In what we shall say
of Dante we shall endeavor only to supplement her interpretation with
such side-lights as may have been furnished us by twenty years of
assiduous study. Dante's thought is multiform, and, like certain street
signs, once common, presents a different image according to the point of
view. Let us consider briefly what was the plan of the _Divina Commedia_
and Dante's aim in writing it, which, if not to justify, was at least to
illustrate, for warning and example, the ways of God to man. The higher
intention of the poem was to set forth the results of sin, or unwisdom,
and of virtue, or wisdom, in this life, and consequently in the life to
come, which is but the continuation and fulfilment of this. The scene
accordingly is the spiritual world, of which we are as truly denizens now
as hereafter. The poem is a diary of the human soul in its journey
upwards from error through repentance to atonement with God. To make it
apprehensible by those whom it was meant to teach, nay, from its very
nature as a poem, and not a treatise of abstract morality, it must set
forth everything by means of sensible types and images.
"To speak thus is adapted to your mind,
Since only from the sensible it learns
What makes it worthy of intellect thereafter,
On this account the Scripture condescends
Unto your faculties, and feet and hands
To God attributes, and means something else.
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