UC-NRLF 755 EXCHANGE THE SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE KIRKUP'S SKETCH OF THE GIOTTO FRESCO. THE SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE BY THE RT. REV. W. BOYD CARPENTER K.C.V.O., D.D., D.C.L., D.LITT., LL.D., CANON OF WESTMINSTER AND CLERK OF THE CLOSET TO THE KING ; LATE BISHOP OF RIPON CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1914 THE WILLIAM BELDEN NOBLE LECTURES THIS Lectureship was constituted a perpetual foundation in Harvard University in 1898, as a memorial to the late William Belden Noble of Washington, B.C. (Harvard, 1885). The deed of gift provides that the lectures shall be not less than six in number, that they shall be delivered annually, and, if convenient, in the Phillips Brooks House, during the season of Advent. Each lecturer shall have ample notice of his appointment, and the publication of each course of lectures is required. The purpose of the Lectureship will be further seen in the following citation from the deed of gift by which it was established : "The object of the founder of the Lectures is to continue the mission of William Belden Noble, whose supreme desire it was to extend the in- fluence of Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life ; to make known the meaning of the words of vi SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE Jesus, c I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.' In accordance with the large interpretation of the influence of Jesus by the late Phillips Brooks, with whose religious teaching he in whose memory the Lectures are established, and also the founder of the Lectures, were in deep sympathy, it is in- tended that the scope of the Lectures shall be as wide as the highest interests of humanity. With this end in view, the perfection of the spiritual man and the consecration by the spirit of Jesus of every department of human character, thought and activity, the Lectures may include philosophy, literature, art, poetry, the natural sciences, politi- cal economy, sociology, ethics, history both civil and ecclesiastical, as well as theology, and the more direct interests of the religious life. Beyond a sympathy with the purposes of the Lectures, as thus defined, no restriction is placed upon the lecturer." PREFACE THESE lectures are published according to the conditions laid down by the Noble Trust. They are not intended as a contribution to the critical study of the Divina Commedia : they are rather designed to be illustrative of the principles set out in the Noble Lectures which I gave in 1904. They are simply thoughts on religious experience as exemplified in Dante's poem. They were given without manuscript, and as presented here they are compilations from notes, not written lectures. Some repetition is needful in addresses orally given. Such repetitions are blemishes in the printed lectures ; but I could not remove such blemishes without recasting the lectures and altering their character as spoken addresses. In conclusion I wish to acknowledge the valuable help given me by three friends, the Hon. William Warren Vernon, the Rev. Canon Moore, and Dr Paget Toynbee. To the debt which, in common with all Dante students, I owe them, vii Vlll SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE they have added the personal kindness of reading the proof-sheets of these lectures. Their thought- ful criticism and suggestions have helped me much. For their willing and experienced aid I shall always feel grateful. W. BOYD CARPENTER. P.S. Some of the illustrations are taken from Lord Vernon's famous edition of the Inferno^ and I gladly join with my publishers in acknowledging the kind way in which the members of Lord Vernon's family whom we approached approved our wishes to reproduce them. We trust that these reproductions will be regarded as a small tribute to the value of a work which still remains a monument of loving, prolonged, and painstaking devotion to the study of Dante. December 31^, 1913. 6 LITTLE CLOISTERS, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. CONTENTS LECTURE PAGE I. THE MAN i II. THE DRAMA OF HIS LIFE (LIFE LOST) 38 III. THE INEXORABLENESS OF RIGHT- EOUSNESS ("INFERNO") . . 74 IV. EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE ("PURGA- TORIO") 128 V. THE VICTORY OF LOVE ("PARA- DISO") 182 VI. THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL (LIFE LOST AND FOUND) ... 226 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Kirkup's Sketch of the Giotto Fresco . frontispiece FACE PAGE Dante and his Book, after Michelino . . 20 Antinferno ....... 76 Avari e Prodighi ...... 84 Lo Stige ....... 92 Cadata del Montone presso S. Benedetto . . 116 Dante, after Luca Signorelli .... 236 Dante, from Giotto's Fresco in the Bargello . 244 THE SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE LECTURE I THE MAN THE study of great works is both a discipline and a delight it is a discipline as it directs and trains our thoughts : it is a delight as it evokes our emotions ; but beyond this the greater works have a power more captivating and more elusive : they possess what we call charm something which we feel but which we cannot explain : it defies definition. We all remember Goldsmith's quaint apology in the preface to the Vicar of Wake- field : " There are a hundred faults in this thing, and a hundred things might be said to prove them beautiful. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be dull without a single absurdity." We may find fault with every feature in a face, but we may admire 2 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE it all together. We shall not understand charm by analysis, and greatness often defies it. Why is the Divina Commedia a great poem ? Can we give it a place among epic poems ? Is it commended by its erudition ? Do we justify its claim to greatness by citing a number of striking images or eloquent or pathetic passages ? We feel at once that these pleadings are inadequate. We feel that we are nearer the mark when we point out the marvellous skill with which these elements are built into and become features of a great and sublime whole an edifice grand in conception, vigorously harmonious in the relation of its parts. It is the superb structure which evokes our admiration. And yet again are we satisfied ? Does this greatness of design, even when supported by beauty and delicacy of detail, give the reason why we place it among eminent works ? When we analyse the sunbeam by split- ting it up into its sevenfold hues, we may mark the tints of separate beauty, but we lose our sun- beam. Thus dissected, we may admire the parts, but we miss the bright cheerfulness and the genial warmth of the beam which made us glad. There was a personal appeal to us in the undivided sun- beam : it rejoiced the eye : it warmed the body. Is there not in like manner a personal appeal which streams to us from great works ? The THE MAN 3 personality of the long ago speaks to us ! We feel the genial warmth of his common sympathy : we are treading the great path which he trod : we feel, I had almost said, the hand pressure of that long ago. It is not only the great theme which commands attention, but the voice which speaks, for we feel that it is the voice of one who like ourselves was a wayfarer on life's road. The same human touch quickens our interest in drama, for in it we may read the history of the soul. We love to see the courageous soul con- fronting adversity refusing to be crushed by fate, or else expiring nobly, unconquered by the dead weight of hard necessity. In this often lies the real fascination of Greek drama ; in this lies the power of that Old Testament drama presented in the Book of Job. The patriarch meets calamity after calamity : he is seen as a lonely individual beaten to the earth by great and inscrutable power. His trouble and perplexity is aggravated by the superficial chatter and conventional ex- planations of commonplace minds : the men whose fortunes .are unimpaired can counsel cheap resignation : even shallow philosophy is sufficient to explain the misfortunes of others ; but the lonely patriarch will not barter his intellectual honesty for any comfortable but unreal explana- tion. He will be true to himself : he will not 4 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE make his judgment blind : the heavy hand of power can find no justification in the mere exercise of power. Might cannot defend things without some moral pleadings. Job possesses intellectual honesty : and he will hold fast his integrity. Here is the problem of life seen exerting its pressure : man is groping towards light. Herein is the power of the book : it finds a place for the soul the soul has its drama, because the soul has its rights. Such great works possess a power of appeal, because they recognise the drama of the soul. Sooner or later, said a great French teacher, our interest is in the soul. The thought of mankind moving in cycles from naturalism to intellectual- ism, perchance has found its way back to-day to the ever pressing question of soul- values. Philo- sophical systems have been framed into compact and logical harmony, but have split asunder because the soul has been left out. A globe was formed of gold with a small admixture of lead : the lead was only one ten-thousandth part of the whole ; but a slight blow shattered the globe : to be strong gold needs to be blended with some substance whose molecules are finer than its own ; the molecules of lead are coarser than those of gold : the globe therefore having no homogeneity was shivered. Philosophical systems may be THE MAN 5 likened to gold, but for enduring strength they must admit that which is of finer texture than mere logical intellect : the soul must be given her place in the system. Herein the collective wisdom of mankind is greater than that of philosophers. " Philosophy is so simple, but we are so learned," is said to be the reproach of one distinguished modern thinker. Philosophers have often forgotten the soul, and so they have mis- calculated life -values ; but mankind has wel- comed every true representation of the drama of the soul. The Confessions of St Augustine, the- 1 story of Dr Faustus, the play of Hamlet^ the Pilgrim s Progress^ the Rubaiydt of Omar Khayyar have awakened responsive interest, because met have heard in them the voices of the soul. The Divina Commedia is a drama of the soul. It has other elements of 'attraction. By its wide j-ange, by its vivid imaginative power, by its acute reflections, by its scholastic disquisitions, it appeals to our historical, poetical, philosophical, and theo- logical tastes. To use an illustration. It has its architecture, and in it the style of the period may be traced : its decorations and embellishments excite the attention of various experts : the marks of its age are everywhere upon it. But voices which are heard within are the voices of the soul : whatever may be the character of its columns and 6 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE buttresses, its windows and its arches, the whole building is a place of worship. In it we may hear the cry of the soul which is striving to find itself, to express itself, and to reach at last the great central soul of love in which it can lose itself burying the whole heart wide and warm in something greater than itself. It is as a soul drama that I desire to set it before you. It is individual yes, markedly so : the characteristics of a man of strong individuality are to be seen in it, but it is the drama of an individual who is finding his personality, if I may borrow a contemporary distinction of phrase. The drama is the drama of an Italian soul one Dante Alighieri by name ; but for all that it might be your drama or mine, for its experi- ences follow the threefold cycle which philosophers, psychologists, and religious teachers have described in various terms. Sometimes it is the Nature stage followed by the negative stage, which in its turn gives place to the reconstructive stage. At other times it is spoken of as satisfaction followed by dissatisfaction, and this again succeeded by restored or renovated satisfaction. Integration surrenders to disintegration, and reintegration then is achieved. The story may be told in varying fashion. It is complacency giving way to struggle, and struggle crowned by peace. It is THE MAN 7 self lost, and self sought, and self found. We may choose what language we please, but the experience is common enough. It is the struggle for the possession of our own spirit : it is a fight from natural life to spiritual : it is the winning of self after conflict. It reflects the Apostle's thought, " I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came sin revived, and I died ; but the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and of death." Dante presents us with a cycle of experiences which have a profound significance for the soul. He is a man who goes on a pilgrimage seeking liberty. From one point of view it is the story of a man going in search of his soul. From another it is the story of the way in which God educates a man's soul. It is the same experience described from opposite sides. Without adopting any of the particular terms which have been used by teachers and thinkers, it is enough for us that we have in the Divina Commedia the chronicle of a great human experience : it sets out the story of a soul passing through such an experience : yet not as a passive subject, but as a co-operating intelligence. It is not merely an emotional record or an intellectual harmonisation : it is a living ex- perience, set forth in threefold stages, and in each stage Dante shared. It is the drama of a soul. 8 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE There are many seductive bypaths along which one might be tempted to stray, and I do not promise that I may not be beguiled to stray, but my purpose is not to stray far enough to forget the sequence of the scenes which make up the dramatic whole. Is there any one thought which may be said to govern the whole ? Is there any word which, like the keynote of a melody, becomes dominant in the drama ? I think there is. The one word which gives us the clue to the whole is love. Perhaps we may lose the force of its dramatic development by claiming thus early that love lies behind the play ; but Dante himself has warned us that his work is not a tragedy : we are watching the unfolding of acts which are to have a happy and glorious close. The drama of the soul may possess tragic elements it has, as we know, tragic possibilities, but it is moving forward to final scenes over which the light of heaven will shine and the music of heaven be heard ; for love lies behind the movements of the universe. Hence, while I speak of it as the drama of the soul, I must also regard it as an unfolding of a divine education of man. From beginning to end, love divine love is working for the illumination, emancipation, and salvation of the souj. It is an education at the hand THE MAN 9 of love. Amore^ amore, amore the sound is heard loudest and loftiest in the happy realms of Paradise, but it speaks on the winding terraces of Purgatory, and even in Hell it is not silent. " If I go up to heaven love is there : if I take the wings of the morning to begin the new life, it is there : if I go down into hell, it is there also." Every step of the way the pilgrim's feet are guided and safeguarded by grace and light from heaven : love never fails him : it moves to his aid though the pilgrim has not yet opened the door of his heart to let it in : it acts through various agencies to direct and protect the pilgrim : it stands waiting for the moment when the gate of the heart will be thrown open to its influence : and when it at length gains admission it vitalises, illumines, invigorates, and uplifts the soul into the regions which are peaceful through intensity of activity. The drama from the heavenly side is the education of the soul. It is as a drama of the soul that we are to regard it. For this we need to know something of the character and circumstances of the man whose spiritual drama is set forth. What manner of man was Dante ? What were his earthly experiences ? What did life do for him ? What did he say of life ? These are the questions we ask. io SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE First, then, what kind of a man was Dante ? In other words, what was the nature of the raw material out of which this poet, who is to become a great spiritual teacher, was formed ? Can we conjure up his likeness ? We have three chief sources of information : we have a description of his personal appearance given by Boccaccio ; we have a portrait on the walls of the Bargello at Florence ; and lastly, we have the mask, said to have been taken from the poet's face shortly after his death. There is enough resemblance between the painting, the mask, and Boccaccio's description to give us confidence in their general correctness. What, then, was Dante like ? Guided by Giotto's picture, I can see him walking with a quiet and even step along the streets of Florence : his somewhat shallow brow is unwrinkled : the chin is strong and firm : the mouth hints lightly at some self-confidence, tinged perhaps with scorn of empty heads : the nose " the index of the face, the rudder of the will " is long, firm, and tending towards the command- ing type. He wears his robe with dignity, avoiding ungainly fold or gesture : his mouth can move to laughter, while his eye is steady, or again, the light of mirth will flicker across the eye while the face remains unmoved : he can indulge in impressions and emotions without losing his self- THE MAN n control. Guided by the features which the mask discloses, I can see him, lean and gaunt, with a visage marked by pain, disappointment, dis- illusion, climbing some mountain path, bending his head before a sudden blizzard, and groping his way through blinding snow to the door of some peasant's hut and asking shelter for the night. He takes his seat on the bench within, loosens his mantle, and by the flickering firelight we may read the story which broken hopes, loneliness, and heart-hunger have written upon his countenance. I may turn to Boccaccio's pages, and read that Dante " was of middle height. His face was long, his nose aquiline, his eyes rather large than small, his jaws heavy, with the under lip projecting beyond the upper. His complexion was dark, and his hair and beard thick, black, and crisp ; and his countenance always sad and thoughtful." This is a picture of the poet in his mature years. Carlyle advised us to get a portrait of any hero whose life we wished to study. Carlyle was right, for the portrait helps our imagination : it affords us a rough key, if we are physiognomists, to unlock, perhaps, some hidden treasure-house of the life ; but yet how small a thing it is ! It can but show us the man at one epoch, perhaps only in one mood : the lines of the face are fixed : the expression will not change : it is but a passing 12 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE vestige of the man, not the man himself. This face has no laughter in it. We cannot catch upon it the magic gleam which crossed it as the happy jest rose to the mind ere it broke from the lips. This face is set, silent, sphinx-like. It is not the face of the tender friend who took the sorrowful by the hand and looked compassion upon them with dewy eyes. It is something, a little better than nothing : it gives shape, feature, outline, but it is not life. If it is the vessel at all, it is the vessel at anchor "a painted ship upon a painted ocean " ; it is not the ship splendid, glorious, moving in full sail, walking the waters like a thing of life. We may feel all this as we look at Giotto's portrait or the mask of Dante. We can realise something about the poet as we contemplate these likenesses : we see a countenance, strong, sad, stern, proudly reticent the portrait of one who could suffer and be silent. But is it Dante ? Do we not miss something ? Where, we may ask, is the elevation of the poet's soul ? The exalted eye of one who has suffered and triumphed ? The rapt aspect of him who beheld the light of heaven and the joys of the blessed ? Shall we answer : " Life teaches man to wear a mask, lest his face should reveal too much " ? It is true that man in his sad pilgrimage is often compelled to assume THE MAN 13 the veil of defensive pride, till hard-won habit arms him with the enigmatic countenance which defies the scrutiny of intrusive curiosity. Shall we answer thus ? or shall we say : " The face upon which we look is the face which has drooped in death. It is no longer under the government of the strong will, or of the joyous and triumphant soul : those blank eyes have no power to let loose the look of tenderness or to lighten with gleams of hope and glances of love " ? It is but a mask after all : the real man is not here. All that this poor thing can tell us is the record of the lines which hardship, disappointment, endurance graved upon the suffering frame. It can tell us nothing of the inward drama of the thrill of gladness, of the victorious contentment, and lastly of the peace which passed understanding. These things were written not upon the dead brow, but upon the tablets of the soul. Let us look at the portrait, mark it carefully, and then put it away, or write beneath it the motto which was inscribed beneath Buchanan's likeness : " Pete scripta et astra, si vis nosse mentem suam." (" Seek his writings, but seek also the starry spirit which animated him, if you would know his mind.") So let us seek to know Dante. We shall learn something of the man from the story of his life and how he held himself amid its i 4 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE changing scenes ; but we shall learn still more from his writings. From these we shall be able to form a truer portrait of him ; for as he writes he will reveal himself, and we shall understand him better as unconsciously he discloses to us what manner of man he was. Sometimes critics have sought to reconstruct the personal character of a poet from his writings. Professor Masson tried to derive from the plays of Shakespeare a portrait of the great dramatist. Shakespeare had put many characters upon the stage. Did he in any one character picture himself, or, if not, was it possible to group together such harmonious and recurrent features as would give to us the true Shakespeare ? The Professor thought so, and he presented for our acceptance his portrait of Shakespeare. It was a Shakespeare haunted by deep questionings, keenly alive to life's disappointments, possessed of a soul almost morbidly fond of dwelling on dark things, and marked therefore by a deep melancholy of soul. It was a blend of Hamlet, Jaques, and