Immediately surrounding the atmosphere of the Earth was the
sphere of elemental fire. Around this was the Heaven of the Moon,
and encircling this, in order, were the Heavens of Mercury,
Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jove, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, and the
Crystalline or first moving Heaven. These nine concentric Heavens
revolved continually around the Earth, and in proportion to their
distance from it was time greater swiftness of each. Encircling
all was the Empyrean, increate, incorporeal, motionless,
unbounded in time or space, the proper seat of God, the home of
the Angels, the abode of the Elect.

The Angelic Hierarchy consisted of nine orders, corresponding to
the nine moving heavens. Their blessedness and the swiftness of
time motion with which in unending delight they circled around
God were in proportion to their nearness to Him, --first the
Seraphs, then the Cherubs, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers,
Princes, Archangels, and Angels. Through them, under the general
name of Intelligences, the Divine influence was transmitted to
the Heavens, giving to them their circular motion, which was the
expression of their longing to be united with the source of their
creation. The Heavens in their turn streamed down upon the Earth
the Divine influence thus distributed among them, in varying
proportion and power, producing divers effects in the generation
and corruption of material things, and in the dispositions and
the lives of men.

Such was the general scheme of the Universe. The intention of God
in its creation was to communicate of his own perfection to the
creatures endowed with souls, that is, to men and to angels, and
the proper end of every such creature was to seek its own
perfection in likeness to time Divine. This end was attained
through that knowledge of God of which the soul was capable, and
through love which was in proportion to knowledge. Virtue
depended on the free will of man; it was the good use of that
will directed to a right object of love. Two lights were given to
the soul for guidance of the will: the light of reason for
natural things and for the direction of the will to moral virtue
the light of grace for things supernatural, and for the direction
of the will to spiritual virtue. Sin was the opposite of virtue,
the choice by the will of false objects of love; it involved the
misuse of reason, and the absence of grace. As the end of virtue
was blessedness, so the end of sin was misery.

The cornerstone of Dante's moral system was the Freedom of the
Will; in other words, the right of private judgment with the
condition of accountability. This is the liberty which Dante,
that is man, goes seeking in his journey through the spiritual
world. This liberty is to be attained through the right use of
reason, illuminated by Divine Grace; it consists in the perfect
accord of the will of man with the will of God.

With this view of the nature and end of man Dante's conception of
the history of the race could not be other than that its course
was providentially ordered. The fall of man had made him a just
object of the vengeance of God; but the elect were to be
redeemed, and for their redemption the history of the world from
the beginning was directed. Not only in his dealings with the
Jews, but in his dealings with the heathen was God preparing for
the reconciliation of man, to be finally accomplished in his
sacrifice of Himself for them. The Roman Empire was foreordained
and established for this end. It was to prepare the way for the
establishment of the Roman Church. It was the appointed
instrument for the political governument of men. Empire and
Church were alike divine institutions for the guidance of man on
earth.

The aim of Dante in the Divine Comedy was to set forth these
truths in such wise as to affect the imaginations and touch the
hearts of men, so that they should turn to righteousness. His
conviction of these truths was no mere matter of belief; it had
the ardor and certainty of faith. They had appeared to him in all
their fulness as a revelation of the Divine wisdom. It was his
work as poet, as poet with a divine commission, to make this
revelation known. His work was a work of faith; it was sacred; to
it both Heaven and Earth had set their hands.

To this work, as I have said, the definiteness and the limits of
the generally accepted theory of the Universe gave the required
frame. The very narrowness of this scheme made Dante's design
practicable. He had had the experience of a man on earth. He had
been lured by false objects of desire from the pursuit of the
true good. But Divine Grace, in the form of Beatrice, who had of
old on earth led him aright, now intervened and sent to his aid
Virgil, who, as the type of Human Reason, should bring him safe
through Hell, showing to him the eternal consequences of sin, and
then should conduct him, penitent, up the height of Purgatory,
till on its summit, in the Earthly Paradise, Beatrice should
appear once more to him. Thence she, as the type of that
knowledge through which comes the love of God, should lead him,
through the Heavens up to the Empyrean, to the consummation of
his course in the actual vision of God.

AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY.

The Essay by Mr. Lowell, to which I have already referred (Dante,
Lowell's Prose Works, vol. iv.) is the best introduction to the
study of the poem. It should be read and re-read.

