Indeed, his notions of
good society were not altogether those of this world in any generation.
He would have defined it as meaning "the peers" of Philosophy, "souls
free from wretched and vile delights and from vulgar habits, endowed with
genius and memory."[87] Dante himself had precisely this endowment, and
in a very surprising degree. His genius enabled him to see and to show
what he saw to others; his memory neither forgot nor forgave. Very
hateful to his fervid heart and sincere mind would have been the modern
theory which deals with sin as involuntary error, and by shifting off the
fault to the shoulders of Atavism or those of Society, personified for
purposes of excuse, but escaping into impersonality again from the grasp
of retribution, weakens that sense of personal responsibility which is
the root of self-respect and the safeguard of character. Dante indeed saw
clearly enough that the Divine justice did at length overtake Society in
the ruin of states caused by the corruption of private, and thence of
civic, morals; but a personality so intense as his could not be satisfied
with such a tardy and generalized penalty as this. "It is Thou," he says
sternly, "who hast done this thing, and Thou, not Society, shalt be
damned for it; nay, damned all the worse for this paltry subterfuge.
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