King Richard. Not everyone will accept such a portrait as exact or trustworthy. Many of us will ask, " Can our many-sided Shakespeare be presented to us by this eclectic method ? " Whatever portrait is evolved, shall we not always feel that he was greater than that ? We cannot think of him as a THE MAN 15 kindly Hamlet, or as a melancholy Jaques, or as a gloomy and desponding Richard. If any character is to be chosen, Prospero comes nearer to my thought of him, but even this is not all Shakespeare : it is not Shakespeare in his youth : it is rather the Shakespeare of one epoch of his career, the Shakespeare who has lived and can now survey life with a happy detachment. It is a man without cynicism : no irritating laudator temporis acti who is for ever flinging the past in the happy and hopeful face of youth, but a kind- hearted man with a quick and tender sympathy with the young lives which are budding around him. But this is all fancy ! It is speculation, unverifiable, misleading. Shakespeare, like Jove, takes many shapes, and defies us to detect him as he passes from form to form. Happily, with Dante it is different : we have to deal with a more clearly defined individuality : he is the hero of his own poem : he is not, however, / a vainglorious hero : he describes vivid incidents and stirring adventures, but he never writes quorum pars magna fui : and yet he was more than a great part of his own story : he was the centre of the whole action of his great poem. Dante himself is its very life. His figure is never obtruded upon us, but nevertheless he is constantly reveal- ing himself to us, and as we read we realise how 1 6 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE much his presence counts in the work. We never resent this presence : our interest centres in it. We feel about Dante as we do about Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan's story, though so personal, is yet so impersonal : it ceases to be obtrusively personal because it is the picture of so many. In a similar fashion Dante's poem is in one sense impersonal, and yet the personality of the pilgrim is perhaps the most vivid thing in the whole poem. It is impossible to describe this personality by setting down a mere catalogue of the characteristics of Dante as they are disclosed in the course of the story. On the other hand, we must note these separately or we shall fail to draw for ourselves any picture of what manner of man he was. Perhaps we may best achieve our aim by grouping certain characteristics and citing certain passages which tell their own story. First, I may recall to your mind the keen and varied powers of observation which his works disclose. Dante is a man who perceives and reflects. "Wisdom is before him that hath understanding : but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth " (Prov. xvii. 24). How many there are who, for this reason, when travelling from Dan to Beersheba cry out that all the land is barren. But Dante is not of these : the world THE MAN 17 lies open before him with all its beauty and its entrancing changes : he is Dante " who saw everything." But he not only saw, he noted : he stored in his memory what he saw, and as he needed he brought forth from his treasure things new and old. We shall realise this if we recall the natural objects to which he refers, and from which he derives so many illustrations. The leopard, the lion, the wolf, the mastiff and the greyhound, the goat and the sheep, the fox, the beaver, the otter, the she-cat and the mouse and the mole, the elephant and the bear, the horse, the ass, and the mule are among the animals he names. He bids us look up and see the birds of the air, and he speaks of the kite and the eagle, the crow and the rook, the goose and the cock, the crane, the stork, and the pelican, the blackbird and the magpie, the dove and the swan, the starling, the swallow, the lark, and the nightin- gale. Insects he notices : the fly and the gadfly, the wasp and the bee, the ant and the spider, the firefly and the butterfly, the locust, and even the detested flea. The lizard, the snail, and the scorpion, the frog, besides the dolphin and the whale, are made to serve his purpose. There are no fewer than between fifty and sixty living creatures mentioned in his works. He notes the features of men : he singles out 2 1 8 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE the eagle eye of Caesar ; he marks the spare loins of Michael Scot ; the small nose of Philippe III. of France, with the large and masculine nose of Charles I. of Anjou. He marks the gestures of men, which are eloquent of their occupation or their emotion. The swift movement of the runner ; the keen eye and nervous fingers of the tailor as he threads his needle (Inf. xv. 18-20) ; the clasped arms of the naked woman hugging close her babe as she escapes from the burning house (Inf. xxiii. 39-42) ; the stern self-possession of Farinata, whose very motionlessness becomes an eloquent gesture of pride, in contrast with the emotion of the grief-stricken Cavalcante. What character is expressed in the lines which tell of these two men in hell ! Cavalcante peering round with eager and anxious eyes in search of his son, and asking with tearful voice about his welfare, then sinking broken-hearted back into his fiery shroud. Farinata, with disdainful bearing his lifted eyebrow showing his unquenched scorn, unmoved by the other's emotion, waiting with superbly rigid patience and then continuing his speech as though no interruption had occurred. None but a keen observer of men could have drawn such a picture. And as Dante marks the characteristic gestures of men, so he notes effects in Nature effects of THE MAN 19 water and of fire : the steaming hand in the winter stream (Inf. xxx. 92) ; oil in flame (Inf. xix. 28) ; green wood (Inf. xiii. 40) ; the darkening tint of burning paper (Inf. xxv. 64). His frequent similes show not only a man observant of Nature, but in true sympathy with it. These revived spirits are like flowers awakening in the dawn : " As florets, by the frosty air of night Bent down and closed, when day has blanch'd their leaves, Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems." (Inf. ii. 127-129.) The souls whose lives have flung away their glory are, when driven to their judgment at Charon's bidding, like autumn leaves : " As fall oft* the light autumnal leaves, One still another following, till the bough Strews all its honours on the earth beneath." (Inf. iii. 104-106.) The spendthrifts and the misers clash together like opposing waves : " E'en as a billow, in Charybdis rising, Against encountered billow dashing breaks." (Inf. vii. 22, 23.) But more characteristic of Dante's faculty of 20 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE observation and reflection is his habit of using mental states to illustrate his subject. Thus early in the poem he pictures his own vacillation of thought : " As one, who unresolves What he hath late resolved, and with new thoughts Changes his purpose, from his first intent Removed ; e'en such was I on that dun coast, Wasting in thought my enterprise, at first So eagerly embraced." (Inf. ii. 39-44.) The quick changes of mind from eagerness to know the worst, to panic-stricken flight at behold- ing it, are given when the pilgrim fears treachery from demons in the eighth circle : " I turn'd myself, as one Impatient to behold that which beheld He needs must shun, whom sudden fear unmans, That he his flight delays not for the view." (Inf. xxi. 24-27.) The strange subconscious hope which mingles with a dreadful dream is described when Dante finds himself ashamed of his own vulgar curiosity, which provoked Virgil's angry contempt : " As a man that dreams of harm Befallen him, dreaming, wishes it a dream, And that which is, desires as if it were not , o E 1! H 5? THE MAN 21 Such then was I, who, wanting power to speak, Wish'd to excuse myself, and all the while Excused me, though unweeting that I did." (Inf. xxx. 134-139.) Sordello's bewildered delight at meeting Virgil is pictured as a joy so eager as to beget doubt : " As one, who aught before him suddenly Beholding, whence his wonder riseth, cries, c It is, yet is not,' wavering in belief ; Such he appear'd." (Purg. vii. 9-12.) More curious is the way in which he describes his own sense of surprise when he becomes aware that one of the seven sin-marks has left his brow : " Then like to one, upon whose head is placed Somewhat he deems not of, but from the becks Of others, as they pass him by ; his hand Lends therefore help to assure him, searches, finds, And well performs such office as the eye Wants power to execute ; so stretching forth The fingers of my right hand, did I find Six only of the letters, which his sword Who bare the keys, had traced upon my brow." (Purg. xii. 120-128.) I need not multiply examples. 1 have given enough to show that Dante is well called the " man who saw everything " ; but he saw as one who attaches meaning to what he saw. He saw not 22 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE as the empty gazer who idly glances at a passing object ; but as the true seer whose mind, like a sword-thrust, pierces to the heart of what he sees, seizes it, and makes it a possession ; he takes truth captive with his spear and his bow. Again, if Dante is keenly observant, he is also keenly sensitive : his intellectual power leads him to observe and reflect : his emotional power en- ables him to feel. Thus he early lets us see the struggle which even great souls experience between the audacity of conscious power and the timidity of a sensitive temperament. The men who do great things are not, as a rule, the men impervious to fear ; on the contrary, it is the mind which realises the greatness of a task which is most open to the onset of nervous terror. The panic of the coming effort has smitten great orators with the restlessness of apprehension or jhe icy touch of positive fear. " How cold your hand is," said a friend to William Pitt one night in the House of Commons. " Is it ? " was the answer. " Then I shall speak well." " You will say you are too nervous," said the greatest orator among English prelates " Let me tell you that if you are not nervous you will never do it." The imagination which can conceive the magnitude of the task can best realise its diffi- culties. All this is well known, and this is what THE MAN 23 we find disclosed to us by Dante. He pictures the lofty enterprise to which he is committed : he tells us how fear seized him and he shrank, driven to doubt by the sudden sense of his own weakness : " But I, why should I then presume ? or who Permits it ? Not ^Eneas I, nor Paul. Myself I deem not worthy, and none else Will deem me. I, if on this voyage then I venture, fear it will in folly end." (Inf. i\. 3I-35-) But here, again, the characteristic and indomit- able courage of the great soul comes to rebuke him. He puts the words into the lips of Virgil, but as we read them we know that it is truly Dante's soul which speaks : " Thy soul is by vile fear assail'd, which oft So overcasts a man, that he recoils From noblest resolution, like a beast At some false semblance in the twilight gloom." (Inf. ii. 4 6 -49-) Deeply Dante felt the danger of this weakness, and, mournfully as he enumerated the causes which brought trouble upon Italy, he placed this cowardly spirit this vi/ta d'ammo, doe pusillanimitk among the moral and intellectual weaknesses of his countrymen (Convito, bk. i. ch. xi. 10). 24 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE Dante does not blame the fear : he blames the weakness which yields to the fear : the fear is the result of sensitiveness, a quality which has its value, but which needs to be kept under control by some higher impulse of the soul. And this leads me to speak of Dante's sensitiveness of disposition. Constantly we meet with indica- tions of this sensitiveness. He acknowledges in set terms his own quick susceptibleness to the influence of environment. " Io, che pur di mia natura Trasmutabile son per tutte guise ! " (Par. v. 98, 99.) So susceptible is he, that he feels what he describes, and feels at the moment just what he would feel were the imagined fact a true one : the imaginary fact calls up identically the same feelings as the real fact. This invests the narrative with naturalness. This sensitiveness shows itself in his keenly sympathetic response to Nature. There are some critics who write as though Nature poetry were an invention of the romantic school. We may all welcome the love of Nature which breathed in Burns, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth ; but we may recall poets of an earlier age whose souls were filled with the joy which earth and sky and THE MAN 25 tree and flood and flower can evoke. The Hebrew was a Nature poet when he said, " The river of God is full of water " ; when he described the kindly act of providence, "Thou sendest rain into the valleys thereof ; Thou makest it soft with the drops of rain : the hills rejoice on every side : the valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing." The reader of the Psalms will recall many other examples, and he must be dead to Nature's appeal who does not feel the exquisite and varying beauty of the great Nature hymn which is numbered 104 in our version of the Psalms. We owe much to the romantic school, but the hearts of poets had responded to Nature long before Cowper. Indeed, may we not say that this responsiveness to Nature marks all the greater poets ? It certainly marks Dante Alighieri. We have seen with what tender feel- ing he pictures the tiny flowers smitten by the night's frost, and with what a joyous sympathy he marks them raising their heads, restored to living beauty by the genial beams of the sun. We have noted the way in which season and hour seem responsive to his mood. For example, at the moment when he is about to commence his wondrous journey to the underworld, he pictures the earthly conditions as those calculated to awaken apprehension in one to whom Nature strongly 26 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE appealed. He enters upon this arduous adven- ture at an hour when all things around him were pleading for rest and quiet. Night was at hand, and evening was whispering her tale of a well-deserved interval of peace ; all Nature was sinking to slumber, and this enterprise along un- trodden ways seemed to set him as a lonely alien upon the earth when all other creatures were claiming their repose : " Now did God's day grow dim, And brown the shadowed air, And o'er the twilight's rim The happy beasts repair To their sweet rest while I, Left sunless and alone To meet an untold agony, Stept into shades unknown." (Inf. ii. 1-4.) He feels the step into the unknown, and the thought of the oncoming night heightens his emotion. The appeal of the evening hour weaves a powerful spell over the poet's heart. We meet the acknowledgment of its potent spell in the Purgatorio, as we meet it here in the Inferno : " Now came the yearning hour When on the lonely sea THE MAN 27 Men feel the farewell power And fain at home would be ; When love fresh weaves her spell As the lights melt away. And o'er the eve a bell Tolls for the dying day." (Purg. viii. 1-6.) And as to sweet seasons, so to sweet sounds also the poet's heart responds. He breaks his story to tell us how when he met Casella, whose skill in music had power to assuage all his cares (Purg. ii. 103), he wooed him again to sing : "Met in the milder shades of Purgatory." And once again, when one sang the compline hymn, Dante tells how all his sense in ravishment was lost : " Che fece me a me uscir di mente." (Purg. viii. 15.) But the sensitiveness which the poet reveals is not responsive only to the appeals of sight and sound. It is a sensitiveness of a yet nobler kind a sensitiveness which feels keenly for others. Thus he tells us that when he saw in Purgatory those whose eyes were fast sewn with wire it seemed to him an outrage to look upon 28 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE those thus humiliated and who could not return his gaze : " A me pareva andando fare oltraggio, Veggendo altrui, non essendo veduto : Perch' io mi volsi." (Purg. xiii. 73-75.) ( tc To gaze then seemed to me An outrage e'en that burned. From these who could not see Therefore away I turned.") Exactly in the same spirit, which cannot endure to take advantage of a superior position or by thoughtlessness to add one pang to those who suffer, Dante meets in the Inferno the shade of his former mentor, Brunetto Latini : the fiery way forbids him to descend to the burning ground whereon Brunetto walks : he must keep to the raised and safe causeway, yet he will not look down upon the parched and fire-smirched face of his friend : he will walk beside him with averted gaze and reverent head : " Io non osava scender della strada Per andar par di lui : ma il capo chino Tenea, come uom che reverente vada." (Inf. xv. 43-45-) (" To walk with him below I dared not to descend ; Therefore with head bent low I held him reverend.") THE MAN 29 In harmony with such high sensitiveness, he describes sensations which are indicative of certain nervous conditions. He knows moments when he longs to relieve himself by speech, but fears to do so lest he should offend his guide : " Allor con gli occhi vergognosi e bassi, Temendo no '1 mio dir gli fusse grave, Infino al fiume di parlar mi trassi." (Inf. iii. 79-81.) (" With eyes shame-cast and low, Fearing my silly speech, All silent did I go Till we the stream did reach.") He knows also the moments when sheer weak- ness makes men talkative : " Parlando andava per non parer fievole." (Inf. xxiv. 64.) (" Talking I went to veil fatigue.") He has insight enough to realise that quick sensitiveness is morally useful : it brings pain, but it carries its healing with it : to feel swift shame mount to the brow is at least to be alive to one's own weakness. When Virgil rebukes him for pausing to listen to the vulgar wrangle between two abject souls Sinon and Adamo of Brescia a burning blush 30 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE suffused his face and a poignant shame filled his whole soul. It is well, Virgil assures him : his confusion is a healthy sign : the very sensitive- ness is a wholesome self-rebuke : it carries healing with it : " Una medesma lingua pria mi morse, S\ che mi tinse 1' una e F altra guancia, E poi la medicina mi riporse. Cosl od' io che soleva la lancia D' Achille e del suo padre esser cagione Prima di trista e poi di buona mancia." (Inf. xxxi. 1-6.) (" The very tongue, whose keen reproof before Had wounded me, that either cheek was stain'd, Now minister'd my cure. So have I heard, Achilles' and his father's javelin caused Pain first, and then the boon of health restored.") He can honour this ready sensitiveness ; it is the sign of a worthy and lively moral sense. Virgil's conscience he describes as "dignitosa coscienza e netta " ; clear and upright, because it feels a small fault like a grievous wound : c< Come t' e picciol fallo amaro morso ! " (Purg. iii. 8, 9.) Allied with this sensitiveness we may place his almost intolerant dislike of ungraceful or undigni- fied deportment. He commends what is calm THE MAN 31 and self-possessed : he deprecates the haste which mars all decency of act : " La fretta, Che P onestade ad ogni atto dismaga." (Purg. Hi. n.) The great ones are always grave and deliberate : their very speech bears this characteristic grace : " Parlavan rado, con voce soavi." (Inf. iv. 114.) Their eyes had none of the irritability of impatient littleness of soul : their aspect was one of weighty authority : "Genti v' eran con occhi tardi e gravi, Di grande autoritk ne' lor sembianti." (Inf. iv. 112.) Similarly Sordello, whose attitude is like that of a couchant lion, moves his eyes with a slow majesty (Purg. vi. 63). Everywhere the great and good in the poem are distinguished by graciousness and quiet dignity. The voices of the saints in Paradise possess sweetness and gravity. Solomon speaks in sober tones (Par. xiv. 35) : Cacciaguida's voice is sweet and soft (Par. xvi. 32). In contrast the voices in the evil realm are harsh, discordant, inhuman : the voices of pain and anger, re- 32 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE morse and despair, or else of deadly and impotent hate : " Quivi sospiri, pianti ed alti guai Risonavan per 1' aer senza stelle, Perch' io al cominciar ne lagrimai. Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Parole di dolore, accenti d' ira, Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle." (Inf. Hi. 22-2 7.) (" Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans. Resounded through the air pierced by no star, That e'en I wept at entering. Various tongues, Horrible languages, outcries of woe, Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse, With hands together smote.") The Inferno is a region robbed of light and music : harsh and hideous cries resound. In silence Minos passes dread sentence (Inf. v. 4-6), Cerberus barks as a dog baying for his food (Inf. vi. 13-27), Pluto shrieks at the passer-by with a hard and grating voice (Inf. vii. 13). The very way in which the poet pictures the harsh discords of this lower world makes us feel how he rejoiced in all that was sweet and gracious, sane and dignified. Ruskin, after his manner, remarks that Dante was a bad climber : according to him, Dante's idea of Alpine travel is only that of difficult walking : THE MAN 33 he disliked steep and rugged paths. But was it the difficulty which Dante disliked ? Was it not rather that he had a proud distaste for ungraceful haste, and the necessity which compelled some undignified attitude ? More than the arduous road, he hated all that caused unseemliness of pose or bearing. The rhythm of his nature demanded grace and stately movement ; haste which obliged him to hurry along steep and rocky paths overthrew all dignity of deportment. It was not physical fatigue which he resented, but unworthy disturb- ance of the harmony and grace of life. We have dwelt on the fastidious sensitiveness of Dante's character, but we must not dwell on it longer lest we conjure up a false or one-sided picture of him. In contrast to this sensitiveness of spirit, we may place his apparent and perhaps real sternness of character. This man of such exquisite feeling, such warm delight in all that is sweet and graceful, has another side to his character. He is level-minded in his demand for rectitude. When righteousness is at stake, neither pity nor partiality must be allowed to sway the judgment. This does not mean that he banishes pity from his heart (Inf. xx. 25-31). On the con- trary, the pangs of pity, which his sensitive soul feels for the forlorn and tormented spirits in 3 34 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE the Inferno^ serve to show how intense is his conviction that nothing can set aside the laws of eternal right. Francesca will arouse in him infinite and overwhelming compassion, but Fran- cesca must face the withering tempest which her fault has aroused against her. Mr J. A. Symonds expressed his wonder that Dante should be so hard and pitiless in his judgment upon the weaklings who hesitated to identify themselves on either side in the great battle of all time. Others may have felt that the harsh contempt expressed by the poet was out of proportion to a fault which might be called weakness, but never vice ; but to Dante the cowardice which refused the call of high duty or noble ideal was sin almost beyond forgiveness : it revealed a spirit dead to righteousness through the paralysing influence of self-interest. In modern days we understand the hesitation of the thoughtful who are too honest in mind to identify themselves with any of the clamouring parties which struggle for mastery ; but hesitation of this class had small place in mediaeval times and was far from Dante's thought. He was thinking of the trumpet call of righteousness summoning men to war against wrong. In that war he could recognise no discharge : to shirk was to proclaim oneself unworthy of the noble THE MAN 35 gift of life. His scorn for these self-interested souls was akin to his conviction of the imperi- ously righteous order under which men lived. We must reckon with this unswerving faith in right in estimating the character of Dante. What, then, is the resultant portrait of Dante left on our minds ? As I see him, he is sensitive, fastidious, hating what was slovenly and un- graceful ; demanding even in little things a correctness in detail (witness his handwriting, described as fine and careful) ; taking a genuine delight in things beautiful, pausing long to observe them ; rejoicing in music, and therefore spend- ing long hours in the shop of Bellacqua ; finding pleasure in art, and so on terms of friendship with Giotto ; watching the slow growth of the tower of the Cathedral, as it grew "like a tall lily pointing heavenward " ; finding relaxation in sketching, perhaps an angel ; tender-hearted to the weak, passing with a gentle smile children at their play ; impatient of fools, yet slow of speech because strong in self-restraint : speaking clearly and incisively where speech was needful ; easily moved by the sorrows of others, and, while keeping a gravely placid countenance, feeling with exquisite inward torture some tragedy of life. We can picture him studying long and carefully ; reading omnivorously and appropriat- 36 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE ing with ready memory and judicious skill all that seemed to bear the mark of truth. He was often stern to men, but courteous, even gaily courteous, to women ; proud with the pride that will do no discourtesy to self through lack of reticence ; proud, too, with a patience which bears much which shallow conceit might resent. He was orthodox according to the orthodoxy of his day, because too sane to fling overboard what was use- ful and might be true ; reverent therefore towards the Church, but so full of great ideals that he could utter the strongest rebukes against those who prostituted her authority ; a lover of truth, he would discard teaching which sinned against its canons ; possessing a heart susceptible and responsive to the appeal of beauty, and still more of kindliness, and therefore able to delight in life and life's pleasures ; yet shy and sensitive, and at times painfully self-restrained, he is, by conse- quence, a man by whom the vicissitudes of life will be keenly felt ; believing in good, he will find it hard should he meet with falseness in men ; giving his whole heart, though with a proud reserve, he will feel acutely should his affection be wounded or his confidence betrayed. He is a man of such a disposition that we should hope for him days of brightness and happiness, of faithful friends and loving comrades, sunshine THE MAN 37 that would melt away all reserve, assured suc- cess that would make him lay aside his defensive pride. A man, tender-hearted, sensitive, fastidious, reserved, proud, ambitious, unselfish in aim though ambitious in desire, he is to go out into the world and meet such fortune as may come to him and such experience as will work upon his character for good or evil. There is in such a soul infinite capacity for gladness and for sorrow ! To what heights of joy may he not attain ? What tortures of soul may he not endure ? Such is Dante. The world waits, ready to open her doors to him. What love will minister to him ? What fortune will crown him ? What will life do for him ? What message will life put into his lips to deliver to his fellow-men ? LECTURE II THE DRAMA OF HIS LIFE (LIFE LOST) THE life of Dante falls into three periods the period of youthful dream, the period of the dream of his manhood, and the period of the divine vision. These three periods are like three acts of a drama, the drama of Dante's life. The first two acts close with the vanishing of a dream ; the third act brings the vision which never fades. The first act ends with the death of Beatrice, the second with the exile from Florence. Like the life of the patriarch, the earlier periods are marked by dreams : and Dante's life, like Jacob's, is a drama told in three acts, and in both cases the drama closes in exile. It is this drama of Dante's life which we have to follow. The first act opens with the life in his early home. The first influence in normal human life is that of love. We do not understand this in our 38 THE DRAMA OF HIS LIFE 39 early years. Later, as we look back, we begin to perceive the sanctities of affection which surrounded our infancy. Later life often drives us to prac- tical or philosophic views of existence. Hard facts meet us. The need of some rationalised harmony presses upon our minds, and we are tempted to attach exaggerated importance to logical or practical wisdom ; but the early in- fluences have played their part, they have been formative powers in our development. In the busy conflict of toil and thought we may forget, but in the hour of emergency or of enforced idleness, when retrospect wields her enchanted wand, we feel and we know that love has been in our lives a real and an unforgetable power. Was it not so with Dante ? Though reason asserted her sway, though he was claimed by sorrow as her child, and grief and disappointment wrote the marks of suffering upon his face, his heart cherished as an inexhaustible treasure the memory of love. It has been the fashion to suppose that his early home life lacked the affection which becomes so rich and sweet a memory as years increase. The case is not proven ; and some facts may be urged in support of an opposite conclusion. We are dealing admittedly with a matter upon which our knowledge is incomplete, and each man's views 40 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE are probably coloured by his partialities, but there does not appear to me to be adequate ground for picturing the child life of Dante Alighieri in ^sombre hues. / Let us see how the matter stands. Dante was / born in 1265. He lost both father and mother before he reached manhood. His mother, Bella by name, died when Dante was about twelve years of age. For the first twelve years of his life Dante knew both a mother's and a father's care. The five or six years which followed his mother's death the years which brought him to the threshold of adolescence were years in which things had changed : his father had married again, and other children's voices were heard in the home ; but, if conjecture be true, these voices were not unwelcome to Dante : at any rate, to one of his half-sisters he became strongly attached. Beyond these scanty materials we have little to tell us the story of Dante's early life. We can lay our hands on none of those domestic records, family letters or family diaries, which, like windows, give us a clear though passing glimpse into the home. Here inference has been busy, and there have been writers who have read the silence of history as equivalent to condemnation. It has been assumed that where little is said, much trouble and some dislike may be inferred. THE DRAMA OF HIS LIFE 41 Because Dante does not speak or write much of his father or his mother, it has been imagined that little love existed between them. This appears to me a criticism not only unjust, but lacking in sympathetic perception. If little cares speak and great ones are dumb, it may also chance that shallow love chatters and deep love is silent. Men do not always give prominence to their strongest affections : a sense of sacredness belongs to such affections, they impose a loyal reticence. The love which speaks may be silver : but the love which is silent may be golden. Do we admire Dante Gabriel Rossetti more when he buried his poems in his wife's grave or when he dragged them out to publish them ? Must we suppose that Cowper loved his mother more than other poets because he paid her the tribute of his immortal eulogy ? Men love Cowper's poem because it expresses what they themselves have felt : the popularity of those poems which pro- claim the sorrows of an aching or bereaved heart is the witness how many silent folk there are who, being deprived of the gift of utterance, welcome verses which put into beautiful or noble language the thoughts and emotions'which thousands feel and find no way to express. Many, moreover, of those gifted with power of utterance shrink from putting into the fierce light of publicity the 42 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE expressions of their deepest feelings. No infer- ence of a lack of affection is justifiable from the mere fact of silence. Dante by temperament was reticent. He ap- pears to me like one brought up in a home in which sentimental affection did not gush out in speech, but in which genuine love, nevertheless, was forcibly felt. The family was comparatively poor : they could not meet their rich neighbours on equal terms ; but they had some pride of lineage : they cherished the memory of their ancestors, and they often spoke of one who had fought and fallen amongst the crusaders. Cynics might perhaps indulge a shrewd suspicion that he was probably the only ancestor of marked dis- tinction of whom the family could boast. But families which cherish this pride of ancestry, possess also corresponding ideals of conduct and achievement. We know that such ideals grew in Dante's mind. " Loyalty, courtesy, love, courage, self-control," he says, "are necessary to this age/' With these ideals, reverence for womanhood held a place. The modest and noble man could never speak in such a manner that to a woman his words should be such as she should not hear. The picture, therefore, which rises to our minds is of a home in which chivalrous ideals are held in high esteem, and in which tales of ancient valour and THE DRAMA OF HIS LIFE 43 high hopes of future glory find a place. Such a home is not usually a loveless one. Again, the home was one in which dreams of greatness grew. We are told that before his birth his mother had a dream which betokened his future greatness. She dreamed that her offspring was a peacock. The story may be apocryphal, but stories of this kind do not circulate round an unwelcome child or arise in the atmosphere of an unhappy home : the fact that such a tale became current does not support the conjecture of home unhappiness. Again, Dante has a strong confidence in his destiny : he takes keen interest in the star under which he was born : " O glorious stars, O light impregnated With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge All of my genius, whatsoe'er it be, With you was born, and hid himself with you, . He who is father of all mortal life, When first I tasted of the Tuscan air." (Par. xxii. 112-117.) Are we not in the presence of a man who early believed that he was born for high things ? May we not conjecture that some relics of a mother's hope and pride are preserved to us in the legend and in the strong faith of the poet in his own destiny ? Perhaps, after all, visions and hopes full of fair augury met the child who was ushered into 44 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE life in the month of May when earth was radiant with Nature's comeliest beauties and breathed all the sweet joyousness of the flowery spring. If so, more sweet and joyous than spring was the mother's face which hung over the cradle as May ebbed and June broke with richer leafage over Florence. I cannot therefore share the views of those who think that home love in the poet's childhood was scant. It is true that Dante tells no touching story of his infant life, and only in one casual line does he refer directly to his mother. There is a studied reserve in his writings : he does not darken sanctities with song. But do we not catch here and there revelations more telling, because indirect, of the deep, tender emotion which home-scenes and home-thoughts awakened in his breast ? Like fossils in the rock, touching remembrances of childhood's experiences are found imbedded in the immortal poem. Does no memory lie behind the picture he draws of Florentine homes in the days of peace ? " L' una vegghiava a studio della culla, E consolando usava P idioma Che prima i padri e le madri trastulla." 1 (Par. xv. 121-123.) 1 " One o'er the cradle kept her studious watch, And in her lullaby the language used That first delights the fathers and the mothers." LONGFELLOW'S Translation. THE DRAMA OF HIS LIFE 45 And when he describes the mother relating legends of famous cities, is he not recalling some early memory ? Did no warm throb of early life inspire his mind when he pictured Virgil's welcome embrace, as told in the eighth, canto of the Inferno ? As Virgil expressed his approval of Dante's scorn of Filippo Argenti, do we not feel that the whole scene is filled with the mingled pride and tender- ness with which a mother embraces the child whose action has satisfied her hopes ? " Lo collo poi con le braccia mi cinse, Baciommi il volto, e disse : Alma sdegnosa ! " This, too, is the very passage in which Dante refers to his mother, for he represents Virgil as calling her blessed : " Benedetta colei che in te s' incinse." (Inf. viii. 43-45.) Would it be venturing too hazardous a con- jecture, then, if we pictured to ourselves Dante as a yellow-haired child, sitting by his mother's knee as she plied the distaff and drew out the thread, his face all aglow with attentive interest as he heard the tale of some deed of heroism wrought on the fields of Troy, or in Fiesole or Rome ? Was it not a home picture which he drew when he wrote 46 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE " Another, drawing tresses from her distaff, Told o'er among her family the tales Of Trojans and of Fiesole and Rome." (Par. xv. 124-126.) But whatever part love may have played in the early life of Dante has been flung into the back- ground by the intense and varied interest which attaches to the name of Beatrice. In her Dante found that transcendent influence which for weal or woe woman exercises over man. A recent German writer has told us that it is impossible to mention Dante to any educated German without calling up the thought of Goethe ; for in Faust as well as in the Divina Commedia we meet the " Ewig Weibliche " (Eternal Womanly) power which leads man on. Both poets have paid their tribute to woman's influence ; but Dante's work is a tribute to Beatrice which soars far beyond the level reached in Faust. Beatrice is in Dante's life something which poor Marguerite could not be in the life of Faust. To Beatrice belongs the magic which transfigures the poet himself. No such transfiguration as we meet in the Divine Comedy could find place in any version of the Faustus legend. It is a transfigura- tion of eternal significance. To understand what Beatrice was to Dante, we must enter into the temper of the time. The THE DRAMA OF HIS LIFE 47 position which woman occupies in public esteem at any particular epoch of history may be taken as a measure of the spirit of the age. Human progress is not like a straight line leading upwards, it is rather an undulating line, like those which mark the progress of some commercial enter- prise, on which are marked receding as well as advancing indications of fortune. Just as in the story of national trade the value attached to some one commodity is often taken as a gauge of general prosperity, so the regard in which woman is held may be taken to mark the high and low water- mark of civilisation and progress. Measured in this way, we have to admit fluctuations as we pass from age to age, and indeed from nation to nation or even creed to creed. We, who were brought up on romances in which love played a leading part, can hardly understand a literature in which woman's in- fluence found practically no place. Yet in the literature of Greece how small a thing is woman ! It has been said that there is no heroine in the Iliad. True, a woman was at the bottom of the mischief, but there is no love-story in the poem. The heroes pass before us Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Patroclus, and a host more, but love does not play a part in their lives. Briseis may be contended for, but who is in love with her ? 48 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE A young and promising scholar said that there was indeed a love-story in the Iliad^ but it was the story of love between two men : no woman brought Achilles from his tent. It was when he heard that Patroclus had fallen that the hero sprang to arms. Love, romantic love, as we know it for example, the love of Romeo and Juliet, or Lorenzo and Jessica, finds no place in the plays of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides. It has been maintained that " the first man who had the courage to say that a woman is worth loving, was Antimachus of Colophon." * Prior to his day, the idea of love i.e. of the beautiful romantic love of which later literature is full was unknown, or at least unrecognised among the poets. "That anyone should have taken the trouble to devote erudition and elaboration to the praise of a woman, would have been an unheard- of thing in early Greece." 2 The love which holds a pre-eminence in the early classic days of Greece is love between man and man. The high, elevating love for a woman the pure, unselfish devotion which we associate with the word " romantic " had no place among her greater poets. This does not mean that there were no portraits of noble women presented in the glorious 1 Women in Greek Poetry, by E. F. M. Benecke, p. 2, 1896. 2 Ibid., p. 70. THE DRAMA OF HIS LIFE 49 days of Greece ; but it does mean that the idea of a chivalrous reverence for womanhood, apart from the comforts which her presence conferred, had not in those days found its voice. With the growth of asceticism there came, according to Mr Lecky, a fashion of thought which lowered the status and dignity of womanhood. " Woman was represented as the door of hell, as the mother of all human ills. . . . Their essentially subordinate position was continually maintained." l Canon law reflected this view, and it was for this reason that Sir Henry Maine held that the expositors of canon law had done injury to civilisation. 2 With the romantic movement, womanhood once more was given a high place in the thought of man. Poets began to sing the praises of women : their beauty was no longer denounced as a danger : it was celebrated in song. Devotion to womanhood became fashionable : the knight, wearing his lady's favour, went proudly into combat. It became recognised that man could draw a strong and inspiring incentive to noble doing and self-mastery in life, from the pure and worshipful affection he bore to the woman he reverenced. Here we betake ourselves into that realm of 1 European Morals^ vol. ii. p. 338. 2 Ancient Law^ p. 158. 4 50 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE love which was so dear to the knighthood and chivalry of the times. We need not trace the idea of love as it was conceived by the Proven$al schools. Among them no doubt there was a tendency to fall to the level of intrigue ; in the view of some the lover was the man faithful in un- faithfulness : " C'etait la fidlite dans 1'adultere." 1 It is enough for us to realise that whatever may have been the moral standard of the Provenfal singers, the Florentine school rose to a higher level, and founded a school of love which bore the shield of a lofty purity. The love of the poets became pure, almost impersonal ; its object was beauty, or womanhood personified in an ideal being. The notion of marriage or possession hardly entered their thoughts ; the mistress whom they praised was for them a being almost a divinity to be worshipped on bended knee. 2 The love which in earlier times had expressed itself in rough and rude fashion, became delicate and worshipful. The ideal celebrated is not that of the woman free in her favours ; it is that of maiden purity and Madonna-like aloofness, whose salutation is a benediction. " Beata P alma che questa saluta." 1 Dantt, Beatrice et la poesie amoureuse, R. de Gourmont, p. 29, Paris, 1908. 