Dante, an essay by the late Dean Church, is the work of a learned
and sympathetic selmolar, and is an excellent treatise on the
life, times, and work of the poet.

The Notes and Illustrations that accompany Mr. Longfellow's
translation of the Divine Comedy form an admirable body of
comment on the poem.

The Rev. Dr. Edward Moore's little volume, on The Time-References
in the Divina Cominedia (London, 1887), is of great value in
making the progress of Dante's journey clear, and in showing
Dante's scrupulous consistency of statement. Dr. Moore's more
recent work, Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Divina
Commedia (Cambridge, 1889), is to be warmly commended to the
advanced student.

These sources of information are enough for the mere English
reader. But one who desires to make himself a thorough master of
the poem must turn to foreign sources of instruction: to Carl
Witte's invaluable Dante-Forschungen (2 vols. Halle, 1869); to
the comment, especially that on the Paradiso, which accompanies
the German translation of the Divine Comedy by Philalethes. the
late King John of Saxony; to Bartoli's life of Dante in his
Storia della Letteratura Italiana (Firenze, 1878 and subsequent
years), and to Scartazzini's Prolegomeni della Divina Commedia
(Leipzig, 1890). The fourteenth century Comments, especially
those of Boccaccio, of Buti, and of Benvenuto da Imola, are
indispensable to one who would understand the poem as it was
understood by Dante's immediate contemporaries and successors. It
is from them and from the Chronicle of Dante's contemporary and
fellow-citizen, Giovanni Villani, that our knowledge concerning
many of the personages mentioned in the Poem is derived.

In respect to the theology and general doctrine of the Poem, the
Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas is the main source from
which Dante himself drew.

Of editions of the Divina Commedia in Italian, either that of
Andreoli, or of Bianchi, or of Fraticelli, each in one volume,
may be recommended to the beginner. Scartazzini's edition in
three volumes is the best, in spite of some serious defects, for
the deeper student.

HELL.

CANTO I. Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill
which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he
turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into
the eternal world.

Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark
wood, for the right way had been missed. Ah! how hard a thing it
is to tell what this wild and rough and dense wood was, which in
thought renews the fear! So bitter is it that death is little
more. But in order to treat of the good that there I found, I
will tell of the other things that I have seen there. I cannot
well recount how I entered it, so full was I of slumber at that
point where I abandoned the true way. But after I had arrived at
the foot of a hill, where that valley ended which had pierced my
heart with fear, I looked on high, and saw its shoulders clothed
already with the rays of the planet[1] that leadeth men aright
along every path. Then was the fear a little quieted which in the
lake of my heart had lasted through the night that I passed so
piteously. And even as one who with spent breath, issued out of
the sea upon the shore, turns to the perilous water and gazes, so
did my soul, which still was flying, turn back to look again upon
the pass which never had a living person left.

[1] The sun, a planet according to the Ptolemaic system.

After I had rested a little my weary body I took my way again
along the desert slope, so that the firm foot was always the
lower. And ho! almost at the beginning of the steep a
she-leopard, light and very nimble, which was covered with a
spotted coat. And she did not move from before my face, nay,
rather hindered so my road that to return I oftentimes had
turned.

The time was at the beginning of the morning, and the Sun was
mounting upward with those stars that were with him when Love
Divine first set in motion those beautiful things;[1] so that the
hour of the time and the sweet season were occasion of good hope
to me concerning that wild beast with the dappled skin. But not
so that the sight which appeared to me of a lion did not give me
fear. He seemed to be coming against me, with head high and with
ravening hunger, so that it seemed that the air was affrighted at
him. And a she-wolf,[2] who with all cravings seemed laden in her
meagreness, and already had made many folk to live forlorn,--she
caused me so much heaviness, with the fear that came from sight
of her, that I lost hope of the height And such as he is who
gaineth willingly, and the time arrives that makes him lose, who
in all his thoughts weeps and is sad,--such made me the beast
without repose that, coming on against me, little by little was
pushing me back thither where the Sun is silent.

[1] According to old tradition the spring was the season of the
creation.

[2] These three beasts correspond to the triple division of sins
into those of incontinence, of violence, and of fraud. See Canto
XI.