comes a completed faith, hope, and love. Having done the will he can know the teaching; therefore after ascending through these seven planets, in the eight and ninth Dante learns the loftiest truths revealed t the faithful. In the eighth he is taught the importar truths of redemption, and in the ninth the celestia. mysteries. Being now faultless in character and creed, the tenth heaven receives him into the ultimate blessedness. Thus the astronomical order proved a most serviceable framework for the poet's symbolism.

V. TWO FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS.

The prevailing system of astronomy also enabled one so adept in allegory to give singularly interesting expression to two most important truths. The three shadowed stars suggest that the shadow of earthly sins falls upon heaven, in accordance with the immemorial faith of Christian thinkers that men are rewarded in the hereafter according to their fidelity here. This shadow of time upon eternity has no other influence, however, than to affect the capacity for bliss, since all dwelling in the celestial sphere are perfectly happy. "Everywhere in heaven is paradise, although the grace of the Supreme Good rains not there in one measure." 1

The four unshadowed planets he uses to teach that there are many ways by which men come to God, and that the conditions of the journey profoundly influence one's destiny. The warrior on the battlefield moves by as direct a road as the scholar in his study; the just ruler is as sure of salvation as the wan hermit in his cell. In the Terrestrial Paradise four beau

1 Par. iii. 88-90.

From "La materia della Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri dichiarata in vi tavole. Dal Duca Michelangelo Caetani di Sermoneta."

tiful ones covered Dante with their arms and led him to Beatrice as she stood by the Griffon, saying: "Here we are nymphs; in heaven we are stars," 1 symbolizing that the four cardinal virtues bring one into the presence of the truth as it is in Christ. The same teaching is here elaborated. The nymphs are now stars, typical of the virtues which must adorn him who would understand the redemptive and celestial mysteries to be revealed in the eighth and ninth heaven. The way to the ultimate beatitude is along this fourfold road, and the final felicity is shaped and colored by that virtue which is most characteristic. Thus time again projects itself into eternity, and the condition of one's mortal warfare affects his final destiny. Each of the four planets stands for one of the cardinal virtues: the Sun for prudence; red Mars for fortitude; the white Jupiter for spotless justice; and Saturn, calm and cold, is typical of temperance or contemplation. The spirits appear in that planet by which they have been most influenced, and whose virtue has been most conspicuous in their lives. They do not dwell there, but have come down to meet Dante that they may instruct him. In the Sun flame forth the spirits of the men of understanding and wisdom, the renowned scholars, and distinguished theologians, whose presence was apparent in that great orb by a lustre more brilliant than its own; in Mars the brave warriors of the faith range themselves into a fiery cross, the symbol by which they conquered; in Jupiter just rulers, moved by a concordant will, even as a single heat comes from many embers, form themselves into a colossal eagle, ensign of em1 Purg. xxxi. 106.

pire; in Saturn there shine in ineffable light the clear, radiant spirits of the contemplative, who mount to the Highest up the golden stairway of meditation.

It was clearly in Dante's thought to teach that these four virtues differ in their worth, that when one passes from prudence to fortitude he comes nearer to God, and that the saint rapt in mystic contemplation of divine truth is closer to the ultimate joy than the just ruler upon his throne. This is in perfect harmony with the deep-seated conviction of the times, in this respect so unlike our own, that a cloistered life of ecstatic communion with God is holier than one spent in active benevolence. But this ascending series of virtues involves us in a perplexity. The light of Dante's mind, as Beatrice was the glory of his soul, was St. Thomas Aquinas. He is appropriately placed in the Sun, the sphere of wisdom and truth, ranking thus below Cacciaguida in Mars, and William of Sicily and Rhipeus the Trojan in Jupiter. The most satisfactory explanation is that though justice is a nobler virtue than prudence and the just ruler walks in a diviner way than the profound scholar, yet there are different degrees of glory in the same realm,— and he who shines with the full brightness of the sphere of the Sun may be nearer God, and more filled with the light eternal, than most of those who inhabit a higher circle. That there are various gradations of bliss in the same planet is declared by Piccarda when she says that Constance "glows with all the light of our sphere."

The grand divisions mentioned are marked in the poem by the termination of the earth's shadow, - a long prologue prefacing the ascent to the Sun, — by