on God. So are those of Beatrice, of Rachel, and of all the saints in Paradise. As for man on earth, he is viator, journeying on through discipline, in righteousness and beneficence, but above all in faith and hope and love of God, with his eyes of knowledge and desire set on God. God is the goal, even of the vita activa, which is also training and enlightenment. Loving his brother whom he hath seen, man may learn to love God practising himself in love. Even Christ's parable, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these," rightly interpreted, implies that the end of human charity is God: the human charity is preparation, obedience, means of enlightenment. The brother for whom Christ died that is he whom thou shalt love, and that is why thou shalt love him. In themselves human relationships are disciplinary, ancillary, as all the sciences are ancillary to Theology. Mediaeval religion is turned utterly toward God; the relationship of the soul to God is its whole matter. It is not humanitarian: not human, but divina scientia, fides, et amor, make mediaeval Christianity. Thus Dante's doctrine is mediaeval. Toward God moves the desire of the viatores in Purgatory, though they still are incidentally mindful of earth's memories. In Paradise the eyes of all the blessed are set on Him. Because of the divine love they may for a moment turn the eyes of their knowledge and desire to aid a fellow-creature; the occasion past, they fix them again on God: thus the Virgin, thus Bernard, thus Beatrice.
As a son of the Middle Ages, Dante was possessed with the spirit of symbolism. Allegory, with him, was not merely a way of expressing that which might transcend direct statement: it embodied a principle of truth. The universally accepted allegorical interpretation of Scripture justified the view that a deeper verity lay in allegorical significance than in literal meaning. This principle applied to other writings also. "Now since the literal sense [of the first canzone] is sufficiently explained, it is time to proceed to the allegorical and true interpretation."[1]
- ↑ Conv. ii. 13. The symbolism inherent in all human mental processes seems indicated by the argument of Aquinas (ante, p. 466) that the mind knows "the particular through sense and imagination; ... it must turn itself to images in order to behold the universal nature existing in the particular." This is a necessity of our half material nature.