2 /#ut to those souls is inflicted by love : " Questo cinghio sferza La colpa della invidia, e pero sono Tratte d' amor le corde della ferza." (Purg. xiii. 37-39.) By love alone can envy be cast out, and so the lashes of the scourge are wielded by love. Dante explains how this can be : envy grows in the heart when the heart is set upon things temporal. The material advantages of the world EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 161 are limited. The soul grows envious of the pros- perity of another because he fears that this may mean less for him. According to the worldly measure, the more my neighbour has the less will be mine : hence my envy and my hate. But with heavenly possessions it is not so : no fear of lessened good dwells in the heart of him who desires the supreme good, for, unlike earthly goods, the more it is shared the more it becomes : those who hunger and thirst for righteousness gain when others gain in righteousness : no fear of loss dwells in the breast which longs for God : " . . . se 1' amor della spera suprema Torcesse in suso il desiderio vostro, Non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema." (Purg. xv. 52.) The more men enter into the partnership of love, the more does love abound. As in the feeding of the multitudes, all may partake and yet abundance be left. The very happiness of heaven grows, the more there are who truly love. If more to love, then more love, even as a mirror which reflects more light as more light is poured upon it : " E quanta gente piii lassu s' intende, Piu v' & da bene amare, e piu vi s' ama, E come specchio 1* uno all* altro rende." (Purg. xv. 73-75.) II 1 62 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE The warnings against envy are derived from Cain and Aglauros. Two voices, like successive peals of thunder, were heard. The first was that of Cain, crying, " Everyone that findeth me shall slay me " : the second was that of Aglauros, who, through jealousy of her sister Herse, refused to admit Hermes after having accepted from him a bribe of gold : her voice is heard saying, " I am Aglauros who was turned to stone." Envy hardens the heart. Such is the warning which is heard as the pilgrims are about to leave the second terrace ; but the canto is not to close with a warning voice which might strike terror into the heart. When all is still, Virgil speaks and draws attention to the beauties and splendours with which heavenly love surrounds man. Heaven is calling men upward ; eternal glories are around : it is the earth-directed gaze which proves men's ruin. It is not one fault only, viz. envy, which causes the trouble : it is the low attitude of mind out of which envy springs : " Chiamavi il cielo, e intorno vi si gira, Mostrandovi le sue bellezze eterne, E 1' occhio vostro pure a terra mira ; Onde vi batte chi tutto discerne." (Purg. xiv. 148-151.) Men should lay the blame upon their low desires, EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 163 rather than complain of heaven's chastisement. With a vision of a radiant angel, and the sound of voices which sing " Blessed are the merciful " and " Rejoice thou that conquerest," the pilgrims pass on to the next terrace, and enter upon a stair- way less steep than those previously encountered. The upward way becomes easier as men ascend. The hardest fight against bad habits comes at the beginning; here, if anywhere, "well begun is half done." More than this pride and envy are sins of the spirit. The later sins come forth into more visible shape : even anger tends to express itself strongly in action. We are more readily aware of anger than we are of envy or of pride. These, therefore, being more subtle and incon- spicuous, are more difficult to conquer : the first battle is within, and the first battle is also the hardest, as it is a battle with foes hard to detect and hard to subdue. Henceforth the stairways are less steep. Thus the cornice of anger is reached. A smoke I dense as night here meets them : it was blinding ?and suffocating. Dante compares it to the gloom of hell : it was as though the murky and acrid atmosphere of the Inferno had risen up against them. It is the terrace of anger, and anger lives in the atmosphere of hell : it is so dark that Dante kept in close touch with Virgil, who bids 1 64 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE him not separate from him. Voices came out of the thick darkness the voices of people who prayed. One word, uttered by all in unison, made up their prayer " O Lamb of God." Tormented with wrath, they invoked Him who is their peace. These are the souls who march on, so Dante says, to loose the knot of anger. The image is striking, for anger tangles up life into strange knots, and many a man has had to walk far before he can disentangle matters which his hasty wrath has thrown into confusion. Examples which show the spirit of forbear- ance follow : the Virgin utters the words, " Why hast thou thus dealt with us ? " The example of Pisistratus gives place to that of St Stephen, who, with eyes fixed upon heaven, prayed for his murderers. The teaching here turns upon freewill. There may be a planetary influence in each man's life, but the heavenly influence is there also, and that is stronger : man therefore can choose his path. Evil begins with delight in some trifling pleasure : the soul is deceived into thinking that it has within its grasp the highest good. It pursues this fancied good, if a restraining Provi- dence does not intervene and turn the love into a better direction. There is no attempt to deal specifically with anger. We are left to infer EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 165 that the disappointments of life, which provoke the spirit of envy, lead on to anger and to the spiritual and moral perils which accompany it. With the benediction " Blessed are the peace- makers " the pilgrims pass upward to the central cornice of the Purgatory. At this point the faults which are more distinctly faults of the spirit are being left behind. Beyond and above, the faults which touch more closely upon material and physical things meet their chastisement. Below, the sins which, according to Dante, arise from distorted or perverted love have been disciplined, and the opposing qualities of humility, pity, and the peaceful spirit have been summoned to counteract or expel them. So we reach the central cornice, of which we have spoken : it shows us the sin of love which has grown slack, even to indifference. Here Virgil, as guide, the exponent of true reason, as j we have seen, explains how pure love, perverted, slack, or wrongly stimulated, becomes the source of the seven sins which mark the seven terracesof the Purgatory. This central cornice is, as we have already noted, the transition cornice, which separates the sins more deeply hidden in the heart from those which are more readily manifested in action and life. It forms the point at which heaven's measure and earth's measure intersect. 1 66 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE The vice of indifference or slackness in moral effort may be reached from above or from below. Pride, envy, and anger may at last give way, but they may leave the spirit without moral sympathy enough for moral activity. On the other hand, the vices of self-indulgence fleshly passions and spendthrift habits or greed of gain may culminate in spiritual lethargy. Slackness may, however, be a sin which has not arisen as a reaction or culmination of other faults : it may be the characteristic attitude of a man whose life is not marked by any conspicuous vices : mere self-centredness of life may bring about moral inertia, and the soul may grow irresponsive to the higher spiritual appeal. In this case love, which should be quick, sensitive, and active, droops into an easy indifference, from which again it might readily pass into hardness of heart. It is significant that to the sinners in this cornice no form of prayer or words of scripture are given : it is as though the spiritual lethargy rendered them incapable of adequate spiritual responsiveness : it may be that their chastisement, which was to live in perpetual haste, was unsuitable, as Dr Moore suggests, to the exercise of quiet meditation and prayer. Was it needful for them to be roused into activity before they could use- fully enter upon the more peaceful exercises of EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 167 devotion ? Their moral inertia must be overcome before the statutes of the Lord could become their delight. Or is it, as Dr Carroll inclines to think, that one discipline of spiritual slothfulness is to be deprived of that privilege of prayer which they had been so indolent in using on earth ? Their lot is to be driven into activity : to feel the stirrings of new desire, the desire of those spiritual advantages so long neglected. Thus at length a strong and wholesome sorrow fills their hearts. Earnest and active longings awaken within, and they can pass upward with the beatitude, " Blessed are they that mourn," ringing in their ears, like the music of new hope. Avarice, gluttony, and lust these are the successive sins which last need purgation. AYarksdsjh^sj^^ : gluttony and lust are sins of the flesh. Avarice is the sin of old age : gluttony prevails in middle life, and lust in the days of what Dante would call youth. All are sins against highest love : all are symptoms of uncontrolled desire or unreasonable love. Avarice is undue love of worldly possessions. Gluttony is undue love of another earthly good food. Lust is the undue love of one of earth's blessings the love of woman. Love is the root of all joy and power and pro-"; gress. If directed aright, trained and disciplined^ 1 68 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE fitly, and kept always in the highest plane, it becomes a real force helping man forward and upward. Ill-directed or ill-disciplined, it becomes the source of degradation and calamity, and brings about a condition in which outward discipline becomes imperative. Avarice this vice has one terrible power in it : life tends to strengthen it. It is the vice of old age in the sense that the experiences of life are often taken as an excuse and a powerfully plausible one for niggardliness. It calls itself prudence : it withers the love of better and nobler things, and renders all work valueless (Purg. xix. 121-123). The vital power goes out of every effort : so these sinners lie prostrate on the ground, useless and unprogressive. Their faces are set now, as in their life below, earthward. Like the fallen angels who, even in heaven, looked not upward to God but downward to gain : "... Mammon led them on ; Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven ; for e'en in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific." (Paradise Lost^ Book I.) Similarly, Dante explains that it was the lack of the EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 169 upward look of the soul which wrought calamity to these poor sinners : " Si come 1' occhio nostro non s' aderse In alto, fisso alle cose terrene, Cos! giustlzia qui a terra il merse." (Purg. xix. 118-120.) The voice which speaks on this cornice is that of Hugh Capet : he sets forth the stories of those whose examples may serve to edify and warn the sinners who learn as they lie prostrate. Hugh Capet speaks as one who is himself undergoing the chastisement of this fault. He speaks as a representative of these sufferers and also as the head of his family. The story of this family, according to Dante, is the story of a vice which grows by what it feeds upon. When the family was poor they could feel a noble shame, but as they won possessions, and the " great dower of Provence " became theirs, the hideous thirst of acquisitiveness grew. They became lost to shame, and their greed of gain brought sorrow to the world and to themselves. As the pilgrims move onward Statius corrects a misunderstanding. Avarice is often considered to be merely or mainly the desire to gain and to keep. The poet explains that the spendthrift must i yo SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE ( suffer as the miser. The prodigal is as the man Igreedy of gain ; for both show a lack of under- standing the true value of possessions. In their handling of them the prodigal and the miserly only look earthward : both fail to turn the eye upward and realise the sacred opportunity which comes to those who live. One graceful touch of life's unknown influences is given here. The meeting of Statius with Virgil is represented as a pleasure to both the elder poets. Through Juvenal, according to Dante, Virgil in the Limbo has become acquainted with the works of Statius, and they meet as those meet who have formed such appreciative opinions of each other that they are prepared to be more than friendly. Love of his writings has awakened in Virgil a love for Statius himself ; so Virgil first expresses himself by laying down a general proposition ; we may love one we have never seen, but when this love shows itself it wakens a responsive love : u Amore, Acceso di virtu, sempre altro accese, Pur che la fiamma sua paresse fuore." (Purg. xxii. 10-12.) Again, Virgil had heard from Juvenal that Statius loved his works, and he admits that this knowledge aroused in him an affection and interest in Statius, EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 171 and he looks forward to the pleasure of Statius's company for the rest of the mountain journey : " Mia benvoglienza inverse te fu quale Piu strinse mai di non vista persona. Si ch' or mi parran corte queste scale." (Purg. xxii. 1 6-1 8.) Thus Virgil speaks in gracious courtesy, and now Statius acknowledges a yet heavier debt to Virgil. He owes it to Virgil that his lot is not cast in the lower world of the Inferno, among the prodigals and misers who roll their heavy burdens against one another. Virgil's words in the third ALneid had laid hold upon his attention. When he read u Quid non mortalia pectora cogis Auri sacra fames ? " he realised his peril and saw that wanton prodi- gality as well as miserliness was a misuse of opgort^uity^: this led to his repentance of this and other sins. This is a human touch, because it tells of the lasting power of thought, of the happy influence of words long after the writer of the words has passed away. There is too a large-mindedness on the part of the Christian poet in attributing the change in Statius's life to the words of a heathen poet. 172 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE The onward progress of the pilgrims has not ceased : indeed, the conversation upon which we have lingered takes place after the angel voice, saying " Blessed are they that thirst," had dis- missed the pilgrims from the fifth cornice. In this sixth cornice the coarse sin of glyitony or love of appetite is chastened. The souls, with their lean and starved appearance, suffer from hunger and thirst, standing beneath the branches of a tree laden with fruit, longing, like children, to eat : the eager appetite remains, but in this i region of discipline it cannot be satisfied. There is another tree the tree of temperance : a tree whose fruit is hard to reach hard to find pleasure in, yet the tree of frugal fare is the tree of life to such men : simple food and clear water may be sweet as the richest banquet. For such sinners these two trees have been prepared : the first which bears the fruit of temperance : the second which bears fruit that appeals to gluttonous desire ; the first of which men eat for strength : the second for appetite. So the sixth cornice is passed, which shows love grown gross through over-indulgence of bodily desire. The benedic- tion with which the pilgrims are dismissed tells that through discipline desire has been restored within its proper bounds by the awakening of the v nobler hunger " Blessed are they that hunger," EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 173 says the heavenly voice ; and we know that the hunger is for righteousness, and that the love of what is high has expelled the love of what is low. There are reasons which make our study of the seventh cornice a study of special interest : it j is the cornice in which the last of the seven sins is purged. Love is the keynote of the whole poem, and love, as Dante admitted, was the master of his life. This terrace, therefore, in which love has blazed into passionate desire, is one which touches closely the personal life of the poet. It is not part of my task to enter into controversy upon this : I can only deal with this as far as my purpose compels me. Briefly we may recall the purification which awaits the souls in this place : they must pass through the cleansing fire. The symbolism is clear enough : love in these sinners had fallen into the ways of grossness : they had allowed it to become tempestuous and to force its way through the baser channels of life. Such a love needs purifying : the hot passion needs the cleansing flame : the earthliness must be burnt out of it. Flames break forth from the terrace embankment : a breeze from the edge of the cornice blows them back, and leaves at intervals a narrow path of safety. It is a path which needs 174 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE to be walked warily lest one fall over the preci- pice on the one side or stumble into the fire on the other. The pilgrims here must go one by one : cc Per questo loco Si vuol tenere agli occhi stretto il freno, Perocch' errar potrebbesi per poco." (Purg. xxv. 118-120.) With a strict rein upon the eyes must he go who would curb wandering desire. The patriarch made a covenant with his eyes (Job xxxi. i) in this matter. The passion of this desire in the Inferno had grown to a tyrannous blast which for ever drove its victims onward the slaves of a force which they themselves had evoked. Here in the Purgatorio the blast plays its part too : from the cornice edge the wind blows against the flame driving it back to make the narrow path of safety, and at the same time fanning the flame : thus alternately the fire is forced back and then quickened to fiercer flame. So in the fight against passion, the very restraint which is chosen or imposed, while it sometimes seems to open the strait path of safety, serves to intensify the passion by denial. Thus the conflict may become more ardent : in fact, the power of the passion is not known save in resistance. There is, there- fore, no escape but to endure the fire, and this EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 175 the angel tells the pilgrims who tread this last and painful way ; but those who enter may bend their ear and hear diviner songs than earth's low love had ever sung : "... Piii non si va, se pria non morde, Anime sante, il foco : entrate in esso, Ed al cantar di Ik non siate sorde." (Purg. xxvii. 10-12.) The angel promise is fulfilled : a voice melodious will bid them welcome in words more sweet than sweetest music : as a form like that of the Son of God cheered the children in the fire, so the song of heaven will encourage these souls who are purified and saved yet so as by fire. One feature of this cornice is its intimate rela- tionship with song : the penitents sing in the flame : they are encouraged by heavenly music ; and, fitly enough, those whom they meet are singers of earthly music ; and the conversation of the pilgrims is chiefly of song. Here Virgil and Dante and Statius meet the Proveii9al poets Guido Guinicelli and Arnaut Daniel. We are in the company of those poets who delighted in amatory verse. Did Dante feel that love-songs had a tendency to bring men into this fire ? Certainly, some among the Troubadour singers set fashions of love which brought morals into 176 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE doubt ; and it seems to me significant that the only souls whom Dante meets in this circle expiating their fault should be those of love- poets. Guido Guinicelli was, according to Benvenuto, a man of uncontrolled passions " Sicut autem erat ardentis ingenii et linguae, ita ardentis luxuriae"; 1 and the amatory poems of Arnaut Daniel are not free from moral reproach. " The tenor of one " (poem), says Mr Paget Toyn- bee, " sufficiently accounts for the place in Purga- tory assigned to him by Dante." We must, however, be careful not to infer anything like wholesale viciousness of spirit among these singers. Dante belonged to the new school (dolce stil nuovd) : he recognised Guido Guini- celli as his master. When he heard Guido tell his name, he acknowledged his indebtedness : " Quand' i' odo nomar se stesso il padre Mio, e degli altri miei miglior, che mai Rime d' amore usar dolci e leggiadre." (Purg. xxvi. 97-100.) But Dante and the Florentine school lifted love into regions of a noble purity : woman was treated with reverence. The Proven9al poets often regarded marriage and love as mutually exclusive : they would have agreed with the 1 Benvenuto, Com., vol. iv. 121. EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 177 verdict of M. Finot, who expresses his views thus : " Les cours d'amour n'ont-elles pas decrete que Tamour et le mariage s'excluent comme 1'eau et le feu?" 1 Where such views prevail vice cannot be far off, but the Florentine school rose above this low level. In their verse the married woman was replaced by the young maiden : the Proven9al gallantry was rebuked : a new epoch began ; a new ideal was created. 2 Dante, in placing these singers where he did, implied no censure of the elevated strain of this school of new poets, but did he not mean to hint that poetry which deals with this kind of love needs careful safeguarding ? How easily its degradation may follow is exemplified in one sufferer here, Arnaut Daniel : he warns against practical dangers in the case of Guido Guinicelli. The poet-heart is susceptible ; Dante knew that he himself was so (Par. v. 99), and his conviction of this danger expresses itself when he pictures these two poets suffering in the seventh terrace of the Purgatorio. How near together in this passion are good and evil : with what cautious footsteps we need to walk along this road of love. " Take heed," says Reason our guide, " for love may be a foolish 1 Prtjuge et Probleme des Sexes, p. 449. Par Jean Finot ; Paris, Felix Alcan. 2 Dante, Beatrice et la Potsie Amoureuse. Par Remy de Gourmont ; Paris, 1908. 