Dante Alighieri

“ As a pilgrim, who goes along a path where he never journeyed before, may believe every house that he sees in the distance to be his inn, and, not finding it to be so, may direct his belief to the next, and so travel on from house to house until he reach the inn, even so our Soul, as soon as it enters the untrodden path of this life, directs its eyes to its supreme good, the sum of its day's travel to good; and therefore whatever thing it sees which seems to have in itself some goodness, it thinks to be the supreme good. ”

“ And then where it says: "Who seeks where his Salvation lies, Must gaze intently in this Lady's eyes;" the eyes of this Lady are her demonstrations, which look straight into the eyes of the intellect, enamour the Soul, and set it free from the trammels of circumstance. Oh, most sweet and ineffable forms, swift stealers of the human mind, which appear in these demonstrations, that is, in the eyes of Philosophy, when she discourses to her faithful friends! Verily in you is Salvation, whereby he is made blessed who looks at you, and is saved from the death of Ignorance and Vice. ”

“ Therefore, we ought not to blame the man because his body, from his birth, may be ugly, since it was not in his power to make it beautiful; but our blame should fall on the evil disposition of the matter whereof he is made, whose source was a defect of Nature. And even so we ought not to praise the man for the beauty of form which he may have from his birth, for he was not the maker of it; but we ought to praise the artificer, that is, Human Nature, who shapes her material into so much beauty when she is not impeded. ”

“ And as the rapidly increasing fire must of necessity be seen, it being impossible for fire to remain hidden, the desire seized me to speak of the Love that I could no longer restrain within me. And although I could receive but little help from my own counsel, yet, inasmuch as, either from the will of Love or from my own promptness, I drew nigh to it many times, I deliberated, and I saw that, in speaking of Love, there could be no more beautiful nor more profitable speech than that which commends the beloved person. ”

“ And thus I say, for like reasons, that these men vilify the Italian tongue, and glorify that of Provence.
The third faction against our Mother Tongue springs from greed of vainglory. There are many who, by describing certain things in some other language, and by praising that language, deem themselves to be more worthy of admiration than if they described them in their own. And undoubtedly to learn well a foreign tongue is deserving of some praise for intellect; but it is a blameable thing to applaud that language beyond truth, to glorify one's self for such an acquisition. ”

“ And forasmuch as Mercy is the Mother of Benevolence, those who know how, do always liberally offer their good wealth to the true poor, and are like a living stream, whose water cools the before-named natural thirst. I, then, who sit not at the blessed table, but having fled from the pasture of the common herd, lie at the feet of those who sit there and gather up what falls from them, by the sweetness which I find in that which I collect little by little, I know the wretched life of those whom I have left behind me ”

“ Hence, if our thought, not only that which fails in a perfect intellect, but also that which in a perfect intellect attains its end, is the conqueror of speech, we are not to blame, because we are not the makers of it. And therefore I prove that I do truthfully excuse myself when I say: "Blame wit and words, whose force Fails to tell all that I hear Love discourse;" for, sufficiently clear ought to appear the good-will, which alone we should regard in respect to merits that are human. ”

“ Oh, ineffable and incomprehensible Wisdom of God, which in Heaven above didst prepare, so long beforehand, for Thy advent into Syria and here in Italy at the same time! And oh, most foolish and vile beasts who pasture in the guise of men—you who presume to speak against our Faith, and profess to know, as ye spin and dig, what God has ordained with so much forethought—curses be on you and your presumption, and on him who believes in you! ”

“ And since, in the goodness of Human Nature, Reason gives us proof of the Divine, it follows that, naturally, the Human Soul is united therewith by the path of the spirit so much the sooner, and so much the more firmly, in proportion as those good qualities appear more perfect; which appearance of perfection is achieved according as the power of the Soul to produce a good impression is strong and clear, or is trammelled and obscure. And this union is that which we call Love, whereby it is possible to know that which is within the Soul, by looking at those whom it loves in the world without. ”

“ Who lives not again in the good King of Castile, or Saladin, or the good Marquis of Monferrat, or the good Count of Toulouse, or Beltramo dal Bornio, or Galasso da Montefeltro, when mention is made of their noble acts of courtesy and liberality? Certainly not only those who would do the same willingly, had they the power, but those even who would die before they would do it, bear love to the memory of these good men. ”

“ We, to whom the remembrance of the ancestors of Dardanus has not come, shall we say that Dardanus living was vile, and dead a Noble? And is not this contrary to the legend which says that Dardanus was the son of Jupiter (for such is the fable, which one ought not to regard whilst disputing philosophically) ; and yet if the adversary might wish to find support in the fable, certainly that which the fable veils destroys his arguments. And thus it is proved that the argument, which asserted that oblivion is the cause of Nobility, is false. ”

“ Certainly I do not intend to cleanse all, but only those parts where the ears of Reason are not entirely overcome; that is, I intend to lift up again those in whom some little light of Reason still lives through the goodness of their nature; the others need only as much care as the brute beasts: wherefore it seems to me that it would not be a less miracle to lead back to Reason him in whom it is entirely extinct than to bring back to Life him who has been four days in the grave. ”

“ And O, admirable and benign Sower of the seed, who dost only wait for human nature to prepare the ground for Thee wherein to sow! O, blessed are those who till the land to fit it to receive such seed!
Here it is to be known that the first noble shoot which germinates from this seed that it may be fruitful, is the desire or appetite of the mind, which in Greek is called "hormen;" and if this is not well cultivated and held upright by good habits, the seed is of little worth, and it would be better if it had not been sown. ”

