appear re- 
 volving around the sun, and Jupiter, Mars, and 
 Saturn are seen not only as they are in themselves, 
 but in their relationship to each other. May we not 
 interpret this vision as the poet's recall of the stages 
 of his own spiritual growth? He remembers with a 
 smile the puerile passions and interests of earth ; 
 the peace born of their subjection to a principle 
 recognized as universal ; the delight of perceived 
 correspondence between the sense of justice in the 
 soul and the reign of justice in the world ; and the 
 vanishing of repentance in rejoicing over the great 
 goodness of God. He renews the rapture of that 
 crucial moment when in prophetic vision he saw the 
 divine incarnate in the human ; the self-renouncing 
 
96 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE. 
 
 ardor which this insight quickened, and the blessed- 
 ness flowing from recognition of the outpouring of 
 the spirit, through mankind, upon individual men. 
 Then gratefully beholding in himself one ripened 
 fruit of the world’s endeavor, he almost anticipates 
 the jubilant cry of Beatrice as, entering the heaven 
 of the fixed stars, she bids him 
 
 “ Behold the hosts 
 
 Of Christ’s triumphal march, and all the fruit 
 Harvested by the rolling of the spheres.” 
 
 In the heaven of the Fixed Stars the central figure 
 is Christ. He gives light to all the blessed spirits, 
 as in the time of Dante, the sun was supposed to 
 give light to all the stars. Second only to him in 
 glory is the Virgin, described as the ‘‘ Rose divine 
 in which the Word divine became incarnate,” and 
 around her ‘‘ circles with joy Gabriel, the angel of 
 the Annunciation.” To the angel who promised the 
 divine infant, follow the apostles who proclaimed 
 abroad the coming of the divine man ; and, last of 
 all, the first man Adam, who was of the earth earthy, 
 appears redeemed by the second man, who is the 
 lord from heaven, thus interpreting the history of 
 the world as the transition from one to the 
 other. 
 
 To become one with God is to become the 
 sharer of his work, and hence to the heaven of 
 
FARADISO, 
 
 97 
 
 consummation succeeds the heaven of influence. If, 
 heretofore, we have traced insight through its ascend- 
 ing degrees, we now behold influence descending 
 from God through cherubim and seraphim to the 
 least and lowest who aspire toward a higher life. In 
 this realm of crystal clearness and of matchless 
 speed, the nine concentric circles of the angelic 
 hierarchy are attracted by God, and their joy is to 
 attract others to him. From above they take to act 
 beneath, and upward gazing become downward pre- 
 vailing. We remember Beatrice, who, to save the 
 sinning Dante, endured in hell to leave the im- 
 print of her feet,'' and thank our poet for this 
 deepest of all lessons, that those who have been 
 changed into the image of God must work forever 
 to create that image in others. 
 
 The careful reader of the ‘‘ Paradiso " will have 
 noticed that the advent of Dante in each heaven 
 deepens the joy of the spirits dwelling therein. 
 Speaking to the poet, the spirit of Justinian be- 
 comes, ‘‘by far, more lucent than it was before," 
 and delighting in his sympathy, Folco shines re- 
 splendent, “ like a fine ruby smitten by the sun." Is 
 it possible, we ask, that there can be increase in the 
 infinite happiness of heaven ? Is it possible, an- 
 swers our poet, that truth shared shall not be truth 
 quickened, or that love shall cease to grow by giv- 
 
98 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 ing ? Through all eternity new individuals will be 
 rising into the communion of the saints and swelling 
 their already perfect joy. As the moon ideal, each 
 for all^ was inverted in the Jupiter ideal, all for each^ 
 so both are transfigured in the insight of the Primum 
 Mobile, which demands that each individual shall 
 see God reflected in every other, and shall reveal to 
 every other the divine as reflected in himself. 
 
 Seeing ever more clearly the divine in the human, 
 we have ascended from the slowest to the swiftest 
 sphere. In the final heaven, — place of the “ supreme 
 deity who alone doth perfectly see himself,'’ — there 
 waits for us the higher revelation of the human in 
 the divine. Long since, in the tender planet Venus, 
 we learned what must be the attitude of perfect love 
 to struggling imperfection, but still unsolved re- 
 mains the deeper question how imperfection came 
 to be. This is the secret of the empyrean, for 
 whose showing forth the poet declares that his lan- 
 guage shorter falls than an infant's “ who still his 
 tongue doth moisten at the breast." 
 