12 178 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE pastime, a base snare, a tormenting memory, or ITsweet and pure inspiration." " What is love ? " Keats asked, and answered his own question : " And what is love ? It is a doll dress'd up, For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle." Here it is seen as a foolish pastime. Again, in a different mood, he gave a different description : " What can I do to drive away Remembrance from my eyes ? For they have seen, Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant queen ! Oh ! the sweetness of the pain ! Give me those lips again ! Enough ! Enough ! It is enough for me To dream of thee." ^ Here it becomes a torment ; but it may become worse, a base snare, for by reaction it may awaken a torturing hatred. " Lust hard by hate," wrote Milton wisely : (cf. 2 Sam. xiii. 1 5) so it proved with Amnon. But the same passion, when it flows in nobler and more natural channels, becomes an incentive to a pure and unselfish life ; as King Arthur taught his knights : " To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 179 Until they won her ; for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid. Not only to keep down the base in man. But teach high thought, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame And love of truth, and all that makes a man." High love serves to kill the low. Dante's con- ception is therefore just, that only a fiery and heavenly love can burn out the baser. Love is stronger than death, and, if our faith be right, it is mightier than sin. God, who is love, is also a consuming fire. If it be fearful to fall into His hands, it is better to do so than to fall into any less faithful hands than His, who sits as a refiner and purifier of silver. His fire will try every work. There are worse things than pain, and the fire of God, if painful, carries a blessing. In the fire we may hear unspeakable music, the song of heaven is always sweet ; and to the heart, weary of his own earthliness and longing for purity and righteousness, it is sweet to hear the benediction, which then comes like a song of triumph, "Blessed are the pure in heart." With this music in our ears we may pass out of the final cornice of the Purgatorio. But before we leave the ascent of this mountain 180 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE of discipline, let us look back upon the terraces and mark the sins which have been disciplined there. The process of purifying has moved from the centre of man's being outward : its power has passed in ever-widening circles till it has grasped man's whole body. When humility has taken the place of pride, when pity has supplanted envy, when peace has banished anger, when energy has driven out indifference, when a nobler hunger and thirst have superseded greed and gluttony, when purified love has come into the soul in place of base passion, then the spirit and soul and body are presented blameless in the garden of the earthly paradise. Perfect self-mastery is now the portion of the pilgrim : the great animat- ing principle of love is delivered from the powers which distorted, starved, or inflated it : it is re- stored to its pure, natural capacity : it is ready for worthy uses, and it is open to heavenly in- spirations. It may now mount upward, for it has waited on the Lord and renewed its strength : the souls so disciplined shall mount up as eagles : the sense of fatigue will pass from them : they shall run and not be weary : they shall walk and not faint (Isa. xl. 31). As they have learned the exercise of self-control they are masters of themselves and monarchs in EDUCATIVE DISCIPLINE 181 the realm of their own being : they may now be crowned, and as they are now fit to make the one true offering of themselves to God, they can be welcomed as kings and priests in the divine kingdom. Love now moves, natural and equable, within their well-disciplined souls, and love is ready to go forth in holy activity, aspiring _ after God and longing to be of service to man.,_ Love is purified for sacrifice : heaven is opening above her head : graces and gifts divine are de- scending upon her. Laved in the streams of sweet forgetfulness and happy memory, she is ready to mount to the stars : " Rifatto si, come piante novelle Rinnovellate di novella fronda, Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle." (Purg. xxxiii. 143145.) LECTURE V VICTORY OF LOVE (" PARADISO ") / WHEN we enter the Paradiso we enter the realm j I /in which love makes itself felt without let or V hindrance. The atmosphere of the Inferno is \ law : that of the Purgatorio is hope : love breathes \everywhere in the Paradiso. The word love is used nineteen times in the Inferno^ and some 'fifty times in the Purgatorio : it rings like a joy-bell throughout the Paradiso : it is heard in every canto : seventy-seven times the word falls on our V J ears as we read this cantica. The form of the ten heavens is due. of course, V ' ' to the prevailing theories of astronomy : the poet takes the knowledge of his day and makes it serve the great purpose of his work. The features of this realm which strike us are ^ love, peace, and progress, accompanied by increas- ing light and perpetual song. The pilgrim still moves onward : now his advance is rapid and 182 VICTORY OF LOVE 183 easy, but it is a progress towards higher and nobler knowledge ; and always the sense of peace is with him as he advances. The peace of the realm into which he has entered is all the more evident if we realise that movement increases in force and rapidity the higher the pilgrim goes. From the heart of the heavens all love, all ( energy, all initiative, all light and music spring. The old image of the spreading circlets on the face of the waters, into which a stone has been cast, may be taken as giving roughly Dante's conception of the Paradiso. The centre of all the highest heaven glows with the eternal fire of love ; but from it love's energy passes forth and becomes, in the next heaven, movement incalculably rapid : in the heaven next beneath it distributes itself in diverse forms, as one star differeth from another star in glory. We see love at rest, love in action, and love distributed into various fountains of capacity and centres of influence : love peaceful, energetic, diversified, fills these highest heavens. This last highest Trinity of heavens may hold a symbolism of the working of the Godhead. God the Father as the central fount of love : God the Son is God manifest in energy : God the Spirit distributes to all, severally, as they need. I In all this picturing of divine things it is the (spiritual value which is dominant. Thus move- 1 84 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE ment, intensely rapid in the primum mobile or first moving heaven, throbs all through the descending heavens ; the rapidity slackens as we descend, but intensifies as we move upwards. No material or physical idea is here : it is but the expression, in imaginative form, of the idea that the nearer man is to God, the more does the energy of his love grow and produce greater activity in the power of service. The whole conception is that of natural objects and phenomena employed to express spiritual truth. We must bear this in mind. The Paradiso is felt to be tame and un- attractive, because lacking in the incidents which meet us in the Inferno and in the Purgatorio. If we treat it as a picture of heavenly geography and of its physical order and occupations, it will seem wanting in arresting force. But we are not bound to treat it after the fashion of prosaic minds. The literalist can hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. The literal must fall away from us as we cross heaven's threshold. What is sown a natural body must be raised a spiritual body. The natural man discerneth not the things of the spirit : they may be foolishness to him. The pilgrim in this upper world must be the spiritual pilgrim : such an one will find his path one which shines more and more to the perfect day, and thrills more and more to the perfected love. As VICTORY OF LOVE 185 spiritual pilgrims going on to perfection, we must enter upon the study of the Paradiso. Then its features will possess for us a true and attractive significance ; for the story is that of the growing and ripening soul. With this in our minds we may follow the symbolism of the cantica. There must be a complete self-surrender, if God is to fill the soul let us note the symbolic suggestion of this at the outset. The hour at which Dante enters the Inferno is * sundown. In contrast he enters the Purgatorio at sunrise : a new day of hope has dawned upon his life : the hour is one of promise : the sun's sweet influence is in the ascendant. But he enters -Jlthe Paradiso at mid-day, when the sun's full power is poured upon the earth : it is the hour of sacred, high, eternal noon : the sun is at the zenith, and all human occupations are suspended : the sound of industry is hushed : the busy folk are snatching this hour for repose : it is the hour of the cessation of human effort. It is, moreover, the vernal equinox, when the docile earth surrenders herself to the sweet seductions of the spring, and when the sun is coming forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber. It is the period of the cessation of effort and of the surrender of the soul to the influences of heaven. This mystic feeling makes itself felt as the action 1 86 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE of the poem advances. The pilgrim surrenders himself to the heavenly forces which are around. Power falls upon him, and, without being aware of his own movement, he is mounting upward. This spiritual idea is common in experimental religious records. Progress in the Christian life __|s__.not through effort, but through all-embracing divine help : in God we live and move and have our being. Here is the force of the Apostolic injunction, "yield yourselves." As you have yielded yourselves to the power of worldly forces, so now yield yourselves to the power of the spiritual forces which pour around you. It is similar to that other precept, " Walk in the spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh " ; or again, " To be spiritually minded is life and peace." Thus, surrendering himself naturally to the throb- bing powers of heaven, Dante mounts upward. If the Purgatorio shows us the discipline of the will, the Paradiso reveals the satisfaction of the heart. Painful effort ceases : no more need the weary feet tread the pilgrim's way : no more do the burdens of past faults weigh heavy on the soul : no longer does every step seem to be no gain, but only a reproach of time wasted in wandering : " Com' uom che torna alia perduta strada, Che infino ad essa gli par ire in vano." (Purg. i. 119, 120.) VICTORY OF LOVE 187 Now movement is painless and upward. So gentle and yet so rapid is the movement that the poet feels no sense of motion, so swift that no outward measure of its speed is possible : thus, amid breathless movement, there is a sense of rest, and yet it is not the rest of lethargy, when, in quick succession, convictions of rapid upward flight break upon the soul. The rest of heaven is not stagnation : the higher the soul rises the swifter are the move- ments in which it is involved. This is no heaven of the indolent, the spirits are caught in the great circling stream of the divine energy, which grows swifter and swifter as it approaches the central fire of God. The ignoble heaven of popular thought is not the heaven of Dante ; slackness, inertness, a fond desire of sloth, find no place in his conception : he is much nearer to the con- ception of the Gospel, in which the kingdom of heaven is a field of labour, and the glory of God is that of the ceaseless worker. " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," was the utterance of Christ. The nearer to God the greater the working energy, is the thought of Dante. Viewed from the literal standpoint, the Paradiso is an imaginative picture of the splendour and, perhaps we ought to add, the joys of heaven, but as a spiritual conception it sets forth in 1 88 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE picturesque form the stages and conditions of /the soul's advance Godward ; in fact, it embodies and unfolds some final experiences of the Christian | pilgrim's progress. If we are to seekt he true message of the Paradiso, we must interpret it from the spiritual standpoint. We need, how- ever, to keep before us what we may call the stage setting of the spiritual drama ; though the message of the moving act, not the scenery, con- veys the true meaning. The stage and scenery, however, are splendid of their kind. The pilgrim moves upwards, leaving the earthly paradise behind. Without being sensibly aware of it, he is passing through great belts of air and fire : he then moves successively through the planets of the Ptolemaic system the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn ; higher still in his journey he reaches the region of the fixed stars, the last realm in which the divine energy reveals itself in form : then, " Sun, moon, and stars forgot," upward he flies and enters the great circle in which formless divine energy sweeps with such intense rapidity that the very idea of speed is annihilated, and the pilgrim steps into the central realm of eternal rest. The peace and stability of the universe is here in the very presence of God, \ whose fire is the fire of love. He is, therefore, both the security of peace and the source of the VICTORY OF LOVE 189 energising power of every realm, from the centre to the most distant circumference of his empire the universe. Among other features of the Divine Comedy we must notice, I think, the. occasional and un- expected modernism of some of the poet's con- ceptions. He tells us that when he looked steadfastly at the sun he saw it going forth with ceaseless industry, flames like sparks from molten iron (Par. i. 5462) : and in a later canto he takes us to the circle where motion which has been growing in rapidity with every advance towards the central heaven attains its maximum in the embrace therefore of the realm of unchangeable peace (Par. xxiv. 131, 132) : the compact stability of the most changeless things we know is attained through the measureless rapidity of constituent parts. The atom, which was thought to defy division, is found to be a little system of swiftly revolving molecules : its quiet strength is sus- tained by the intensity of movement, which it conceals. The central peace of all is not allied with indolent quietude : the nearer to God the deeper the peace, and also the greater the necessity of eager activity. The realm is one of progress. The idea of continued progress in the Paradiso receives illustration as we note how the stages of 190 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE mediaeval learning are incorporated in the imagery. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy is made to represent the progress of learning. The first three planets the Moon, Mercury, and Venus represent the Trivium, i.e. Grammar, Dialectics, and Rhetoric respectively ; the next four planets represent the Quadrivium, i.e. Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astrology : three heavens lie beyond, and they stand for the three great revelations of God in Natural Science, in Moral Science, and finally in Theology. Our interpreta- tion, however, must avoid mechanical literalism. The significance of the planets thus brought into harmony with the curriculum of education is simply this : that the progress through the heavens is, like the pursuit of the stages of study, educa- tional ; the soul, with the mind, must be exercised in the powers of the Graces. As the student must become well skilled in grammar and dialectics and rhetoric, so must the soul be apt in faith, hope, and charity. Again, as the Quadrivium must follow the Trivium, so must the great cardinal virtues of life appear as products of the Graces. The virtues are not to be learned by practice or discipline, as in the Purgatorio : they must be effluent from graces already stored in the soul : they must come as from a centre of spiritual force, not as an acquired habit, but as in harmony with VICTORY OF LOVE 191 the governing impulses of the soul. But when these graces and virtues are thus possessed, more lies beyond. Then the powers of perception and apprehension are enlarged : the spirit can discern God in Nature, God in moral order, God in the very soul itself. The highest capacity reached is the theological, the final knowledge of God, not through any medium, like that of natural or moral order, but in direct spiritual vision. It is, therefore, not into a fixed and stereotyped heaven that the pilgrim is introduced in the Paradiso : it is into a realm of spiritual progress : it is into a realm of spiritual order : its laws are different from the laws of lower regions : " And much is lawful there which here exceeds our power." (C. i. 55.) But its laws are truly laws : it is no chaotic or anarchical heaven : its habitations express accu- rately the spiritual qualities of souls in various stages of progress. It is a region through which the pilgrim may go, learning and growing at every stage, learning because growing, and growing by learning : for experience and capacity increase by interaction. We must drop our earthly standards of measurement in this world of progress. " Here " and " there " and " now " and " when " are notions of earth, and must be forgotten in the Paradiso. 1 92 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE The souls are linked with various planets, which betoken degrees of spiritual capacity, yet all have their abode in the Mystic Rose. But we must con- ceive of these things apart from ideas of time and place : the advance is one, not of movement, but of spiritual growth. Place is not this planet or that, but peace and light in the great company of souls who dwell in the presence of God. It is in this sense that we must understand and measure the progress of the soul in the Paradiso. It is, then, a spiritual progress which is exhibited in the Paradiso. Whatever attempt Dante made to draw pictures of heaven, spiritual ideas were almost always uppermost in his mind. The interest which he may have felt in a material heaven is subordinate to his ethical conceptions : the progress of the soul towards the vision and presence of God is more than all poetical picturings. Dante, in his own characteristic fashion, makes us realise that heaven is no place of eternal fixed- ness. For mortals entering it the prospect is one of progress and variety : the step across its threshold does not usher us at once into the scenes of its fullest or final delight : it only introduces the pilgrim to a journey through realms of growing light, music, and movement. Happiness is indeed the portion of its inhabitants, VICTORY OF LOVE 193 but the shadow of earth stretches far beyond the threshold. The marks and consequences of human frailty are seen to reach through three of heaven's mansions, the penumbra of the earth falls across the heavens of the Moon, Mercury, and Venus : lack of completeness in spiritual grasp while on earth brings this dimming of heaven's light. The Christian life has at its root the thre^ graces of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Instability in Christian purpose means weakness in faith : personal ambition blending with noble devotion implies lack of firm grasp upon Christian hope : undue earthliness in affection may impair the bright purity of love. So earth's shadow falls over the appointed lot of those who betrayed such weaknesses. Those who showed instability in high purpose find their fitting lot in the inconstant Moon : those in whom the alloy of personal ambition mingled with great and noble desires have their portion assigned them in Mercury : those in whom love betrayed some taint of earth- liness find their place in Venus. Over these three heavens the faint earth shadow rests. But no spirit is confined to these lower heavens. The pilgrim journeying Godward takes his way through them, but he must pass through the heavens in which the cardinal virtues are strong. Prudence shines in the Sun : Fortitude assumes 13 i 9 4 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE its warlike mantle in Mars : Justice marks the heaven of Jupiter : while in Saturn, Self-control or Temperance sets the spirit free for that contemplation, which lifts the soul higher and nearer God. Three heavens lie beyond, but to reach these the soul must ascend by the ladder of gold, which rises upward till it reaches the last heaven of final rest. Thus in the structure, as it were, of the Paradiso we are compelled to notice the idea of advance. Heaven is no place of stagnation : all things and all souls are in movement, and whoever enters must go forward and upward. He passes through region after region finding light growing around him in intensity, movement growing more rapid, and music more sweet the higher he ascends and the nearer he approaches the ineffable glory. Thus through the heaven, as through the hell and the purgatory, the way of the pilgrim is an advance. But it is more, he himself is changed, as the Apostle said, it is an advance from " glory to glory." Strange and wonderful experiences are his as, like a wanderer, he is drawing near to his home. The various spheres through which he passes possess their characteristic picturesque- ness, beauty, and suggestiveness, but the chief interest is centred in the spiritual conditions VICTORY OF LOVE 195 which these various abodes of the blessed are meant to set forth. It is not my purpose to enter upon any critical account of the ten heavens of the Paradiso. It is enough for our aim to keep in mind the general picture which Dante gives us. His Paradise of ten heavens is divided into a threefold division. Three planets (the Moon being accounted one), three planets the Moon, Mercury, and Venus belong to the first division. Over these the shadow of the earth lies. Four planets (the Sun being accounted as one), four planets the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn form the second division. The remaining heavens, three in number, are the Starry Heaven, the Heaven of Initial Movement, and the Heaven of Peace. Through these the golden stairway mounts. Peace presides over the souls of all within the borders of Paradise, for though they appear now in one realm, now in another of Paradise, yet the dwelling-place of all is in the highest heaven, where all is peace, because love, burning love, is centred there. There is no need of mental questioning, for there all is light : there is no need of heart trouble, for all is love : there is no disturbance of soul, for all is peace. Not only do the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest, but all doubt, dismay, and discord pass away from harmonised 196 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE souls, who, in their final vision, wake up after God's likeness and are satisfied with it. The heavens, while serving to illustrate special virtues or qualities, are linked together in an orderly spiritual sequence. The soul in heaven must begin with the graces. In our human order we are often led to think of the virtues as qualities which may be acquired by vigilance and self-discipline, and which, being acquired, still lack the graces which the power of God may supply. We can become prudent, brave, just, and temperate ; but faith, hope, and charity must be bestowed from on high : they are the spiritual aftermath of the harvest of diligent endeavour. But in heaven the order is reversed : our virtues must be the outcome of graces, and the graces will again crown the acquisition of virtue. The first three heavens tell us that faith, hope, and charity must fill the soul before prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance can be ours in their full volitional energy. And is it a mere fancy which sees in the last three heavens the perfecting of the graces after the soul has been duly furnished with the virtues ? At any rate, the heavens are progressive : they illustrate not only fitting habitations of souls endowed with some special qualities, but stages also in the upward progress of the soul. VICTORY OF LOVE 197 It has been said that Dante in the Paradiso is a medievalist. We may admit that we meet with discourses in this cantica which must seem tedious and inconclusive to us. The strange mixing muddling it appears to our minds of arguments metaphysical with facts from the physical world repels our interest. The pro- longed discourse on the spots on the Moon (C. ii.) can only have an antiquarian interest. The argu- ment on behalf of the sanctity of Imperial power is mingled with puerile exegesis. The influence of mediaeval thought and method is evident. It was inevitable that this should be the case. Dante is the child of his age ; and, as is natural, he shows the influence of mediaeval thought most strongly when he deals with theological or meta- physical subjects. Then his imagination is not wholly free, and he speaks with the voice of the schools. We meet, therefore, the mediaeval tone in those discourses in the Paradiso in which the poet represents himself as being examined on the questions of faith, hope, and charity. But if the stamp of mediaevalism is clearly discernible in these conversations, Dante knows when to smile at scholastic conceits, and can on occasion hold his own judgment against the most venerated names. He differs with Aquinas on two matters on confession and on the Papal power. On confession 198 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE he takes the earlier and more ethical view : on the Papal power he takes the view of the Ghibel- line : he lays down principles which were advocated later by Marsiglio of Padua in his work Defensor Pacts. He could never accept the idea advocated by Aquinas that the power of the Empire had been absorbed in or united with that of the Church. In Aquinas' view the Church could admit no rival to herself in the secular state. In Dante's view the Imperial power was heaven-born and consecrate. Dante is no slavish follower of the great doctors from whom he learned and whom he reverenced. Dante early in this cantica sets forth the relation between eternal truth and its human form of expression. He shows keen perception of the difference between formal and absolute truth : he shows, however, his common-sense appreciation of the practical values of earthly forms, even though they cannot be claimed as final expressions of truth. We are taught that now the eternal divine truth may link itself with inadequate human expressions of it. As he moves upward Dante gazes at the Sun : he sees into the heart of it : sparkles of flame are showered forth from it, as close packed sparks rush from iron glowing in the forge. With the increasing outrush of power, daylight seems doubled. From the Sun he turns to gaze now upon Beatrice, whose eyes are fixed VICTORY OF LOVE 199 with rapt intensity upon the Sun. Then a new and strangely exalting sensation came to him : he had the feeling of being transfigured. He felt divinely strong, invigorated with power as of a god, such a sense of exalted capacity and power of godlikeness was his. Whether any bodily change was wrought in him he knew not : he could not tell whether any outward signs accom- panied this inward conviction of sudden and glorious difference. The love, by whose effluence of light he was transfigured, alone could tell what happenings accompanied his experience. His experience is very simple and suggestive : there is first a direct look at the Sun, when light seems doubled : there is then a look at Beatrice, and he feels a sense of personal change to a godlike energy. Beatrice, let us say, as the commentators do, stands for Theology : theology gives formal ex- pression to divine truths : but these truths in their ultimate verity must always transcend formal expression. Dante, in common with all thinking theologians, holds this view. What he is able to tell is only a feeble and halting recollection of all he saw. When " within that heaven which most this light receives " he beheld things "... which to repeat Nor knows, nor can, who from above descends j 200 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE and this for the reason that in beholding the beatific vision, intellect fails to grasp all that is made manifest, and memory fails to retain it. " Our intellect ingulphs itself so far That after it the memory cannot go." (Par. i. 5-9-) Divine truth transcends formal expression ; though philosophically inadequate, yet the expres- sion of it may nevertheless be the means of helping the soul of man into the experience of spiritual harmony with God : and, indeed, because more suited to man's earthly capacity, formal theology may possess this power in a degree which no formless divine truth could convey. The power to grasp eternal truth in its ultimate reality is beyond man. He can gaze into the heart of the great light : he can feel it to be a light which grows in intensity and power, but it transcends his capacity : it is vain to hope to grasp it : its very vastness eludes him : its splendour of light blinds him : its very magnificence deprives him of the joy of consciously apprehending it and of personally embracing it. Hence, while realising the tran- scendent light of naked and unembodied truth, man needs and must use the more limited but sweeter, sweeter because more familiar, embodi- ment of truth, which, though less splendid and VICTORY OF LOVE 201 even liable to anthropomorphic limitations, is more accessible and practically more useful to the soul of man. Beatrice, then, stands for theo- logical truth made comprehensible to man, and so capable of working in and for man that great readjustment of his being which prepares him for further heavenly experiences. This is a principle constantly recognised and affirmed : we find it in one form or another admitted by the greater spirits among men. In the interests indeed of what is called higher thought, there is sometimes shown a disdain of all dogmatic form. This is quite intelligible, seeing how often dogmas have been exploited by unintelligent theologians, and how often theories have been enforced in a perverse and unsympa- thetic spirit. Dante keeps to the same path in this matter : he recognises that divine truth must transcend human expression, and he also realises the value of human forms : they may help upward the soul which looks heavenward. Dante implies that he drew his power to mount from Beatrice : Beatrice looked steadfastly towards the eternal spheres : Dante's gaze was fixed on Beatrice. If Beatrice stands for theology, theology, to be powerful, must direct its gaze aright : it is not a skilful system of dogmatics which will avail : its whole outlook must be Godward : it 202 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE must steadfastly look towards the central love, otherwise its virtue departs from it : Beatrice cannot help Dante upward except Beatrice look to heaven. Like Glaucus, who, having tasted the herb which revived the fish's life, was transformed into a god of the sea, so was Dante transformed by the light not which came from the eyes of Beatrice, but the divine light reflected in her eyes as she gazed heavenward. With this transforma- tion Dante knew not whether he was in the body or out of it : so absorbed was he by new influence that former sensations of self-consciousness were suspended. The power which wrought this was not that of Beatrice, it came from the Supreme Fountain of all power : it was a manifestation of that power which to Dante was the eternal central power : it was the love which governs heaven, which lifted him with its light. Elsewhere love holds high place in the experi- ences of the Paradiso. As it was love which built the Inferno : as it is the action of love, now perverted, slackened, or coarsened, which is illus- trated in the Purgatorio : so it is love as an inspir- ing, uplifting power, bestowing on all things their true worth and force, which meets us on the threshold of the Paradiso. Human forms of truth help us to grasp truth greater than themselves : VICTORY OF LOVE 203 for even as we grasp the form we are sensible that what we reach must transcend all earthly expression of it. It does so in truth, but, never- theless, it has been brought more within our grasp by coming to us through the human medium. Truth, like the Lord of truth, must be incarnate for us to grasp it ; but as the Christ was said by the creed to be inferior to the Father as regards His manhood, though equal to the Father as regards His Godhead, so also truth as it comes to us is inferior to all divine thought as regards its earthly form, but equal to the divine thought as regards its heavenly significance. The human expression of truth is but the medium : like a mirror, it has power of reflection, but the power of perfect reflection (Depends upon the quality and perfection of the instrument. In Christ, according to the Apostle, there dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. " He that hath seen me," said Christ, "hath seen the Father." But with our poor, limited theological instruments, defective and damaged, we cannot expect the reflection to be perfect. It is only as the mirror is turned to catch the rays of divine light that it can reflect anything : Beatrice must look to the Sun, if her eyes are to reflect heaven's light. Our theological dogmas must be interpenetrated with divine feeling and fitness. Doctrines are dead 204 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE things unless they bring us into contact with divine power. As in God we live, and move, and have our being ; so human teachings only live as they live unto God, for all alike live only unto Him. But we must leave this matter, and note the shadow of the Paradise. The dark cone of earth's shadow fines down to its last point in the heaven of Venus. The shadow is the influence of the earthly passion which marred the love of those whose heaven is here. The personages whom we find here have awakened some comment. Cunizza da Romano, sister of Azzolino the tyrant, whose character was dark-stained by her licentious con- duct, and Rahab the harlot, are in this heaven. The startling fact is that these two women, whose lives, by all admission, were smirched with sin, are placed by Dante, not with the voluptuous circle in the Inferno, with Dido and Semiramis and the unhappy Paolo and Francesca, but in this third heaven, less darkened by earth's shadow than either the Moon or Mercury. When we think of poor women, whose fall, if fall it were, was due to force, placed lower down than these two women who sold their virtue of their own free choice, we are staggered, and we ask, has Dante lost the calm spirit of just judgment ? Surely, as far as faults are concerned, the faults VICTORY OF LOVE 205 of Cunizza and Rahab are far darker than those of Piccarda and Costanza. But let us recall the fact that the question with Dante in the Paradiso is not to point out the penalty of sin : the burden of actual sin has no place or power in Paradise. Hell may weigh sins, but Paradise does not. The souls we meet in the heavens were those who would acknowledge on earth their sins, but, however much the sins of life lay heavy on their souls when below, now in heaven the sense of burden has wholly passed away : these souls have doubtless drunk of Lethe, and have entered into the blessedness of those who can forget. The suggestion made by many is that these souls have passed through the period of repentance : they have tasted forgiveness, and they are entitled to believe that their sins have been put away. Thus we are told by some that Cunizza da Romano spent her later years in penitence and kindly ministry to the needy. All this may be true, and Dante may have realised it and appreciated the significance of such a close to a life whose early years were deeply stained. But I am inclined to see in Dante's treatment of this matter another meaning. Dante, as we have seen, shows with inexorable sternness the con- sequences of wrong-doing : of this unswerving severity the lot of Paolo and Francesca is the 206 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE pathetic proof ; but in his general estimate of human faults, this weakness of the flesh is treated by him as less hateful than others. Shall I say that he treats this fault with an almost gentle hand ? I can hardly say this in presence of the fact I have cited ; but I think I am right in saying that he feels less repugnance to this fault than to those which betray meanness, cruelty, cunning, fraud, or treachery : his heart, moreover, is more with the sinner than with the hypocrite : he wishes to show that faults like these may coexist with bright, amiable, and attractive yet magnanimous qualities. Are we wrong in calling attention to the fact that there is often found more sweetness and lovableness, more singleness and simplicity of soul among such sinners than among the pretentious religionists who are careful to keep within the conventional borders of social order ? I think Dante remembered Him who said : " The publicans and harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you." If we read the context and hear how he breaks forth indignantly against the corruptions, defalcations, and greed of Church authorities, we shall the less wonder that he took a fierce gladness in placing Cunizza and Rahab in this heaven shadowed with the faint shadow of these earthly faults. He realises does he not ? that his action may cause some dismay or VICTORY OF LOVE 207 surprise to the commonplace or conventional mind. He pictures Cunizza free from the heavy memories and self-reproaches of the past. She cries : " Gladly do I pardon to myself The cause of this my lot, and it grieves me not, Which would haply seem hard saying to your vulgar." (See Par. ix. 32-36.) Dante, in short, as it seems to me, had not only knowledge of the Old and New Testaments, which were to him "the Word divine" (Par. xxiv. 99), but he had drank deeply into the spirit of the Evangel : he had read of the gracious love which received the Magdalen, which cast a protecting shield over the woman taken in adultery, and which sought to win the tarnished woman of Samaria. Is it surprising, then, that he should rejoice to place in his heaven the thrice-married Cunizza and the harlot Rahab ? He could plead the Scripture record of faith for the right of Rahab to be there, and the example of the woman of Samaria for his treatment of Cunizza. No one who has entered into the spirit of Dante will accuse him of slackness in dealing with this sad fault ; but, as we recognise the stern measure he dealt out to it in the Inferno, we ought to recognise the loving tenderness with which he rejoiced over the fallen whom his divine Master had welcomed to His side. 208 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE It is, moreover, in this heaven of Venus that we hear the philosophical discussion on inborn qualities and gifts : its conclusion is that the best natures are sometimes turned aside by the chances of their lot : "Evermore nature, if it fortune find Discordant to it, like each other seed Out of its region, maketh evil thrift." (Par. viii. 139-141.) There are always to be found poor souls whom we are tempted to condemn with harshness, but who, in popular language, may be more sinned against than sinning : to know all is, according to the French proverb, to forgive all. One there was who said to the woman weeping at his feet, " Neither do I condemn thee : go and sin no more." Remembering all this, and remembering the chivalry of heart which Dante bore to woman- hood, I am not surprised that he finds in his heaven room for these two fallen ones, types of those to whom the Lord Christ showed such ready forgiveness and compassion. Prudence is the virtue with which the spirits in the fourth heaven are expected to be adorned. Appropriately the solid sanity which marked Dante's wide sympathy finds expression in this heaven of the Sun. It is the heaven consecrated to the theologians. In the choice of the Sun as the VICTORY OF LOVE 209 special haunt of the theologian, Dante shows us his lofty ideal of theology. Theology, the science of the knowledge of God, is to him the queen of all sciences. We shall not dispute the position. If to know God is everlasting life, then the science which leads to this knowledge must hold a place high above all other kinds of knowledge. From the standpoint of this ideal, theology may challenge every science. But the ideal is one thing : the real is, alas ! another. Even in Apostolic days there were theological debates, which St Paul described as disputes about words : and the Apostle showed a wise intolerance of empty discussion. The truth is that theology in endeavouring to become a science became a speculative philosophy : in en- deavouring to be logical it became rationalistic : in endeavouring to satisfy the logic of the mind it forgot the syllogisms of the heart. It starved the soul in trying to appease the reason. It ceased to be a science, for in secluding itself within the chamber of premises and conclusions it silenced the capacities by which alone God can be known. In trying to describe God it deprived the soul of the power to receive Him. In the excursions of logical speculation it forgot that by love alone God, who is love, can be known. The clear-visioned statements of Apostles were too 210 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE often lost sight of by scholastic teachers, who certainly did not remember that St John had said, " He that loveth not knoweth not God/' and that St Paul had prayed that his flock might be rooted and grounded in love, that so they might comprehend the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Now Dante's breadth and sanity enable him to reverence ideal theology, and, at the same time, to mark the weaknesses which attach to the human attempts to give it expression. The form given to divine truth by human teachers had its value : truth absolute might be recognised by man as ideally and eternally existent, but it could not, unless translated into some form intelligible to men, be operative in helping the soul upward. This he taught early in his Paradise, as we have seen. The divine light must be reflected in the eyes of Beatrice, i.e. interpreted in human form. But the interpretations given by men are many. In his day Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, Anselm, Hugh of St Victor were leaders of theological thought. Differences marked their teaching : the law of charity was not always strong enough to control the passion of controversy : great teachers were often swift to search out heresy in their rivals : VICTORY OF LOVE 211 men of earnest convictions would persecute in- tellectual opponents unto death. Dante, with a sublime indifference to controversial bitterness, and deaf even to cries of heresy, draws together in the heaven of the Sun the teachers of rival schools. Those who believed that knowledge led the way to love, move in the same heaven with those who taught that love opened the door to knowledge. He selects twelve, who form a starry circle around himself and Beatrice : beyond this another starry circle is formed, and even beyond this a third circle twinkles and brightens. The nearer circle represents theologians of what was called the Dominican type of theology : the next circle represents the theologian of the Franciscan type. The keynote of the inner or first circle is know- ledge : the keynote of the circle encompassing it is love : these star-like theologians shine bright even against the brightness of the Sun. Thus men differing in gift and in type of teaching are made one in the region of wider and clearer heavenly light. Dante measures them, not by their differences nor by their mistakes, but by the something good or true which they communicated to their fellow-men. He values each for what he was, and for what of good he did. He was an admirer of Aquinas : he drew many of his theo- 212 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE logical conceptions from his writings, but he could recognise the worth and value of other teachers also. He could not share the party spirit which exalted one teacher over another : he could be a disciple of any thinker who had some truth to teach, but he would not be brought in bondage of any : he could be a learner from any teacher : he would refuse to be a partisan. He realised the width of riches of the Church's inheritance : like a true disciple of St Paul, he refused to say, " I am of Paul, or I am of Apollos, or I am of St Thomas Aquinas, or 1 am of Bonaventura." All teachers were his : this was his lawful inheritance : all were his, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or St Dominic, or St Francis (i Cor. iii.). Here is the token of that intellectual and spiritual breadth which welcomed help from all quarters or from all messengers of truth. But this is not all : Dante, keen logician as he is, lover of subtle argument, courageous to attack difficult problems, is, nevertheless, alive to practical values. It is not without meaning that he introduces Solomon among the teachers to whom knowledge was the gateway of love. In the discussion which he introduces respecting Solomon, he calls attention to the actual purpose of knowledge and wisdom : its value is not speculative, or to satisfy the pride of curiosity, VICTORY OF LOVE 213 it is for service, for the fulfilment of assigned function. Such is seen in the case of Solomon : " Clearly he was a king who asked for wisdom, That he might be sufficiently a king ; 'Twas not to know the number in which are The motors here above, or if necesse With a contingent e'er necesse make, Non si est dare prlmum motum esse^ Or if in semicircle can be made Triangle so that it have no right angle." (Par. xiii. 95-102.) And thence the lesson of charitable hesitancy in judgment is drawn. We cannot judge except as we know the end and purpose of things : hence judgment should not be hasty, it should be slow of foot : "... lead shall this be always to thy feet, To make thee like a weary man, move slowly Both to the c Yes ' and c No ' thou seest not ; For very low among the fools is he Who affirms without distinction, or denies, As well in one as in the other case ; Because it happens that full often bends Current opinion in the false direction, And then the feelings bind the intellect." (Par. xiii. 112-120.) The full strength of this large outlook of Dante is not realised unless we note that in the 2i 4 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE Dominic circle Sigieri is found beside Thomas Aquinas : and Joachim of Flora beside St Bona- ventura. Sigieri joined in the disputes which took place in Paris : he was opposed to the Dominican claims in the matter : Thomas Aquinas in 1260 entered the lists against him, and sought publicly to refute him. The theology of Joachim of Flora was distasteful to Bonaventura : he re- garded his followers as heretics. Dante, alive to the good in each, places Sigieri next to Thomas Aquinas' left hand : and Joachim next to Bona- ventura. Who are we to j udge or to charge too readily with heresy men who are trying each in their way to let God's light pass out through them to the world ? The Church, alas ! has too often been forward to quench the smoking flax and to crush the bruised reed : so doing she has lost music and light. It is not for us to judge before the harvest, says Dante, with remembrance of Christ's parable, to count " The corn in field or ever it be ripe. For I have seen all winter long the thorn First show itself intractable and fierce, And after bear the rose upon its top." (Par. xiii. 132-135.) But as many that are last may be first, so also the first may be last. VICTORY OF LOVE 215 " And I have seen a ship direct and swift Run o'er the sea throughout its course entire, To perish at the harbour's mouth at last." (Par. xiii. 136-138.) Thus, as the great theologians are seen splendid in the heaven of the Sun, the warning against harsh and hasty judgments is given by Dante. Whether men followed the school of St Francis or St Dominic, they might find their way to heaven. But yet, "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall," and let none venture to take the final judgment into his hands ; for be- yond the recognised schools bright lights may be found. Outside the second circle the limits of another, wider and greater, were seen : " And lo ! all round about of equal brightness Arose a lustre over what was there, Like an horizon that is clearing up. And as at rise of early eve begin Along the welkin new appearances, So that the sight seems real and unreal, It seemed to me that new subsistences Began there to be seen, and make a circle Outside the other two circumferences. O very sparkling of the Holy Spirit, How sudden and incandescent it became Unto mine eyes, that vanquished bore it not." (Par. xiv. 67-78.) 