"[84]
Whoever has studied mediaeval art in any of its branches need not be told
that Dante's age was one that demanded very palpable and even revolting
types. As in the old legend, a drop of scalding sweat from the damned
soul must shrivel the very skin of those for whom he wrote, to make them
wince if not to turn them away from evil doing. To consider his hell a
place of physical torture is to take Circe's herd for real swine. Its
mouth yawns not only under Florence, but before the feet of every man
everywhere who goeth about to do evil. His hell is a condition of the
soul, and he could not find images loathsome enough to express the moral
deformity which is wrought by sin on its victims, or his own abhorrence
of it. Its inmates meet you in the street every day.
"Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place, for where we are is hell,
And where hell is there we must ever be."[85]
It is our own sensual eye that gives evil the appearance of good, and out
of a crooked hag makes a bewitching siren. The reason enlightened by the
grace of God sees it as it truly is, full of stench and corruption.[86]
It is this office of reason which Dante undertakes to perform, by divine
commission, in the _Inferno_. There can be no doubt that he looked upon
himself as invested with the prophetic function, and the Hebrew
forerunners, in whose society his soul sought consolation and
sustainment, certainly set him no example of observing the conventions of
good society in dealing with the enemies of God.
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