daily and hourly proceeds immediately from God, is the Soul which he breathes into every single child before its birth. This is why all "contingencies" are destined to be resolved and to fall to pieces. They are given over to change, decay, and destruction. But the human soul, which emanates from God himself, is immortal and eternal. On the journey through the planets the poet's guide says to him: 1.

"The Good which moves and satisfies all the realm thou art climbing, frames its providence into a virtuous power in these great bodies; and not only are created things provided for in the mind that in itself is perfect, but they together with their means of safety. Wherefore whatsoe'er this bow doth shoot, lights as disposed to a provided end, even as a thing directed to its mark. Were this not so, the heaven thou art traversing would produce such effects as make not works of art but ruins. . . . The circling nature which is seal to the mortal wax, plies its art well, but maketh no distinction betwixt one abode and other. Wherefore it comes that Esau parts from Jacob in the seed; and from so base a father is Quirinus born he is assigned to Mars. The begotten nature would ever make its path like to its generators, did not divine provision overrule."

And in like manner he says elsewhere: 2

"Seldom does human goodness mount up through the branches; and this He wills who gives it, that from Him it may be asked for."

Are we then to believe in astrological fatalism? Are the nature, the virtues, and the vices of each in

1 Par. viii. 97-108, and 127-135.

2 Purg. vii. 121.

dividual and his lot in life unconditionally fixed by the stars under whose influence he came into the world? Do the consequences of our decisions and our actions depend on the positions of the planets?

This belief was widely held during the Middle Ages, and my hearers will remember how long it maintained itself, so long, indeed, that it has many echoes even in our modern forms of speech. Dante most emphatically contradicts it: 1_

"Ye mortals refer all causes to the Heaven, as though it swept all with it of necessity. If it were so, free choice in you would not exist, and there would be no justice in your reaping joy for good and misery for evil. The Heaven does give rise to impulses within you, I say not all of them, but if I did say all, yet light is given you for goodness and for wickedness, and free will, which, if it endure the toil in its first conflicts with the Heaven, then if it be well nurtured conquers all. To Greater Power and to Better Nature ye lie in free subjection, and that it is which doth create in you the mind o'er which the Heaven hath not charge. Wherefore if the present world goes off the track, in you lieth the cause; in you it must be sought."

We have seen the Intelligences moving the nine heavens and thereby bringing their influence to bear on the destinies of earth. Are they then confined each to his special heaven as an actual dwelling-place? -We must answer this question in the negative. Each angel enjoys, in the Empyrean, the immediate presence and sight of God, and it is only the forces radiating from him and from his apprehension of God 1 Purg. xvi. 67.

which are reflected in the stars. Nor is it otherwise with the souls of the blessed. The Heaven of highest light is the true home of all; all are permitted to gaze on the face of God, only the measure of sight is determined by their capacity and deserts, and the Heaven to which they are, so to speak, outwardly assigned,1 is a symbol of this measure.

And thus, spiritually and ultimately, the whole of this cosmography comes to be, as it were, reversed. We have been depicting the whole God-filled heaven, wherein is his city and his lofty throne, as the outermost, embracing all the others. But again, God is the sole kernel of the universe, round which the whole creation must revolve in a widening series of circles. God, says one of the Schoolmen, is indeed a circle; but a circle whose centre is everywhere and its bounding circumference nowhere. Thus, if we picture the heaven of God as stretching beyond all conceivable extension, yet may God equally be conceived as the absolutely indivisible unit, the mathematical point which occupies no space at all. The poet depicts this inverted conception, if we may so call it, thus: 2.

"A point I saw that rayed out light so keen that the sight on which it blazed must needs close itself against its piercing power. And whichever star seems smallest seen from here, had seemed a moon compared with it, as star compares with star. Perchance so close as Halo seems to gird the light that paints her when the sustaining moisture is most dense, e'en at such distance round the point a fire-circle whirled so rapidly it

1 And apparently assigned only on the special occasion when they come to meet Dante and his guide, Par. iv. 28 seq.

2 Par. xxviii. 16.

had surpassed that motion which most swiftest girds the universe; and this was by another girt around, that by a third, the third too by a fourth, by a fifth the fourth, then by a sixth the fifth. Above followed the seventh, already spread so wide that Juno's messenger, complete, had been too strait to hold it. And so the eighth and ninth; and each one moved more slow according as in number 't was more distant from the unit: and that one had its flame most clear from which the pure spark was least distant; I believe because it plunged the deepest in the truth thereof."

Thus we have followed the poet in his ascent, and have, I hope, returned unharmed to the point whence we started, I mean to your own well-grounded conception of the construction of the universe. For our last vision has been not alien from the teaching of Copernicus a vision, not indeed of the planets themselves, but of the Spirits that move them, circling around the sun, only in the place of the physical Sun the poet has placed "the Sun of the angels," God.

IV

THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE DIVINA

COMMEDIA

I. THE INFERNO.1

THE chronology of the Divine Comedy has been discussed still more elaborately than the topography and the division of sins; and all that this note attempts is to set forth in plain terms the view which approves itself to the writer. References are given to the passages which support the statements made; but there is no attempt to defend the interpretation adopted against other views.

The year of the Vision is 1300, Inf. i. 1; xxi. 112114; Purg. ii. 98, 99; Parad. ix. 40. The sun is exactly in the equinoctial point at spring, the change of his position during the action of the poem being ignored, Inf. i. 38-40; Parad. x. 7-33; and less precisely Parad. i. 37-44. The night on which Dante loses himself in the forest is the night preceding the anniversary of the death of Christ, Inf. xxi. 112–114. At some period during that night the moon is at the full, Inf. xx. 127; and (as will presently appear) a comparison of Inf. xx. 124-126 with xxi. 112-114, together with a reference to Purg. ix. 1-9, indicates that

1 The Inferno, Temple Classics, J. M. Dent & Co. Written by P. H. Wicksteed. (By permission.) For full discussion vide Dr. Edward Moore's Time References in the Divina Commedia.