“ Amongst the men of one nation there is the equality of the native tongue; and because one knows not how to use it like the other, therefrom springs envy. The envious man then argues, not blaming himself for not knowing how to speak like him who does speak as he should, but he blames that which is the material of his work, in order to rob, by depreciating the work on that side, him who does speak, of honour and fame; like him who should find fault with the blade of a sword, not in order to throw blame on the sword, but on the whole work of the master. ”

“ The fear of shame moves me; and I am moved by the desire to give instruction which others truly are unable to give. I fear shame for having followed passion so ardently, as he may conceive who reads the afore-named Songs, and sees how greatly I was ruled by it; which shame ceases entirely by the present speech of myself, which proves that not passion but virtue may have been the moving cause. ”

“ It is now evident to sound minds that the words of those men are vain, that is, without a crumb or particle of Truth; and I say sound not without cause. Our intellect may be said to be sound or unsound. And I say intellect for the noble part of our Soul, which it is possible to designate by the common word "Mind." It may be called sound or healthy, when it is not obstructed in its action by sickness of mind or body, which is to know what things are, as Aristotle expresses it in the third chapter on the Soul. ”

“ And this is most false according to the Philosopher, according to our Faith, which cannot lie, according to the Law and ancient belief of the Gentiles. For although the Philosopher does not assert the succession from one first man, yet he would have one essential being to be in all men, which cannot possibly have different origins. And Plato would have that all men depend upon one idea alone, and not on more or many, which is to give them only one beginning. And undoubtedly Aristotle would laugh very loudly if he heard of two species to be made out of the Human Race, as of horses and asses ”

“ There were then many ancient philosophers, the first and the chief of whom was Zeno, who saw and believed this end of human life to be solely a rigid honesty, that is to say, rigid without regard to any one in following Truth and Justice, to show no sorrow, to show no joy, to have no sense of any passion whatever. And they defined thus this honest uprightness, as that which, without bearing fruit, is to be praised for reason of itself. ”

“ And thus, in order that a man may be a philosopher, it must be love to Wisdom which makes one of the sides friendly; it must be study and care which make the other side also friendly, so that familiarity and manifestation of benevolence may spring up between them; because without love and without study one cannot be called a philosopher, but there must be both the one and the other.
And as friendship for the sake of pleasure given or for profit is not true friendship, but accidental, as the Ethics demonstrate, so philosophy for delight or profit is not true philosophy, but accidental. ”

“ It germinates, then, as the Vegetative, as the Sensitive, and as the Rational, and it branches out through the virtues or powers of all of them, guiding all those to their perfection, and sustaining itself in them always, even to the point when, with that part of our Soul which never dies, it returns to the highest and the most glorious Sower of the seed in Heaven ”

“ This is the error concerning Human Goodness, which, inasmuch as it is sown in us by Nature, ought to be termed Nobility; which error was so strongly entrenched by evil custom and by weak intellect that the opinion of almost all people was falsified or deceived by it; and from the false opinion sprang false judgments, and from false judgments sprang unjust reverence and unjust contempt; wherefore the good were held in vile disdain, and the evil were honoured and exalted. ”

“ Good report is the first born of kindly thought in the mind of the friend; which the mind of the foe, although it may receive the seed, conceives not.
That mind which gives birth to it in the first place, so to make its gift more fair, as by the charity of friendship, keeps not within bounds of truth, but passes beyond them. When one does that to adorn a tale, he speaks against his conscience; when it is charity that causes him to pass the bounds, he speaks not against conscience. ”

“ Though we have not any perception of them from which our knowledge can begin, yet some light from their most vivacious essence shines upon our intellect, inasmuch as we perceive the above-mentioned reasons and many others, even as he who has the eyes closed affirms the air to be luminous, because of some little brightness or ray of light which passes through the pupils; as it is with the bat, for not otherwise are the eyes of the intellect closed, so long as the soul is bound and prisoned by the organs of our body. ”

“ Modesty is a shrinking, a drawing-back of the mind from unseemly things, with the fear of falling into them; even as we see in virgins and in good women, and in adolescent or young men, who are so modest that not only when they are tempted to do wrong, and urged to do so, but even when some fancied joy flashes across the mind, the feeling is depicted in the face, which either grows pale with fear, or flushes rosy-red. ”

“ Among those works the Vita Nuova and the Convito have a distinct place, as leading up to the great masterpiece. In the New Life, Man starts on his career with human love that points to the divine. In the Banquet, he passes to mature life and to love of knowledge that declares the power and the love of God in the material and moral world about us and within us. In the Divine Comedy, the Poet passes to the world to come, and rises to the final union of the love for Beatrice, the beatifier, with the glory of the Love of God. ”

“ And this is that desire which always makes every pleasure appear incomplete, for there is no joy or pleasure so great in this life that it can quench the thirst in our Soul, for always the desire for that perfection remains in the Mind. ”

“ Having proved, then, that the goodness of a thing is loved the more the more it is innate, the more it is to be loved and commended for itself, it remains to see what that goodness is. And we see that, in all speech, to express a thought well and clearly is the thing most to be admired and commended. This, then, is its first goodness. And forasmuch as this is in our Mother Tongue, as is made evident in another chapter, it is manifest that it has been the cause of the love which I bear to it; since, as has been said, "Goodness is the producer of Love." ”