III

Nè creator nè creatura maiCominciò el, figliuol, fu sanza amore ...suggests a comparison of Dante’s psychology with that of the most modern school. In an age when (as a glance at Fra Salimbene’s pages will demonstrate)—pages written, it must be remembered, for the eye of a Sister of the Order of Sta Clara!—something more than Elizabethan broadnessof speech was not uncommon, Dante pours out volumes of prose and verse, every line of which may be said to be suitablepour les jeunes filles. He would scarcely have subscribed to that domination of the Sex-instinct which is an axiom of the Freudian psychology. In the lines referred to above he more or less adumbrates the doctrine of “Libido”; but it does not occur to him to label that psychic force with so doubtfully reputable a name as “Libido.” The noble title “Amor” is for him, as for earlier philosophers, the more appropriate one.It would, of course, be absurd to credit Dante with the place of a pioneer of the twentieth century psychology of the Unconscious, which had its roots in the Psychical Research of F. W. Myers and his friends, and sprouted up to visible life and growth so recently under the hands of the Viennese Freud and the Switzer Jung. But it would probably not be too much to say, in view of his remarkably intelligent interest in mental processes, and especially in the phenomena of dreams and of the border-land between sleeping and waking, that, given the assets and the advantages of our modern thinkers, he would have taken no mean place among psychologists of the modern type.FromInf.i. 10—Tant ’era pien di sonno—toPar.xxxiii. 58, we find this interest displayed; and before we pass on to consider his teaching on the more human aspect of Education, the personal relation between Teacher and Pupil, it may be worth while to direct attention to one or two passages which emphasise this point.In the 30th Canto ofInferno[218]he uses as a simile that significant situation in which the dreamer hopes he is dreaming—Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,Che sognando desidera sognare ...In another passage[219]he sketches a case where the wakened dreamer forgets the “dream-cognition,” but is still dominated by the “affect”—... Colui che somniando vedeChe dopo il sogno la passione impressaRimane, e l’ altro a la mente non riede....Ere he quits the Terrace of Accidie, Dante falls asleep, and here he describes[220]in vivid and picturesque language the process of going to sleep, when thought follows thought in more or less inconsequent fashion—Novo pensiero dentro a me si miseDel qual più altri nacquero, e diversi;E tanto d’un in altro vaneggiai,Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,E ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai.At the opening of the next Canto[221]comes the dream—dream of the two symbolic Ladies—and the awakening. The dreamer is apparently roused by the intensity of a dream-stench; but his awakening is due as a matter of fact to the arresting voice of Virgil, whose person is projected into the “manifest content” of the dream a few lines earlier,[222]in the cry of the “Donna Santa”—O Virgilio, o Virgilio, chi è questa?“Three times,” says Dante’s Guide, “have I called you. Get up, and come along!”... Il buon maestro, “Almen treVoci t’ ho messe,” dicea, “Surgi e viene!”In the last Canto ofPurgatoryproper[223]we have another picture of a going to sleep and an awaking. The sleepiness has been induced by a sort of natural self-hypnotism, the poet’s gaze steadily fixed on a few bright stars seen throughthe confined opening between the cliffs as he lies on the rocky stair.Poco potea parer li del di fori;Ma, per quel poco, vedev’ io le stelleDi lor solere e più chiare e maggioriSì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle,Mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente,Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle.This time the awakening is not sudden or violent.[224]After the altogether lovely dream of Lia—the sublimation of Dante’s desire, suggested, or coloured, by the natural anticipations of one on the threshold of the earthly Paradise—he wakes up quite naturally, his sleep “breaking from him” with the breaking dawn.