2i 6 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE This third circle has given rise to many questions what does it signify ? Does it cele- brate some other school of thought ? If so, what school ? Dr Carroll suggests that the circle embraces the followers of Joachim. But, if so, Joachim, who appears in the earlier circle, would be separated from his followers. Is not the third circle the hint of some further light of truth which may be expected as the great order of God's providence moves forward ? The lights of the theological firmament are not exhausted by the companies gathered in the first two circles. God has other light to break forth for men, even as Christ has sheep " not of this fold." This third circle is a great figurative mode of expressing faith in the dawning of light, more light upon mankind. Christ is the light of the world ; but the full glory of that light is only perceived as ages of spiritual teaching open men's eyes to see. We need not believe that any set of men were empowered to lock the gate of knowledge and to throw away the key. As long as the soul can aspire, the conscience speak, the mind think, and the heart feel, so long will there be theologians in the world ; for men will always seek to give expression to their religious consciousness, till that day comes when we shall know even as we are known, and when, as Dante hoped, fervent love VICTORY OF LOVE 217 would clear the vision, and perfection absolute would be acquired (Par. xiii. 79-81). Passing to the next heaven we reach the red planet Mars ; the sign of the cross is on it, and on the cross gleams the form of Christ. It is the heaven of those who were soldiers of the cross, faithful unto death. Fortitude is needed here. We are not now bidden to behold the teachers and doctors. Here are the heroes of the faith. Here the voice cries for courage, and martial music calls to the heart, "Arise and conquer." Here the sacrificial spirit is needed; and, fitly, as the pilgrim enters this heaven which glowed with a hue more ruddy than its wont, the ardour of sacrifice passes into his soul : he is ready to take up the cross, yes, or to suffer the cross and follow Christ. Love, the love which can endure pain and loss, thrills him with heroic enthusiasm : his heart speaks the language of loving devotion ; the offering of his whole heart he makes " In that dialect Which is the same in all." (Par. xiv. 88.) The joy of sacrifice is his : the love of earthly or lower things seems hopelessly un- worthy : 218 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE " 'Tis well that without end he should lament, Who for the love of thing that doth not last Eternally despoils him of that love ! " (Par. xv. 10-12.) In this heaven, besides Cacciaguida his kinsman, Joshua, Judas Maccabaeus, Charlemagne, and Godfrey de Bouillon find place. Love may be fostered by knowledge, and sacred theology may therefore help the souls of men to the fuller apprehension of divine love ; but, if love is to grow vigorous, it must learn exercise through courage : it must share the sacrificial spirit of the cross. Its quality grows purer in this experience. " Can the Haoma," asked Zarathustra, " can the Haoma that has been touched by the corpse of a dead dog or the corpse of a dead man be made clean again ? " Ahura Mazda answered : " It can, O Holy Zarathustra, if it has been strained for the sacrifice : no corpse that has been brought unto it makes corruption or death enter into it." Similarly, he that dies with Christ gains life beyond the power of corruption : for "he that is dead is freed from sin." Love takes on new lustre and new life-power in the heaven of the Heroes of the Cross. In olden days these heroes were the martyrs like St Stephen, Polycarp, St Cyprian : in modern days they are the missionary martyrs of the cross, VICTORY OF LOVE 219 Williams, Livingstone and Moffat, Bishops Sel- wyn and Hannington. If the fourth heaven shows us love enlarged to the toleration of differences and the welcome of spiritual help from all quarters, the fifth heaven sounds the call to courageous service, inspired by Him who transfigured suffering with the glory which shone from His cross. But love, as an impelling force, needs the curb of justice. Therefore, in the sixth heaven the pilgrim gains from the eagle-light of those who showed this great virtue, precious in all, invalu- able in rulers. Here the great tide of political interest might well carry us away. Dante, firm in his faith that the Emperor held, no less than the Pope, a consecrated office, naturally passes into meditations and discussions respecting the relation of civil and ecclesiastical responsibility. It is the heaven of Jupiter fit emblem of the dwelling of those who were kings among men. The spirits there, like stars, group themselves in the form of an eagle, and from the eagle's mouth comes the voice of "the associated spirits," as Mr Tozer calls them. Righteousness is in rulers the highest wisdom, and true love, which draws all virtues into itself, must absorb this one. Hence Dante finds occasion to denounce "the unjust or selfish or thoughtless rule which has 220 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE brought so many evils in its train." To follow this, however, would lead us from our true path now. But, as we accompany the pilgrim through this heaven, we meet once more with indications of Dante's courageous sense of right. Here, in company with David, Hezekiah, Constantine, we find two pagan souls, Trajan and Ripheus. Commentators are naturally inclined to inquire the reason for thus placing high in heaven, heathen who might more appropriately have found place in the limbo of the Inferno. It is easy, of course, to point out that some other characters might have been selected ; but it is only a sign of pitiful literalism to say with one commentator, "This is a fiction of the author; for there is no proof that Ripheus the Trojan is saved." Of course not : the remark applies to thousands of others ; it is a criticism which shows some slumberfulness on the critic's part. There is no certain authority behind the judgment, of Dante respecting the various persons he introduces ; it is possible that many whom he thrust into the Inferno have their place in heaven. To enter upon such a question as this is to challenge the right of the poet to his own imagination : to say that he might have found heathen worthier of this place in heaven is to VICTORY OF LOVE 221 enter upon an investigation too large to be profit- able. Does it not lie on the face of the matter that here again Dante desires to affirm his belief that many are first who shall be last, and the last first ? Is he not bidding us to recall the saying of Christ that some may come from the East and the West and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the children of the kingdom shall be cast out ? He read the touching tale of Trajan's charity to the widow : he remembered how his guide and master Virgil had spoken of Ripheus as the most just among the Trojans : he felt that such were spirits " naturally Christian," and he boldly placed them in the heaven, firmly con- vinced that to such souls the revelation of Christ's love had been somewhere disclosed. The explanations given need not detain us. It is the spirit of Dante on this matter which interests us ; and in his joy over the depths of divine grace we feel the reaching out of his heart in charity to all. Love is the keynote of the Divina Commedia, as it is the central force in Dante's character. The pressure of love's joy in Dante's heart finds utter- ance at this moment in one of his most beautiful images. The eagle speaks sweet words of divine grace : it far surpasses poor human thought : in the erring world who would believe that Ripheus the Trojan would find place among these holy 222 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE lights : nay, even Ripheus, now with enlarged views of things divine, cannot fathom the deeps of God's dear love. The words are sweet as the lark's song, splendid, satisfying. There follows the image which has evoked such widespread admiration : u Like as a lark that in the air expatiates, First singing and then silent with content Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her, Such seemed to me the image of the imprint Of that eternal pleasure, by whose will Doth everything become the thing it is." (Par. xx. 73-78.) To mount to the highest realms of heaven, the pilgrim must climb the golden ladder. This ladder rises from the heaven of Self-control. Contemplation takes the place of action. The soul, disciplined to self-control, is now in perfect self-mastery, made ready for a further movement upward. The sphere of action, with its distract- ing claims, is left behind : the mind once more is fixed on things above : not even the innocent and needful duties of theologian or warrior or ruler find place here. "Ab exterioribus ad in- teriora," said St Bernard; and again, "ab in- terioribus ad superiora." We are in the truly mystical belt of the Paradise. The transition is through the Fixed Stars and the Primum Mobile VICTORY OF LOVE 223 to the Empyrean to the central divine abode of love. The pilgrim sees the Celestial Rose, the great company of those whose names are written in heaven : in that heaven Beatrice takes her place, and St Bernard comes to act as guide to Dante. The emblem of theology gives way to guidance of a more mystic quality. Dante's powers of insight grow as he passes onward : he is invigorated with strength for the last and highest vision. So Dante sped upwards to the central light of all, and, after prayer in which all the spirits in glory seem to join, high resolve and ardour grew strong within him. His sight was purified and he entered more and more into the glory of the divine light. But the excess of splendour over- whelmed him : memory vainly strove to hold the vision : yet there came into his heart a sweetness born of what he saw, and he longed to bequeath by his utterance to future ages if but a single sparkle of that glory. His gaze wedded itself to the splendour, so that he saw all created things, all divine opera- tions, all the pages of the universe bound up with love as in one volume. More he saw, for his mind, after gazing, was kindled to a fervour of perception : and with his strengthened sight he beheld, well knowing that the eternal light 224 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE itself did not change, three circles, threefold in colour, like rainbow reflected from rainbow ; and faint tinted, the human lay within the divine. Like a lightning flash it was given him to see how this could be, but, even at the moment of this supremest revelation, vigour failed. But though perceptive energy failed, power new power of resolution and ardour entered into him ; he found his will and desire caught up by the resistless might of that love by which the sun, the stars, and all creation moves. Thus with the vision of God this great pilgrim- age ends. All the regions traversed have given their tale and taught their lesson : in every experience Dante has had some share. But what he reached in this final vision was not detailed knowledge : it was, as far as mind goes, the realisation of all things in God : of God in His threefold nature, and of the manhood taken into God. His vision added nothing to knowledge ; but it gave what was more precious than knowledge : it brought the inspiration of love as an empowering energy to his wish and to his will. By searching out he could not fathom the measureless depths of the Divine Nature, but by drawing near to God he could become partaker of that Divine Nature, which is love. Thus the last great scene of this great poem VICTORY OF LOVE 225 shows us that, as love alone can lead to the knowledge of God, the highest knowledge man can gain leads but to love. Wouldst thou enter God's kingdom, O pil- grim of earth ? then love. Wouldst thou share the sweet activities of its citizens ? then love. Wouldst thou know Him who rules over them and all ? then love. For love opens the kingdom of heaven, and love makes the joyousness of its happy services, and none can know the heart of God save through love ; for God is love. LECTURE VI THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL (LIFE LOST AND FOUND) THERE is in modern thought a growing interest in the soul. The verdict of the Frenchman is being recognised, "T6t ou tard on ne jouait que des ames." The words of thinking men offer evidence of this tendency. Hoffding reminds us that rationalistic measurements of life must yield to a consideration of life-values. Bergson carries us into a region whose atmosphere is psychical. The spirit of dissatisfaction and unrest which prevailed a generation ago has given place to one which recognises the value of religious experiences : ethical questions have taken a place of prominence in thought. The soul of man is acknowledged as having rights and needs. In the light of the movements of to-day the Divina Commedia possesses special interest. No one will deny the historic, literary, and philosophical interest of the poem ; but, to use a current phrase, 226 THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 227 the poem is a human document : it is a spiritual record. It is much more than a Ghibelline poem : it is a work of world value, because it is the drama of a soul. Dante's life had its drama, and, fromTtHe~exfernal point of view, the drama must be called a tragedy : he was stripped of all that he held dear : his early ambitions were crushed : his early hopes dissipated. The young life so full of promise leads to a life which closes in exile. But beneath the tragedy of circumstances there is the drama of a soul, and this, such is Dante's own verdict, is not tragedy. The drama of the life may end tragically : the drama of the soul is a divine comedy. The poem is not merely a framework for a series of wonderful and arresting pictures : it is a record of soul experiences : it is the story of Dante's own spiritual advance. It is the Pilgrim s Progress of the fourteenth century. The personal note is heard throughout the poem. It is not a work in which a great poet's vivid imagination plays over a theme of . world- wide interest : it is a personal record. The pil- grimage he takes was no mere excursion of the imagination : it was a stern necessity. Only in such a stern experience could his soul reach emancipation. He tried to climb the sunlit hill of perpetual gladness : its heaven-kissed height seemed to 228 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE beckon him. It was the hill of the Lord, upon whose summit the divine light for ever shone : but none could climb that hill whose hands or hearts were stained with wrong. "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord ? " the Psalmist had asked, and the Psalmist answered his own question : " Even he that hath clean hands and a pure heart." Obstacles always arose in the path of the guilty. Dante tried to climb, and he met with invincible difficulty. For a time he had hopes of success : the morning shone brightly, the distant hill seemed to smile in the early light, the gay creature which appeared to hinder his steps was but a playful hindrance ; but presently the air trembled, a more majestic beast stood across his path, and, lastly, the lean and hungry wolf drove the poet step by step towards the darkness he thought that he had left behind. The straightforward way is closed to him : so he is told that for him there is another path. The direct way of unstained virtue is not for him : for him there is another and a drearier way. This necessity is due to his own fault or sin. The forms of evil, threefold, withstand him when he seeks to climb. In the language of the Psalmist, he is fallen into the evil times " when the wickedness of his heels compasses him round about." Evil has been sown, and it becomes the THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 229 parent of obstacles. Its opposition is felt, not in the physical realm, but in the spiritual. The power of evil is not in things external, as some have deemed : the external consequences of wrong are God's : they are the chastenings and warnings of a divine love. The power of evil is in the spiritual enfeeblement which results from evil indulged in : it is seen in the inability to act with the old vigour of unsullied rectitude : the inertia of righteous indignation : the paralysis of the power to pray, when the words fly upward, but the thoughts remain below. The defeat of Dante on the hill of God is a witness of spiritual deterioration. Some wrong had smitten his soul with weakness. This is made clear in the words of Beatrice (Purg. xxx. 100-145). The vision of Beatrice had awakened in him the ideal of a life, noble, chivalrous, woman-worthy. Had he followed this light, his might have been a bright and stainless career : misfortune and disaster might have been his lot, but these would have been easier to bear had no self-consciousness of wrong shadowed his heart : his wound had then been a clean wound. But when Beatrice died, the grief which over- whelmed him was the prelude of a reckless time. He gave himself to others : Beatrice was less to him : he turned into false paths : 230 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE "... into ways untrue he turned his steps, Pursuing the false images of good, So low he fell, that all appliances For his salvation were already short, Save showing him the people of perdition." (Purg. xxx. 130-138.) So low he fell that his friend Guido Cavalcanti flung at him the reproachful words, "la vil tua vita." It is personal wrong-doing which necessi- tated his pilgrimage : in it he must not only be a spectator, he must also participate in the chastise- ment. In the Purgatorio he must in some measure share the penalties of those who seek purification : he must stoop low with the proud (Purg. x. 121 135) : he must taste the acrid breath of the dark smoke which envelops the angry (Purg. xvi. i-io) : he must pass through the fierce flame which is the portion of lust (Purg. xxv. 109120). What was the nature of the fault which com- pelled Dante to encounter such experiences ? We must answer with some reserve : we must refuse to yield to the spirit of disproportionate curiosity. In this drama of the soul, it is not so much specific acts of wrong which are of moment : it is the general disposition, not the single deed, which counts. The awakened soul is not troubled so much by the wrong things which he did as by THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 231 the haunting consciousness of the lowered or degraded spirit which once held possession of him and which made such deeds possible. In the retrospect of conscience the sense that we ever were dominated by such and such an ill spirit brings the worst torment. This would be felt most keenly in the Purgatorio y for it is not the realm in which wrong actions are avenged, but the realm in which the spirit itself is disciplined. There Dante is made to take a retrospect of life. In his pilgrimage he recognises those evil disposi- tions which gained at one time or another the ascendancy over him. It is well therefore to check the irrelevant curiosity which would ask chapter and verse for some special act of wrong ; but without seeking such, we can form some general idea of the way in which Dante fell below that ideal of life to which the vision of Beatrice called him. In the Purgatorio Dante meets with Forese. Forese was a man whose life was given to the pleasures of sense, and Dante, speaking of the life which he and Forese had lived, speaks of it as a time of which they might be ashamed : " If thou bring back to mind What thou with me hast been and I with thee, The present memory will be grievous still." (Purg. xxiii. 115-118.) 