Dante Part 8

[Footnote 91: _Ibid._ xxviii. 41, 42.]

[Footnote 92: _Ibid._ x.x.x. 40-42.]

[Footnote 93: _Paradiso_, x.x.xi. 52-93.]

[Footnote 94: _Paradiso_, x.x.xiii. 143-145.]

[Footnote 95: Compare Symonds, p. 183.]

APPENDIX

AN ATTEMPT TO STATE THE CENTRAL THOUGHT OF THE COMEDY

APPENDIX.

Dante's poem--the true reflection of his mind--is a compact and rounded _whole_ in which all the parts are mutually interdependent. Its digressions are never excrescences, its episodes are never detached from its main purpose, its form is never arbitrary and accidental, but is always the systematic and deliberate expression of its substance.

Moreover it is profoundly mediaeval and Catholic in conception and spirit. The scholastic theology and science of the Middle Ages and the spiritual inst.i.tutions of the Catholic Church were no trammels to Dante's thought and aspiration. Under them and amidst them he moved with a perfect sense of freedom, in them he found the embodiment of his loftiest conceptions. Against their abuses his impetuous spirit poured out its lava-stream of burning indignation, but his very pa.s.sion against those who laid impure hands upon the sacred things of G.o.d is the measure of his reverence for their sanct.i.ty.

If the Catholic poet of the fourteenth century speaks with a voice that can reach the ears and stir the hearts of the Protestant and heretic of the nineteenth, it is not so much because he rose above the special forms and conditions of the faith of his own age as because he went below them and touched the eternal rock upon which they rested. Not by neglecting or making light of the dogmas and inst.i.tutions of his day, but by piercing to their very heart and revealing their deepest foundations, did he become a poet for all time.

The distinction, then, which we are about to draw between the permanent realities of Dante's religion and the pa.s.sing forms, the temporary conditions of belief, under which it was manifested, is a distinction which did not exist for him. His faith was a garment woven without seam, or, to use his own metaphor, a coin so true in weight and metal, so bright and round, that there was no 'perhaps' to him in its impression.[96]

This unwavering certainty alike in principle and in detail, this unfaltering loyalty to the beliefs of his day alike in form and substance, is one of the secrets of Dante's strength.

But, again, such compactness and cohesion of belief could not have been attained except by the strict subordination of every article of concrete faith to the great central conceptions of religion, rising out of the very nature and const.i.tution of the devout human soul. And therefore, paradox as it may seem, the very intensity with which Dante embraced beliefs that we have definitely and utterly rejected, is the pledge that we shall find in his teaching the essence of our own religion; and we may turn to the Comedy with the certainty that we shall not only discover here and there pa.s.sages which will wake an echo in our bosoms, but shall also find at the very heart of it some guiding thought that will be to us as it was to him absolutely true.

Now Dante himself, as we have seen, tells us what is the subject of his Comedy. Literally it is 'The state of souls after death,' and allegorically 'Man, as rendering himself liable to rewarding or punishing justice, by good or ill desert in the exercise of his free will.' The ideal requirements of Divine Justice, then, form the central subject of this poem, the one theme to which, amidst infinite diversity of application, the poet remains ever true; and these requirements he works out in detail and enforces with all the might, the penetration, the sweetness of his song, under the conditions of mediaeval belief as to the future life.

But these conditions of belief are utterly foreign to our own conceptions. I say nothing of the rejection of the virtuous heathen, because Dante himself could really find no room for it in his own system of conceptions. It lay in his mind as a belief accepted from tradition, but never really a.s.similated by faith. Apart from this, however, we find ourselves severed from Dante by his fundamental dogma that the hour of death ends all possibility of repentance or amendment. With him there is no repentance in h.e.l.l, no progress in Heaven; and it is therefore only in Purgatory that we find anything at all fundamentally a.n.a.logous to the modern conception of a progressive approximation to ideal perfection and oneness with G.o.d throughout the cycles of a future life. And even here the transition of Purgatory is but temporal, nor is there any fundamental or progressive change of heart in its circles, for unless the heart be changed before death it cannot change at all.

In its literal acceptation, then, dealing with 'the state of souls after death,' the 'Divine Comedy' has little to teach us, except indirectly.

But allegorically it deals with 'man,' first as impenitently sinful; second, as penitent; last, as purified and holy. It shows us the requirements of Divine Justice with regard to these three states; and whether we regard them as permanent or transitory, as severed by sharp lines one from the other or as melting imperceptibly into each other, as existing on earth or beyond the grave, in any case Dante teaches us what sentence justice must p.r.o.nounce on impenitence, on penitence, and on sanct.i.ty. Nay, independently of any belief in future retribution at all, independently of any belief in what our actions will receive, Dante burns or flashes into our souls the indelible conviction of what they deserve.

