which we meet in Dante results. Sin is a burden which man imposes upon himself and the centre of the universe,

"il punto,

Al qual si traggon d'ogni parte i pesi,"

which is to be understood not only in the physical but in the moral sense as well. The heavier the burden of sin, the deeper is man dragged down by it. Without metaphor, the more depraved man, the greater his estrangement from God, and that in time no less than in eternity. God and the devil, the prince of light and the prince of darkness, are the two extreme antagonistic principles, the latter therefore held exactly in the centre of the universe by his own heaviness. Between these two extremes man, according to the path he chooses, approaches the one or the other. The approach will be the greater the more decidedly and recklessly he pursues the path once chosen; but if man remains standing, undecided between the two, then in all eternity he will be in suspense. His condition is the faithful mirror of his mode of thinking and acting and its necessary consequence. A popular legend tells of men so depraved that even the devil refuses them admission to his realm, and they are forced to wander about after death without finding rest. As if man were capable of becoming more corrupt than devils! The poet, too, knows of such as are excluded both from heaven and from hell. These, however, are not in his estimation the most depraved of villains; they are the lukewarm ones, sinners, whose guilt in the opinion of the world is simply weakness of character, not sin. For these the poet has created a separate region. Their habitation is on this side of the circles of hell-indeed, this side of Limbo.

With a few strokes of the brush the guilt of the inhabitants of Limbo is depicted. Wretched souls, passing their life without blame and without praise, lacking the resolution, the vigor of mind, and the energy to do either good or evil. Like the angels of the legend, they did not take sides in the war of the Titans, but remained indolently gazing on the eternal conflict between light and darkness-vulgar souls, unable to take an interest in this struggle for higher blessings. Their life is no animated life, but simply the existence of a plant-turning as the wind blows, only to avoid being disturbed in that comfortable repose which

they strive for as the highest blessedness; following any standard, because in their eyes principles, opinions, and convictions are nothing but fine words, empty phrases. Lukewarm-neither cold nor warm, neither good nor bad; cowards, men of pleasure.

And now their punishment! The inner indecision is visibly represented by the suspense between heaven and hell, by the exclusion from both places. But they are placed in the entrance to hell-that is, infinitely nearer hell than heaven. Their state of suspense is eternal; they can never escape from it—non hanno speranza di morte. This, too, in a double sense: eternal their inner indecision, eternal their hanging between heaven and hell, as it were. And this suspense is their worst torture, for, as their disposition and conduct are unnatural, so also is their condition unnatural. It is in the nature of man that he must decide, but the desire is also in his nature to exist in stable and fixed situations. More tormenting far than the suffering caused by misforfortune that has actually come to pass is the suspense of fearful and uncertain expectation. Therefore do these wretches feel envious of every other lot. Better to be a whole than only a half. The coward is apt to envy any one who, be it in the one direction or in the other, shows decision. But his very slothfulness and cowardice are the hindrances to his ever becoming more resolute. They fear to miss that sweet repose which is the ideal of their aspiration if they should emerge from their indecision. This is their low-mindedness, which will not struggle, or fight, or exert itself, or sacrifice aught. And the low-mindedness is low life also-vita bassa. What is within them is here made externally visible. As the baseness of their disposition, so also the falseness of their calculation. The very thing which they seek-comfortable repose-they do not find, because in their blindness-cieca vita-they pursue a wrong course to reach true repose. He only can attain repose who, braving the wind, stands firm as a tower, whose spire does not tremble though the winds rage ever so wildly ("Purgatorio," v, 14, 15). Those wretches, however, too indolent to brave the wind, out of baseness accommodate themselves to and turn with the wind; they follow any standard. But, as the wind is subject to constant change, they are forced, instead of enjoying repose, ever restlessly to turn in a circle, ever to follow the standard as it moves round in a circle. Such natures

flee and avoid, of course, as far as possible, heavy cares and great suffering. But baseness, too, and cowardice have their sufferings and cares-small ones, to be sure, only gadflies and wasps; but for these people they are no less afflicting than great and heavy ones for strong, determined natures. Much more keenly do the inhabitants of Limbo feel the sting of the gadflies and wasps than the high-minded Farinato the fire of his coffin. In base and paltry cares their energy is consumed; the stings of the insects cause their faces to drip with blood. How great their cowardice is clear from the fact that the slight pain of the sting of the gadfly is sufficient to make them dissolve in tears. The loathsome worms at last, which suck up the blood mixed with tears, are an image at once of the base creature and his base objects, upon which are wasted his vitality, symbolized by the blood-and his cares of which his tears are the emblem.

Too much has, perhaps, been said about these sinners, of whom Dante's guide says: "Not a word of these; look and pass. Nevertheless, the poet himself, after hearing this admonition, employs six triplets in speaking of them.