[225]Le tenebre fuggian da tutti latiE il sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’ mi.Dante’s analysis of Dreams was naturally relative to the knowledge and tendency of his day. The presaging quality of Dreams—... Il sonno che soventeAnzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle;like the proverbial belief that the truest dreams are those that come before dawn—... Presso al mattin del ver si sogna[226]is not for him the fruit of scientific psycho-analysis; but rather the unscientific or quasi-scientific deduction of untold generations of men on whom the dreams that “came true” left a far deeper impress than the large majority that proved fallacious.Dante was, however, a real psychologist of his own time and date, as many qualities of his thought and interesttestify; and his discerning interest in the dream-consciousness supplies a definite link between the thinkers of the Trecento and our modern Masters.IIIIt must not, however, be supposed that the somewhat specialised comparison of Dante’s purgatorial scheme with the Montessori Method sketched above[227]by any means exhausts the educational principles of thePurgatorio; still less that it covers the whole area of such principles enshrined in theDivine Comedy. The old-fashioned relation between Master and Pupil has still something to be said for it. The personal element cannot be eliminated, however great may be the need—especially in certain stages of self-restraint and self-effacement. This personal relation, in its permanently important aspects, is beautifully figured in the relation between Dante as learner and Virgil, Beatrice, and Statius as teachers.Benedetto Croce[228]draws attention to the frequentIntramesse didascalichewhich mark the XXIst and following Cantos of thePurgatorio—notably the discourse of Statius on “generation” inPurg.xxv. “This poetry,” he says, “breathes throughout the spirit of the Master who knows, and desires to make clear the idea he is expounding; who stoops down towards the pupil to embrace him and lift him up towards the Truth.”[229]Beatrice, again, as Croce points out,[230]taking Virgil’s place in the journey through the skies, is like an elder sister patiently schooling her younger brother.She helps him to overcome his prejudices, to solve his problems, to conquer his doubts; now turning upon him the eye of a fond mother nursing a delirious child,[231]now laughing him out of his “childish notions,” the charm of her resplendent beauty and the illumination of her smile giving just that touch of romance to their relations that suggests the final stage of the transfiguration of the half-earthly love of theVita Nuovainto something wholly celestial. But the type of this relation between Master and Pupil is most surely and most prominently drawn in that which subsists all through the first two cantiche between Virgil and Dante.[232]“Mia scuola,” Virgil calls this relation in the beautiful scene with Statius;[233]and a striking feature of this “School,” recurring in the same Canto[234]and elsewhere, is the close, intimate, easy and even playful mutual understanding between Teacher and Pupil. To this point we shall return; but first a word may be said on the sterner aspect of Education, from the pupils’ point of view.Granted that the “Primrose Path” is the only appropriate one for infant steps to toddle on; that path itself has its ups and downs—slight gradients from the adult point of view, but for the infant involving a demand for real effort and adventure. And the end of man—our human Good—lies above the zone where primroses bloom, on the heights: as Tasso sings—... In cima all’ erto e faticoso colleDella virtù è riposto il nostro bene.[235]Let us glance, then, at what Dante has to say about the sterner side of Education—the necessary sacrifices that must be made for Liberty—and about the responsibilitiesof the teacher in his relation to the pupil whom he would guide up to freedom of mind and soul.To the former we have already referred above (p. 102) in connection with the Montessori principle of the joyous facing of difficulties. The hard initial battle[236]is symbolically represented by the place which theInfernoholds in Dante’s quest of Liberty. For him indeed the “prime battaglie” are the hardest. No essential routine or inevitable drudgery which beset the path of learning can match in sheer distastefulness the weary horror of that first part of the Poet’s journey, of which his self-pitying anticipations are recorded in the lovely and pathetic opening lines of the second canto: “The day was departing, and the darkened air was relieving from their labours the animals on earth, and I was preparing all alone to sustain the struggle alike of the journey and of my piteous thoughts.”Lo giorno se n’ andava, e l’ aere brunoToglieva gli animai che sono in terraDalle fatiche loro; e io sol unoM’ apparecchiava a sostener la guerraSì del cammino e sì della pietate.