Now to Dante's mind, as to most others, the conceptions of _justice_ and _desert_ implied the conception of _free will_. And accordingly we find the reality of the choice exercised by man, and attended by such eternal issues, maintained with intense conviction throughout the poem.

The free will is the supreme gift of G.o.d, and that by which the creature most closely partakes of the nature of the Creator. The free gift of G.o.d's love must be seized by an act of man's free will, in opposition to the temptations and difficulties that interpose themselves. There is justice as well as love in Heaven; justice as well as mercy in Purgatory. The award of G.o.d rests upon the free choice of man, and registers his merit or demerit. It is true, and Dante fully recognises it, that one man has a harder task than another. The original const.i.tution and the special circ.u.mstances of one man make the struggle far harder for him than for another; but G.o.d never suffers the hostile influence of the stars to be so strong that the human will may not resist it. Diversity of character and const.i.tution is the necessary condition of social life, and we can see why G.o.d did not make us all alike; but when we seek to pierce yet deeper into the mystery of His government, and ask why this man is selected for this task, why another is burdened with this toil, why one finds the path of virtue plain for his feet to tread, while one finds it beset with obstacles before which his heart stands still--when we ask these questions we trench close upon one of those doubts which Dante brought back unsolved from Heaven. Not the seraph whose sight pierces deepest into the light of G.o.d could have told him this, so utterly is it veiled from all created sight.[97]

But amidst all these perplexities one supreme fact stands out to Dante's mind: that, placed as we are on earth amidst the mysterious possibilities of good and evil, we are endowed with a genuine power of self-directed choice between them. The fullness of G.o.d's grace is freely offered to us all, the life eternal of obedience, of self-surrender, of love, tending ever to the fuller and yet fuller harmony of united will and purpose, of mutually blessed and blessing offices of affection, of growing joy in all the supporting and surrounding creation, of growing repose in the might and love of G.o.d.

But if we shut our eyes against the light of G.o.d's countenance and turn our backs upon His love, if we rebel against the limitations of mutual self-sacrifice to one another and common obedience to G.o.d, then an alternative is also offered us in the fierce and weltering chaos of wild pa.s.sions and disordered desires, recognising no law and evoking no harmony, striking at the root of all common purpose and cut off from all helpful love.

Our inmost hearts recognise the reality of this choice, and the justice and necessity of the award that gives us what we have chosen. That the hard, bitter, self-seeking, impure, mutinous, and treacherous heart should drive away love and peace and joy is the natural, the necessary result of the inmost nature and const.i.tution of things, and our hearts accept it. That self-discipline, gentleness, self-surrender, devotion, generosity, self-denying love, should gather round them light and sweetness, should infuse a fullness of joy into every personal and domestic relation, should give a glory to every material surrounding, and should gain an ever closer access to G.o.d, is no artificial arrangement which might with propriety be reversed, it is a part of the eternal and necessary const.i.tution of the universe, and we feel that it ought so to be.

There is no joy or blessedness without harmony, there is no harmony without the concurrence of independent forces, there is no such concurrence without self-discipline and self-surrender.

But these natural consequences of our moral action are here on earth constantly interfered with and qualified, constantly baulked of their full and legitimate effect. Here we do not get our deserts. The actions of others affect us almost as much as our own, and artificially interpose themselves to screen us from the results of what we are and do ourselves. Hence we constantly fail to perceive the true nature of our choice. Its consequences fall on others; we partially at least evade the Divine Justice, and forget or know not what we are doing, and what are the demands of justice with regard to us.

Now Dante, in his three poems, with an incisive keenness of vision and a relentless firmness of touch, that stand alone, strips our life and our principles of action of all these distracting and confusing surroundings, isolates them from all qualifying and artificial palliatives, and shows us what our choice is and where it leads to.

In h.e.l.l we see the natural and righteous results of sin, recognise the direct consequences, the fitting surroundings of a sinful life, and understand what the sinful choice in its inmost nature is. As surely as our consciences accuse us of the sins that are here punished, so surely do we feel with a start of self-accusing horror, 'This is what I am trying to make the world. This is where we should be lodged if I received what I have given. This is what justice demands that I should have. This is what I deserve. It is what I have chosen.'

The tortures of h.e.l.l are not artificial inflictions, they are simply the reflection and application of the sinner's own ways and principles.