232 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE It is difficult to treat these words except as a confession that Dante and Forese had what in modern parlance would be described as a gay time together. Beatrice's words, spoken later, throw further light upon the life of Dante at the time. Thus she speaks : cc . . .If the highest pleasure thus did fail thee By reason of my death, what mortal thing Should then have drawn thee into its desire ? Thou oughtest verily at the first shaft Of things fallacious to have risen up To follow me, who was no longer such. Thou oughtest not to have stooped thy pinions downward To wait for further blows, or little girl, Or other vanity of such brief use." (Purg. xxxi. 53-60.) The truth is, I think, that Dante was what has been called impressionable : he had in high degree the "joie de vivre": he was "trasmut- abile" ready to yield to the influence of the hour ; happy in the company of lively and intelligent ladies, quickly responsive to their smiles, his mercurial spirit caught the mood of the moment. Whatever seriousness the chastenings of life may have evoked later, in his younger days he shared Horace's counsel, THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 233 " Nee dulces amores Sperne puer neque tu choreas, Donee virenti canities abest Morosa." (Carm. i. 9.) It is not needful to seek out particulars, we can picture his self-surrender to the joyousness of the hour, even while we can recognise the under- current of sorrow which gives an air of reckless- ness to the merriment of the moment. His later thoughts may have intensified his power of self-criticism : he may have drawn his tints of that careless time with too dark a pencil. We know how strong is the self-condemnation which devout men have passed upon themselves. In the clear light of spiritual illumination the faults of the past look dark indeed. Never from the unawakened soul do we hear such language of self-reproach as that which breaks forth from saintly lips, and the Divina Commedia breathes the burden of the wasted, idle hours in Dante's life which lay heavy upon his heart and memory. This great poem is like a broad river which carries on its ample bosom much freightage for many lands, but whose stream runs steadily in one direction. The interests awakened by the poem are many, but it never swerves from its great purpose as the record of the deep experiences of a soul. 234 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE The Divine Comedy, then, is the record of per- sonal experience. What is the character of his experience ? The author has deliberately chosen from the Christian year the days which he spends in his pilgrimage. The time-marks, as they are called, have commanded the interest of students because of their clear spiritual significance. The day of his painful experience of bewilderment, when he threaded the dark mazes of the rough wood wherein he had lost his way, was Maundy Thursday the day when the Christ was troubled in spirit and testified that one of His disciples would betray Him. The daylight of Good Friday morning brings hope to the pilgrim, but it is the day in which defeat overtakes him, and he is driven backward and downward in terror : as the evening falls he passes onward to the gate of hell. Through the night of Good Friday, the whole of the following Saturday, and the Saturday night he is in the Inferno. On the Easter morning he emerges from the gloom of that shadow of death and beholds once more the stars of heaven. His soul is not left in that evil grave, called the Inferno. The imagery of the times selected is quite simple. The pilgrim passes through an experi- ence which can be best described in terms drawn from the story of Christ. St Paul gave spiritual THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 235 significance to the experiences of Christ. To pass through death into life was the way to spiritual ripeness of age. This view became current in Christendom. It found expression in theological formulae : baptism symbolised the experience : the convert was buried with Christ in baptism, and raised up in Him to newness of life. Hymns sung in all quarters of the world have adopted the same spiritual imagery. The scientific investigator of Christian experiences describes the psychological changes of these experiences in terms which form a parallel to this spiritual imagery. The spirit of self-satisfaction, he says, is invaded by higher visions of life's possibilities : intense dissatisfac- tion becomes the portion of the soul. It seems thrust down into hell, till it finds a new power of life in the service of another than self, and so it enters into a life upon which heaven's light shines. The language of St Paul is found to be expressive of an experience common and constant : " I was alive without the law once, but when the law came, sin revived, and I died," till " being crucified with Christ " he lived, but not he, but the Christ which was in him. The Divine Comedy, as the record of a spiritual experience, is the expansion of this great Christian formula of experience. The Inferno is the revela- tion of evil : the witness that the wages of sin is 236 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE death. The Purgatorio is the life of struggle to overcome sin. The Paradiso is the entering into the full liberty of the children of God. The experiences are continuous : the pilgrimage is one : its spiritual significance grows clearer as we pass from stage to stage. The pilgrim, however, is never outside the divine love : the help of God's grace is always with him ; but the lessons which the pilgrimage is to teach must be learned one by one, and learned personally. He must learn to see vice in its own ugliness. He must learn the need of effort co-operating with grace : he must learn to surrender self and even self-effort to the great tide of the divine love which sweeps all souls, who are filled with good will, back to the embrace of God's presence. It is a pictorial rendering of Christian experience. It may be felt by some that in this experience one feature is lacking. In the normal records of such experiences we are accustomed to hear often the name of Christ. Christ is felt to be personally the life power of the visions of the soul, and in the Divina Commedia it may be said that we miss this ecstatic love and devotion to Christ. Let us see how the matter stands. Christ, the personal Lord of the soul, does not appear early in the narrative. The victory of the triumphant Conqueror on the cross is referred to, but the DANTE, AFTER LUCA SIGNORELLI. (Orvieto : The Duomo. Fresco.) THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 237 names Jesus or Christ are not once mentioned in the Inferno. In the Purgatorio proper the name Christ appears five times, but only allusively, not as taking any part or affording any spiritual strength to the pilgrim. Not till we reach the earthly Paradise do we learn from the poet what Christ is to him, or what part Christ plays in this great tale of experience. In the Paradiso the name Christ occurs thirty-four times. It is not, how- ever, the number of times in which the sacred name is on the poet's lips which we seek to know, but the place which he assigns to Christ in this great story of a soul's redemption. In the earthly Paradise, and in- the Paradiso proper, Christ is introduced three times. The planet Mars, which is the heavenly lodge wherein the martyrs and soldiers of Christ may be met, is appropriately marked with the sign of the cross : this heaven is illustrious with those who, like their master, loved not their lives unto death. But the two occasions more relevant to our purpose in which Christ is introduced are to be found earlier and later. In Canto xxix. the gryphon appears as the emblem of Christ. The gryphon draws the trium- phal chariot of the Church. Here the powers of the Old and New Testaments are seen : here the three Christian graces and the four cardinal virtues 238 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE are gathered together. All the helps and incen- tives to virtue and goodness, all the inspiring appeals which warn and move the soul, all the various ministries by the way are assembled in allegory, and the power which draws them forward is the Christ Himself. All that has helped the pilgrim has been, though unknown to him, due to the Christ who alone gives to His Church its active and progressive energy. All help is through Him. But, again, if I understand it rightly, Christ is the final test of the soul ; Dante, when he hears the reproaches of Beatrice, stands in the presence of the gryphon (one person only in two natures), that is, in the presence of Christ, and it is when Beatrice turns round towards the Christ, and in His presence grows more glorious, that Dante feels the keenest pangs of self-reproach : " So pricked me then the thorn of penitence, That of all other things the one which turned me Most to its love because the most my foe. Such self-conviction stung me at the heart, O'erpowered I fell. 1 ' (Purg. xxxi. 85-89.) The measure of Dante's fault is the wisdom brought by Christ ; so it is before Christ's judg- ment-seat that Dante is judged. But Christ is not for judgment alone : He is for redemption ; for once the pilgrim has been plunged into the waters of Lethe and has tasted THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 239 their sweetness, new visions are granted to him. The virtues, which are nymphs, but in the full heaven are stars, lead him back towards the gryphon. The three graces quicken his sight. Beatrice's eyes glow with intense light as she gazes at the gryphon ; and lo ! in Dante's view the gryphon is seen transforming itself, though motionless, showing now one nature, now another. It is the symbol of Him who as man brings God to man, and as God brings man to God, the one whose changeless love shines upon man with light and revelation as man is able to bear it. Thus Christ is seen unveiling His glory to the pilgrim. Through the eyes and soul of Beatrice the revelation comes. She is the divine wisdom, the splendour of the living light eternal ; but Christ Himself, the gryphon, is the living light eternal, through whom the glory of all wisdom comes. He is the judge by whom all souls are tried : He is the one from whom streams the light of highest knowledge, with comfort and strength. In harmony with this, we find that in the heaven of the Fixed Stars, Christ is the central and triumphant light : there the victory of His life and death is made manifest : His light is like that of the sun : so intense is that light that Dante is smitten with blindness : 2 4 o SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE " What overmasters thee, A virtue is from which naught shields itself. There are the wisdom and the omnipotence That oped the thoroughfares 'twixt heaven and earth, For which there erst had been so long a yearning." (Par. xxiii. 35-39.) When sight came back to him Dante realises that all around him there is music and light. What he sees is like the glory of some half-remembered vision. The splendour has a touch of familiarity about it. His soul recognises, yet cannot wholly recall, what shines upon him in the smile of Beatrice. Beatrice bids him look upon the Garden of the Saints, seen like flowers : upon them rays of Christ are shining, and under that light they are blossoming. Melody sweet and entrancing breathes everywhere, and proclaims itself as the angelic love, which encompasses her who gave Christ to the world, and will still circle round her as she follows her Son. " And I shall circle, Lady of Heaven, while Thou followest thy Son, and mak'st diviner The sphere supreme, because thou enterest there." (Par. xxiii. 106-108.) Such was the light and gladness of the saints the "... company elect to the great Supper Of the Lamb benedight," (Par. xxiv. 1-2.) who feedeth them so that they hunger no more. THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 241 As we follow the poet's progress we can estimate in some degree what the Christ is to his soul. Christ is the One who draws to him all the helps and comforts, the graces and virtues which are to fill his soul. As the pilgrim passes upward the glory of Christ is unfolded to him in the victory of the cross and the dazzling light of His nearer presence. Every step of the way is marked, not only by enlarged revelation of the divine glory, but by increased capacity of spiritual perception, till in the final vision of the triumph of Christ he approaches that stage when he can realise what the Apostle meant when he dreamed of presenting every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Thus the pilgrimage of the soul does not end with the earthly Paradise. It passes upward to fuller revelations and fresher invigorations of spirit : it sees new glories, and it undergoes a subtle and continuous change of inward capacity. In other words, the experiences of the soul as told in the poem do not cease with the attainment of the earthly Paradise. We need to examine the nature and conditions of this final or Paradise experience of the soul. There are two experiences mentioned which call for our attention. They are experiences which are different in character from any of the earlier experiences in the Purgatorio or in the 16 242 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE Inferno. One is the experience of movement : the other that of change. The poet discovers that he is moving upward rapidly without any personal consciousness of movement. Light in- creases round the pilgrim : to him it seems that the light of one day is added, as though God had added to the heavens a second sun (Par. i. 61-63). As Dante longs to understand this, Beatrice tells him : " Thou art not upon earth, as thou believest ; But lightning, fleeing its appropriate site, Ne'er ran as thou." (Par. i. 9193.) He has been moving upward without knowing it. The nature of all things is to move towards God. In Dante's case the obstacles which thwarted this natural movement have been removed, and now he is borne onward as an arrow to its mark by the impulse of the vibrating cord : " And thither now, as to a site decreed, Bears us away the virtue of that cord Which aims its arrows at a joyous mark." (Par. i. 124-126.) He ought not to wonder at this, for to his renewed soul this movement is according to the order of its being : " Thou shouldst not wonder more, if well I judge, At thine ascent, than at a rivulet From some high mount descending to the lowland. THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 243 Marvel it would be in thee, if deprived Of hindrance, thou wert seated down below. As if on earth the living fire were quiet." (Par. i. 136-141.) The other experience is that of change. He discovers that the change which he thinks is taking place in the object he beholds, is not a change in the object but a change in himself. The highest vision of all is of that which does not change : " For it is always what it was before ; But though the sight, that fortified itself In me by looking, one appearance only To me was ever changing as I changed." (Par. xxxiii. 111-114.) This principle of a change in the soul as the pilgrim advances seems to be consistently adhered to in the Paradiso ; whatever new visions meet him, he passes through some change ; some new virtue or capacity is given to him that he may be enabled to behold the glories which are being disclosed to him. In the first canto, as we have seen, he compared this change to that which befell Glaucus, when he tasted " of the herb that made him Peer of the other gods beneath the sea." (Par. i. 68-69.) 244 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE In the vision of Christ's triumph he knew that inner strength was vouchsafed to him. He compared his growing power of mind to a fire unlocking itself from a cloud, dilating itself be- yond the limits of its prison house : " So did my mind, among those aliments Becoming larger, issue from itself." (Par. xxiii. 43-44.) The spiritual counterpart of these things is found in the experience of the soul. The Paradise differs from the Purgatorio^ as effortless progress differs from laborious upward advance. In the Purgatorio every step means effort, the pilgrim is conscious of fatigue and failing strength ; it is exertion felt and known till the summit is reached. But in the Paradiso^ all is changed : there is no cessation of movement, but it is movement with- out effort : the soul is borne upward by the irresistible law of its own restored nature : a force greater than its own bears it forward. In the Purgatorio the pilgrim tries and toils ; in the Parad'iso he needs only to surrender himself to the great divine tide of goodness which sets Godward. The life of conflict is exchanged for the life of full assurance of faith. As long as the soul is governed by the sense of law, the battle between the conscience and impulse goes on ; the DANTE, FROM GIOTTO'S FRESCO IN THE BARGELLO. (From the reproduction published by the Arundel Society in 1859.) THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 245 heart is not wholly given to the highest ; the arena of conflict is in the moral sphere of conscience and passion, each clamouring for the verdict of the hesitating will ; but when the love of the divine fills the soul, the will is carried captive to right : the struggle ends ; liberty is reached, for the spirit is emancipated from the claims of the lower ; the will of God becomes our will ; in His will is our peace (Par. iii. 85) : His service is perfect freedom, for in it we are working according to the true order of our being. This joyous and effortless movement is the abiding law of the Paradiso. The soul need struggle no more ; it has found rest and liberty in the divine order : it surrenders itself to the tide of the divine life which flows freely around it : such souls are led by the spirit of God, because they are sons of God. This is none other than the great surrender of recognised spiritual experience. " I live, yet not I," cried St Paul : his old nature is self-condemned, the new man is recognised in the economy of the soul. The Christian pilgrim is content to be led by God. He is no longer nervously solicitous about saving his soul : he puts no anxious hand upon the ark when it seems to shake : he is con- tent to let God do His own work. His thought is Godward. "When shall I appear before God ?" " My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the 246 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE living God." "Show us the Father and it sufficeth us." These are his prayers. With this comes the other experience of the soul the inward change which sometimes seems a change in outward things. Life is just the same as before : duties are the same, work is the same, friends are the same ; but all these appear to have changed their meaning, their value, their interest. A new beauty and charm have been added to life. In its light we see light. If we grow pure by being purely shone upon, we gain through purity a clearer and happier view of life. As we follow the pilgrim poet in his upward flight, and notice the growing intensity of light through which he moves, we feel that the Paradiso is but an expansion of the familiar words : " We, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed from glory to glory even as by the spirit of the Lord." The pilgrim himself is unconscious of the change : he cannot explain : whether in the body or out of the body matters not. His progress is like growth : it is something which goes on : something which he does not feel, but rather of which he becomes aware as stage succeeds stage in the miracle of life's progress. It is the experi- ence of which Greene wrote : " Then comes the Spirit to our hut, When fast the senses' doors are shut." THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 247 The natural sense is superseded when the things of the spirit take their place in our experience, for they are spiritually discerned. The spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God. Thus the experiences indicated in the Paradiso fall into line with the spiritual experiences of awakened souls. They are not fictions of the fancy : though Dante, with his adventurous imag- ination, has clothed them with dazzling apparel ; they are still but splendid forms of personal experiences which have been shared by multitudes since St Paul wrote his Epistles and St Augustine his Confessions. Dante expresses in his way what Tauler told in his sermons and what Bunyan detailed in his Pilgrim s Progress. The value of the Divina Commedia is various. It repays the study of the historian, the philosopher, the archaeologist, the naturalist, but its central thought reveals its spiritual value. That value springs from its personal quality, and that personal quality is the spiritual experience of the poet set forth in his own subtle, splendid, and ample fashion. Is there any further word to be said ? Yes, one. 1 have said that there is a word which is like the keynote to the whole poem. That word is love. Amore is whispered in the dark shades of 248 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE the Inferno : it is enunciated with clearness in the Purgatorio : it becomes music and perpetual song in the Paradiso. It was love which made Dante L face the hideous revelations of the Inferno : it was j love which sent him Virgil Reason as a guide : it was love which bore him slumbering to the gate of the Purgatory : it was love which sent \ him sweet dreams of warning and of hope : it was love which challenged him to enter the flame, in which all the gross dregs of passion were purged away that love's fire might burn with clear purity once more. It was love's realm into which he entered as he mounted upward with Beatrice at his side. It was at last into the flaming heart of divine love that he looked, and learned that love was the moving power and final rest of the universe. It is of love divine, unfailing, changeless love : of love almighty, inexorable, inspiring love of which he sings. God's love to be seen, felt, known, realised everywhere and always in human life is his message to his fellow-men. To give such a message, expressed in such unexampled splendour of form, was a lot which compensated for a thousand sorrows and disappointments. Had his lot been less shadowed with grief, he would perchance have achieved far less. Had he been successful in his early ambitions, he might have been known as a magistrate whose name found a THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL 249 place among the city records of Florence ; but sorrow claimed him and sorrow crowned him : she put this deathless song in his mouth : she made him sing, but it was no threnody he sang for God put His own new song into his mouth, and the Divina Commedia is a thanksgiving unto God. And now that our task is ended, how shall I pass on the message of Dante to you ? Some of you are on the threshold of life : different callings and different destinies lie before you. Here you meet : in a little time you will be scattered : many and various will be your occupations, but whatever your work among the countless useful and honourable avocations of your country, your life may be noble and true. As one honoured among the many honoured names of Harvard sang: " In many ways may life be given, And loyalty to truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is fate." Yes for love is over all life : that is Dante's message : love is over all life. That very love may call you to disappointment, batter you with undeserved blows, fling you aside neglected, yes, plunge you into hell, or bid you climb the bitter steep of some laborious Purgatory ; but it will 250 SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE not leave you nor forsake you : it will bring you out into the sweet table-land of peace ; it will show you at length that life is always under the rule of that eternal love by which the sun, the stars, and all creation move. 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