Beyond, on the opposite shore of Acheron, in the first circle of hell, we meet nobler beings than those we leave here. Children, women, wise men, poets, heroes-human beings who have no other fault than that they have not heard of Christ, not believed in him, which is the only way that leads to God. Even though they have gained merit, this does not suffice, for "No one can come to the Father except through the Son." Their life is a constant longing. In the temporal state it is a longing with hope, but in eternity it is a longing without hope. The presumption is here, on the one hand, that the innate longing of man for the infinite cannot be satisfied by ethical means alone, but that there must be resort to religion; on the other hand, that he who has not found salvation in the temporal state through scorn of honest search will not find it in all eternity. And here the influence of the dogmatics of his church and of his time upon our poet is unmistakable. Not to sin (Inf., iv, 34) and to be lost, nevertheless (Inf., iv, 41), is an idea which has in truth been worked out by the too exclusive dogmatics of the Church, but which correct thinking finds it impossible to follow. Here is a point where it might be difficult to trace the revelation of the

true spiritual meaning of the future life on the part of our poet, and it is easy to understand that a restoration of the dwellers in this circle has been thought of, in spite of the decided senza speme (iv, 42). The inner state of this class of human beings is indeed appropriately depicted. An eternal search for something unknown; a sighing for something to allay the thirst of the human heart. No sunlight, but at best the dim light of a fire. The first, as is known, comes from above; the latter, however, only lights a hemisphere of darkness, and that from below. Therefore the first is the appropriate symbol of revelation, the latter the symbol of the natural light of reason. On the whole, they have quite an agreeable place of abode; these inhabitants of Limbo rejoice in fresh, green meadows, a noble castle, a light, and the choicest of society. Still the abode is in hell. One thing they lack-blessedness. We repeat, if we accept the Christian premise, that the thirst for God is innate in the human soul, and that the soul can only become happy in God, the inner state of these beings is appropriately described. On the other hand, we can hardly admit that here too the unalterable life of eternity is meant. The moral law postulates that the honest seeker shall find-shall find hereafter-if the proper opportunity was not given him on earth. And the philosophical belief in immortality also implies infinite development in the hereafter-not stagnant life.

With the inhabitants of the second circle (Inf., v) the relation between sin and punishment is only too apparent. Sensual passion, to whose service man is addicted, becomes a mighty storm, which seizes the souls, throws them hither and thither in torment, and dashes them together. The throwing hither and thither a symbol of the inconstancy of the voluptuous, the dashing against each other a symbol of jealousy-which so easily makes its appearance in people of this stamp, and so easily causes them to collide. No light in their unquiet habitation, for these "wicked souls" will not be lighted up either by the light of revelation or by the natural light of reason. Desire obeying no law but that of its own will-il talento-to which they have subjected reason, has made them the will-less sport of their own arbitrariness. It is a significant touch, furthermore, that the storm is hushed the moment our poet addresses two of the sinners (v, 96), for the storm of passion, too, may be temporarily silenced by the presence

and the speech of an earnest man. Nor must we overlook the fact that this circle of hell is by no means an abode of unalloyed torment; on the contrary, it harbors joys for its inhabitants within its pale. To these souls is granted the highest wish of those who truly and fervidly love-to be forever united with the object of their love, never to suffer separation. Francesca and Paolo are united in eternal embrace (v, 135). To be sure, their joy is not untroubled, such as that which the inhabitants of heaven enjoy. An infinitely bitter drop is mingled with it. For, though the lover desires most fervently to be united with his beloved, he desires no less that the beloved shall enjoy blessedness, shall partake of eternal happiness. But here the sight of the beloved tortured, suffering, forever unhappy, is continually before him, and that sight reproaches him, inasinuch as he is forced to say to himself that he is in part the cause of the unhappiness and the suffering of the beloved one. So even the joy of eternal union bears the character of hellish torment. Silvio Pellico has most strikingly, in my opinion, expressed the two sides of this situation when he puts in dying Francesca's mouth the lament:

"Eternal torments,

Alas! await us below there!"

while Paolo expires with the consolation :

"Eternal,

Too, will be our love."

The congruence in the case of the inhabitants of the third circle is not so obvious, but does not present any particular difficulties. Here we have to do with the gluttons, with people "whose God is their belly, and who glory in their shame, who mind earthly things" (Philipp. iii, 19). The type of these sinners is the monster Cerberus, the guardian of their circle. He has three mouths, for one does not suffice to still his insatiable appetite. So, too, are the people who are guarded by him-beings whose most valuable and precious organ is their throat, who would like to be all gullet, that they might the better pander to their insatiable greed-human beings who would divest themselves of their humanity to clothe themselves with the purely animal nature, as it appears especially in the dog. For this reason they are guarded by the three-throated