He has made his choice, and he is given that which he has chosen. He has found at last a world in which his principles of action are not checked and qualified at every turn by those of others, in which he is not screened from any of the consequences of his deeds, in which his own life and action has consolidated, so to speak, about him, and has made his surroundings correspond with his heart.

In the h.e.l.l, Dante shows us the nature and the deserts of impenitent sin; and though we may well shrink from the ghastly conception of an eternal state of impenitence and hatred, yet surely there is nothing from which we ought to shrink in the conception of impenitent sin as long as it lasts, whether in us or in others, concentrating its results upon itself, making its own place and therefore receiving its deserts.

When we turn from h.e.l.l to Purgatory, we turn from unrepentant and therefore constantly cherished, renewed, and reiterated sin, to repentant sin, already banished from the heart. What does justice demand with regard to such sin? Will it have it washed out? Will it, in virtue of the sinner's penitence, interpose between him and the wretched results and consequences of his deeds? Who that has ever sinned and repented will accept for a moment such a thought? The repentant sinner does not _wish_ to escape the consequences and results of his sin. His evil deeds or pa.s.sions must bring and ought to bring a long trail of wretched suffering for himself. This suffering is not corrective, it is expiatory. His heart is already corrected, it is already turned in shame and penitence to G.o.d; but if he had no punishment, if his evil deed brought no suffering upon himself, he would feel that the Divine Justice had been outraged. He shrinks from the thought with a hurt sense of moral unfitness. He wishes to suffer, he would not escape into the peace of Heaven if he might.

Never did Dante pierce more deeply into the truth of things, never did he bring home the _justice_ of punishment more closely to the heart, than when he told how the souls in Purgatory do not wish to rise to Heaven till they have worked out the consequences of their sins. The sin long since repented and renounced still haunts us with its shame and its remorse, still holds us from the fullness of the joy of G.o.d's love, still smites us with a keener pain the closer we press into the forgiving Father's presence; and we would have it so. The deepest longing of our heart, which is now set right, is for full, untroubled communion with G.o.d, yet it is just when nearest to Him that we feel the wretched penalty of our sin most keenly and that we least desire to escape it.

But if the sinful disposition be gone, then the source of our suffering is dried up with it, and the sense of oneness with G.o.d, of harmony and trust, gradually overpowers the self-reproach, until from the state of penitence and suffering the soul rises to holiness and peace.

It is in giving us glimpses of this final state that Dante wields his most transforming power over our lives. He shows us what G.o.d offers us, what it is that we have hitherto refused, what it is that we may still aspire to, that here or hereafter we may hope to reach. Sin-stained and sorrow-laden as we are, it is only on wings as strong as his that we can be raised even for a moment into that Divine blessedness in which sin has been so purged by suffering, so dried up by the sinner's love of G.o.d, so blotted out by G.o.d's love of him, that it has vanished as a dream, and the soul can say, 'Here we repent not.'[98] How mighty the spirit that can raise us even for a moment from the desolate weariness of h.e.l.l, and the long suffering of Purgatory, to the joy and peace of Heaven!

And here too there is justice. Here too the deserts of the soul are the gauge of its condition. For, as we have seen, in the very blessedness of Heaven there are grades, and the soul which has once been stained with sin or tainted with selfish and worldly pa.s.sion, can never be as though it had been always pure. Yet the torturing sense of unworthiness is gone, the unrest of a past that thwarts the present is no more; the souls have cast off the burden of their sin, and are at perfect peace with G.o.d and with themselves.

Sin, repentance, holiness, confronted with the Eternal Justice--what they are and what they deserve--such is the subject of Dante Alighieri's Comedy.

Have five and a half centuries of progress outgrown the poem, or are Dante's still the mightiest and most living words in which man has ever painted in detail the true deserts of sin, of penitence, of sanct.i.ty?

The growing mind of man has burst the sh.e.l.l of Dante's mediaeval creed.

Is his portrayal of the true conditions of blessedness as antiquated as his philosophy, his religion as strange to modern thought as his theology? Or has he still a power, wielded by no other poet, of taking us into the very presence of G.o.d and tuning our hearts to the harmonies of Heaven? Those who have been with him on his mystic journey, and have heard and seen, can answer these questions with a declaration as clear and ringing as the poet's own confession of faith in the courts of Heaven. If those who have but caught some feeble echoes of his song can partly guess what the true answer is, then those echoes have not been waked in vain.

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 96: _Paradiso_, xxiv. 86, 87.]

[Footnote 97: Compare _Purgatorio_, xvi. 67-84; _Paradiso_, iv. 73-114, v. 13 sqq., viii. 115-129, xxi. 76-102, x.x.xii. 49-75.]

[Footnote 98: _Paradiso_, ix. 103.]