[237]The youthful scholar, in his quest for knowledge and truth and the freedom that is truth’s guerdon, has not, as a rule, to face this literal isolation in drudgery and painfulness. For him the social instinct and the companionship of fellow-victims, not to say the healthy stimulus of friendly rivalry and competition, are present to lighten his burden and sweeten his lot. Yet each, after all, has to tackle the drudgery and the difficulties for himself. There is no Royal Road. The Master may spur him on with the vision of the “gladsome mountain which is the origin and source of all joy.”Dilettoso monteCh’ è principio e cagion di tutta gioia;may encourage him to face the flames by the thought of the welcoming smile of Beatrice on the other side: “as you tempt a child with an apple!” “Mark you, my son, this barrier separates thee from Beatrice.”Or vedi, figlio:Tra Beatrice e te è questo muro;[238]but, none the less, the grim journey has to be undertaken, the distasteful plunge to be made. It is largely the Teacher’s attitude and example that make this effort possible; that evoke the manly spirit in the pupil, and encourage him to persevere in face of difficulties.All this is recognised by the best modern theory and practice. “The New Teaching,” says Professor Adams,[239]“does not seek to free the pupils from effort”—we have seen that this is really the case, even in its extremest form of Montessorianism, with its individualistic charter of Child-liberty—“not ... to free the pupils from effort, but to encourage them to strenuous work”; it “does not seek to get rid of drudgery, but to make it tolerable by giving it a meaning, and shewing its relation to the whole learning process in school, and to the whole process of living in the world.” This is exactly Virgil’s attitude towards Dante. He is, first of all, alert to cheer and encourage him in moments of special difficulty. He encourages Dante both by example and by precept to mount the grisly back of the monster Geryon, their sole means of descent into the Abyss[240]; and later, when the flame has to be faced before entering the Earthly Paradise,[241]he reminds him of the success of that past experiment of faith, much in the manner of the noble self-encouragement of that Homeric hero, who, known to Dante onlyat second-hand, yet captured his imagination. “Be of good cheer, my heart, we have suffered worse things ere this.”τέτλαθι δὴ κραδίη, καὶ κύντερον ἄλλος ποτ’ ἔτλης.[242]Or again, when at the foot of the mountain Dante is dismayed at its steepness, the Master explains: “It is ever easier as you ascend.”[243]When Dante is frightened as the Mountain trembles (Purg.xx. 135) Virgil interposes with a call to confidence—Non dubbiar mentr’ io ti guidoBut Virgil not only encourages; he explains. From time to time he pauses with the double object of giving his companion a breathing-space and of enheartening him by an exposition of the end and purpose of the drudgery—of the whole scheme, of which the experience they are now undergoing is an integral and necessary part. Thus he expounds to his disciple the topography of Hell when they have passed within the rampart of the City of Dis, and before they begin the steep and terrible descent, and encounter the Minotaur.[244]Again, after the uncomfortable ordeal of the suffocating fumes on the Terrace of Wrath, he diverts his pupil’s attention with a sketch of the order and inner meaning of the purgatorial terraces, and explains how Sin, in all its deadly forms, is just “disordered Love.”[245]And we may note in passing how this postponement of the explanation and the detailed scheme till the movement of learning is well on its course, is itself typical of the New Teaching,[246]and grounded on sound psychological principles. Virgil supplies, indeed, in the first Canto of theInferno, a summary forecast of the journey, but does not sit down at the beginning and burden his Pupil’s mind with an elaboration of details. Nor can we leave the lecture on “Disordered Love” ofPurg.xvii. without drawing attention to the ideal relations of Teacher and Pupil depicted in the following Canto, and especially to the masterly way in which Virgil suggests ever fresh problems to Dante’s mind and draws him on with an increasing “thirst to know.”[247]The liberty which Education “goes seeking,” and in which its nobler forms live and move as in a bracing atmosphere, demands some sacrifice alike from Teacher and from Pupil. From the Pupil, especially in its earlier middle stages, it demands a degree of submissiveness and docility, and courage and perseverance to face distasteful drudgery; from the Teacher, that self-restraint of which we have already spoken—yet not mere self-effacement. Like the Divine Master, he must “begin to do and to teach.”[248]He must be a fellow-pilgrim, sharing the toils of the road, and over the roughest places a leader, even as Virgil volunteers to go first where the grim descent begins into the “cieco mondo”: “I will go first and thou shalt follow me.”Io sarò primo, e tu sarai secondo.