 That our thought may learn to grapple with this 
 deepest mystery, it is declared to us first in symbolic 
 form. Before our eyes a river of light flows betwixt 
 two banks depicted with an everlasting spring. From 
 the river issue living sparks which on all sides sink 
 down into the flowers. The river, the sparks, and 
 
PARADISO, 
 
 99 
 
 the flowers are, as Beatrice tells Dante, but images 
 or foreshadowing prefaces of truth. He must bathe 
 his eyes in the living water that he may truly see, 
 and drink of it that his thirst for knowledge may be 
 slaked. Through such final baptism he enters into 
 the glory of the empyrean ; in such heavenly eu- 
 charist partakes completely of his God. Purified by 
 these sacramental acts, he beholds the river trans- 
 formed out of its length into round, while the indi- 
 vidual flowers upon its bank blend into the White 
 Rose of Paradise. Into this flower of love, symbol 
 of the invisible church, descend the angels, bringing 
 sweet influence from God ; and then, ascending, 
 they waft back to him the fragrant thanksgiving of 
 the saintly host. 
 
 In the thirteenth canto of the Paradiso,'’ the gen- 
 eration of the Son from the Father is imaged as the 
 flowing of effulgent light from its fountain. Pre- 
 sumably, therefore, the similar image used in de- 
 scribing the empyrean symbolizes the same truth, 
 and in the length of the shining river we are to see 
 the outpouring of the Father, — in the roundness the 
 divine perfection of the Son. Still expanding, the 
 wonderful light of the Logos becomes so wide that 
 its circumference would be too large a girdle for 
 the sun,'* and mirrors itself in the countless ranks of 
 beatified saints who have been made one in the 
 
lOO 
 
 A STUDY OF DANTE, 
 
 spirit. Herein is clearly suggested the truth that 
 the invisible church (already defined as the ripened 
 fruit of creation) is in the image of the Son, as the 
 Son is in the image of the Father. 
 
 The doctrine that all things were made by the 
 Word, suggested in the symbols just described, is 
 still more explicitly revealed in the final vision of 
 the Paradiso.” Gazing at last, direct upon his God, 
 the poet beholds '‘within the deep and luminous 
 subsistence of the High Light three circles of three- 
 fold color and of one dimension.'' “ By the second 
 circle is the first reflected," and this second circle, 
 when contemplated by the poet's eye, “ within itself 
 of its own very color seems painted with the effigy 
 of man.'’ The incarnation of the divine in man 
 finds its only possible ground in the eternal being of 
 man in God. The historic atonement manifests in 
 time an act complete from all eternity, and forever 
 the human and divine have been made one, not by 
 the conversion of tha Godhead into flesh, but by the 
 taking of the manhood into God. 
 
 To rethink for ourselves the poet's thought, we 
 must recur to the insight of the spirits in Venus, 
 that in love is to be found the keynote to the har- 
 mony of the universe. Dante reaffirms this doctrine 
 in the closing words of the sacred poem, and leaves 
 us as his final legacy, the insight that “ it is love 
 
PARADISO. 
 
 lOI 
 
 which moves the sun and the other stars/' In love, 
 therefore we must seek the solution of the deep 
 mysteries of the trinity and incarnation. 
 
 Love implies an object distinct from and yet iden- 
 tical in nature with the being who loves. Any ob- 
 ject less than himself leaves his love a mere unreal- 
 ized potentiality. Man could never bestow all his 
 love on a stone or animal ; hence had he only stones 
 and animals to love he could not be completely him- 
 self. So infinite love demands an infinite object, and 
 thus implies that dualism in the Divine Being formu- 
 lated in theology as the eternal Father and the eter- 
 nally begotten Son. Love, whose very essence is 
 self-communication, must have always completely 
 communicated itself. To suppose otherwise is to 
 introduce potentiality and therefore imperfection into 
 our thought of the Father. On the other hand, in 
 self-communication or generation there is implied 
 logical movement from antecedent phases of less to 
 greater perfection. These logical phases of develop- 
 ment eternally beheld by the Father in the Son and 
 eternally recognized by the Son as he contemplates 
 his relationship to the Father, are actualized in the 
 process of creation whose consummation is the in- 
 carnation of the divine in the human, and the 
 redemption of man from the multiplicity of selfish 
 individuals into the unity of the Spirit. 
 
102 
 
 A STUB Y OF BANFF. 
 
 The ascending insights of paradise are God in the 
 universe, — God in the individual, — each individual in 
 every other, — all individuals in God. This final 
 vision is the truth beyond which nothing true ex- 
 pands itself,'' and in which ‘‘ all intellect finds rest." 
 In God we live and move and have our being. In 
 the mystery of His triune nature is the pledge of 
 our immortal union with Him, and out of the daring 
 humility born of perfect faith we may echo the 
 words of the old mystic : 
 
 ‘ ‘ I know without me God cannot a moment live ; 
 
 If I to death should go, He, too, would death receive.” 
 


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