Everything, the most supersensual, presented itself to his mind,
not as abstract idea, but as visible type. As men could once embody a
quality of good in a saint and _see_ it, as they even now in moments of
heightened fantasy or enthusiasm can personify their country and speak of
England, France, or America, as if they were real beings, so did Dante
habitually.[185] He saw all his thoughts as distinctly as the
hypochondriac sees his black dog, and, as in that, their form and color
were but the outward form of an inward and spiritual condition. Whatever
subsidiary interpretations the poem is capable of, its great and primary
value is as the autobiography of a human soul, of yours and mine, it may
be, as well as Dante's. In that lie its profound meaning and its
permanent force. That an exile, a proud man forced to be dependent,
should have found some consolation in brooding over the justice of God,
weighed in such different scales from those of man, in contrasting the
outward prosperity of the sinner with the awful spiritual ruin within, is
not wonderful, nay, we can conceive of his sometimes finding the wrath of
God sweeter than his mercy. But it is wonderful that out of the very
wreck of his own life he should have built this three-arched bridge,
still firm against the wash and wear of ages, stretching from the Pit to
the Empyrean, by which men may pass from a doubt of God's providence to a
certainty of his long-suffering and loving-kindness.
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