[249]As fellow-pilgrim, he will not hesitate to let the Pupil witness something of his distress. The Master girds himself to the descent pallid with sympathetic suffering—tutto smorto[250]—nor does he hide the tokens of shame and confusion when he becomes conscious that he has beena party to an unwarranted delay.[251]And we note the effect of this frankness on the Pupil—an enhancement of loyal admiration for the Master; and, for his own conscience, a more delicate perception of moral values: “He appeared to me self-reproached. O noble, stainless, conscience, how bitter to thy taste is a trifling fault!”El mi parea da se stesso rimorso;O dignitosa coscienza e netta,Come t’ è picciol fallo amaro morso!Even so pleads the spirit of the New Teaching.[252]Let not the Teacher “put on airs of omniscience and solemnity. He must be a part of the gay company; he must not mind ‘giving himself away,’ he must be a human being, not a wooden stick; gladly must he learn, and then he will gladly teach.” Thus Virgil moves in Dante’s company as a fellow-learner, not omniscient, not infallible; ever ready to confess with frankness his own limitations, and to own up to his mistakes. In this spirit he apologises to Pier delle Vigne[253]for the inconsiderate act to which he was forced owing to his inability to convince Dante through the medium of his own verses. In the same spirit he gives place to Nessus when a description is needed of Nessus’ own region of the Inferno, reversing hisdictumabout the original descent: “Regard him (Nessus) as thy prime authority, and me as secondary.”Questi ti sia or primo, e io secondo.[254]In like manner he gives way to Statius when an explanation is wanted of the emaciation of spirits no longer subject to bodily hunger,[255]and leads Dante to expect from Beatrice the completion of his own careful but yet not fully satisfying exposition of a heavenly matter: “And if this argument of mine doth not appease thycravings thou wilt see Beatrice, and she will fully relieve thee of this and every other desire.”E se la mia ragion non ti disfamaVedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamenteTi torrà questa e ciascun altra brama.[256]Dante in his portrait of Virgil reminds us that the quest of Truth demands “truth in the inward parts,” that a humble and limpid sincerity is essential. Finally, he shews us this humility transfigured into a Divine self-effacement, where the elder Poet hands over his disciple entirely into his own guidance and that of Beatrice, in humble acknowledgement of his own limitations.[257]This act of self-effacement has indeed been in his mind from the first. When the time shall come for Dante’s ascent to the realms of thebeate genti, “a spirit more worthy than I shall be appointed thereto, with whom I will leave thee at my departure; for that Potentate who reigns in heaven above, because I was rebellious against His law, wills not that any by my guidance should enter His city.”Anima fia a ciò più di me degna;Con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire;Chè quello imperador che là su regnaPerch’ io fu’ ribellante a la sua leggeNon vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna.[258]And so Virgil’s work is done, and the Teacher shews himself sublimest in the last act. “The hardest lesson,” says the apostle of the New Teaching, “for a clever teacher to learn, is to let a clever pupil be clever in his own way,” nor “has a teacher been really successful” until “he has, by skilful preparation, enabled his pupil to do without him.”[259]This final self-effacement of the Teacher, with its corollary, the achievement of self-masteryand self-determination in the Pupil—the achievement of thatliberty of soulwhich is the supreme aim of the pilgrimage—is best described in Virgil’s matchless words of farewell, which we may now quote in their fulness. His “skilful preparation” has all led up to this ... to make itself dispensable! “By force of wit and skill I have conducted thee hither; henceforward let thine own pleasure be thy guide; from both the steep and the narrow ways thou art now free.... No longer await either word or sign from me; free, sound, and upright is thy will, and it would be amiss not to do its bidding; wherefore over thyself I invest thee with supreme control.”Tratto t’ ho qui con ingegno e con arte;Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce;Fuor sei de l’ erte vie, fuor sei de l’ arte....Non aspettar mio dir più, nè mio cenno,Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrioE fallo fora non far a suo senno:Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.[260]

