"The Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms
That it receives whatever turns to it."[186]
A tear is enough to secure the saving clasp of them.[187] It cannot be
too often repeated that Dante's Other World is not in its first
conception a place of _departed_ spirits. It is the Spiritual World,
whereof we become denizens by birth and citizens by adoption. It is true
that for artistic purposes he makes it conform so far as possible with
vulgar preconceptions, but he himself has told us again and again what
his real meaning was. Virgil tells Dante,--
"Thou shalt behold the people dolorous
Who have foregone the good of intellect."[188]
The "good of the intellect," Dante tells us after Aristotle, is
Truth.[189] He says that Virgil has led him "through the deep night of
the _truly dead_."[190] Who are they? Dante had in mind the saying of the
Apostle, "to be carnally minded is death." He says: "In man to live is to
use reason. Then if living is the being of man, to depart from that use
is to depart from being, and so to be dead. And doth not he depart from
the use of reason who doth not reason out the object of his life?" "I say
that so vile a person is dead, seeming to be alive. For we must know
_that the wicked man may be called truly dead_." "He is dead who follows
not the teacher.
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