Hence it is that not riches, not pleasures, not honors, not length of
life, not health, not strength, not comeliness, was sung to the shepherds
from on high, but peace."[216] It was Dante's experience of the confusion
of Italy, where
"One doth gnaw the other
Of those whom one wall and one fosse shut in,"[217]
that suggested the thought of a universal umpire, for that, after all,
was to be the chief function of his Emperor. He was too wise to insist on
a uniformity of political institutions _a priori_,[218] for he seems to
have divined that the surest stay of order, as of practical wisdom, is
habit, which is a growth, and cannot be made offhand. He believed with
Aristotle that vigorous minds were intended by nature to rule,[219] and
that certain races, like certain men, are born to leadership.[220] He
calls democracies, oligarchies, and petty princedoms (_tyrannides_)
"oblique policies which drive the human race to slavery, as is patent in
all of them to one who reasons."[221] He has nothing but pity for mankind
when it has become a many-headed beast, "despising the higher intellect
irrefragable in reason, the lower which hath the face of
experience."[222] He had no faith in a turbulent equality asserting the
divine right of _I'm as good as you_.
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