The danger of all science save the highest (theology) was that it led
to materialism There appears to have been a great deal of it in
Florence in the time of Dante. Its followers called themselves
Epicureans, and burn in living tombs (Inferno, X.). Dante held them in
special horror. "Of all bestialities that is the most foolish and
vile and hurtful which believes there is no other life after this."
"And I so believe, so affirm, and so am certain that we pass to
another better life after this" (Convito, Tr. II. c. 9). It is a fine
divination of Carlyle from the _Non han speranza di morte_ that "one
day it had risen sternly benign in the scathed heart of Dante that
he, wretched, never resting, worn as he was, would [should] full
surely _die_."
[153] Purgatorio, XXXI. 103.
[154] Inferno, XXXI. 5, 6.
[155] Tr. IV. c. 28.
[156] Inferno, XXV. 64-67.
[157] Purgatorio, XXXI. 123-126.
[158] Spenser, who had, like Dante, a Platonizing side, and who was
probably the first English poet since Chaucer that had read the
Commedia, has imitated the pictorial part of these passages in the
"Faerie Queene" (B. VI. c. 10). He has turned it into a compliment,
and a very beautiful one, to a living mistress.
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