Nè creator nè creatura maiCominciò el, figliuol, fu sanza amore ...

Nè creator nè creatura mai

Cominciò el, figliuol, fu sanza amore ...

suggests a comparison of Dante’s psychology with that of the most modern school. In an age when (as a glance at Fra Salimbene’s pages will demonstrate)—pages written, it must be remembered, for the eye of a Sister of the Order of Sta Clara!—something more than Elizabethan broadnessof speech was not uncommon, Dante pours out volumes of prose and verse, every line of which may be said to be suitablepour les jeunes filles. He would scarcely have subscribed to that domination of the Sex-instinct which is an axiom of the Freudian psychology. In the lines referred to above he more or less adumbrates the doctrine of “Libido”; but it does not occur to him to label that psychic force with so doubtfully reputable a name as “Libido.” The noble title “Amor” is for him, as for earlier philosophers, the more appropriate one.

It would, of course, be absurd to credit Dante with the place of a pioneer of the twentieth century psychology of the Unconscious, which had its roots in the Psychical Research of F. W. Myers and his friends, and sprouted up to visible life and growth so recently under the hands of the Viennese Freud and the Switzer Jung. But it would probably not be too much to say, in view of his remarkably intelligent interest in mental processes, and especially in the phenomena of dreams and of the border-land between sleeping and waking, that, given the assets and the advantages of our modern thinkers, he would have taken no mean place among psychologists of the modern type.

FromInf.i. 10—Tant ’era pien di sonno—toPar.xxxiii. 58, we find this interest displayed; and before we pass on to consider his teaching on the more human aspect of Education, the personal relation between Teacher and Pupil, it may be worth while to direct attention to one or two passages which emphasise this point.

In the 30th Canto ofInferno[218]he uses as a simile that significant situation in which the dreamer hopes he is dreaming—

Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,Che sognando desidera sognare ...

Qual è colui che suo dannaggio sogna,

Che sognando desidera sognare ...

In another passage[219]he sketches a case where the wakened dreamer forgets the “dream-cognition,” but is still dominated by the “affect”—

... Colui che somniando vedeChe dopo il sogno la passione impressaRimane, e l’ altro a la mente non riede....

... Colui che somniando vede

Che dopo il sogno la passione impressa

Rimane, e l’ altro a la mente non riede....

Ere he quits the Terrace of Accidie, Dante falls asleep, and here he describes[220]in vivid and picturesque language the process of going to sleep, when thought follows thought in more or less inconsequent fashion—

Novo pensiero dentro a me si miseDel qual più altri nacquero, e diversi;E tanto d’un in altro vaneggiai,Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,E ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai.

Novo pensiero dentro a me si mise

Del qual più altri nacquero, e diversi;

E tanto d’un in altro vaneggiai,

Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,

E ’l pensamento in sogno trasmutai.

At the opening of the next Canto[221]comes the dream—dream of the two symbolic Ladies—and the awakening. The dreamer is apparently roused by the intensity of a dream-stench; but his awakening is due as a matter of fact to the arresting voice of Virgil, whose person is projected into the “manifest content” of the dream a few lines earlier,[222]in the cry of the “Donna Santa”—

O Virgilio, o Virgilio, chi è questa?

“Three times,” says Dante’s Guide, “have I called you. Get up, and come along!”

... Il buon maestro, “Almen treVoci t’ ho messe,” dicea, “Surgi e viene!”

... Il buon maestro, “Almen tre

Voci t’ ho messe,” dicea, “Surgi e viene!”

In the last Canto ofPurgatoryproper[223]we have another picture of a going to sleep and an awaking. The sleepiness has been induced by a sort of natural self-hypnotism, the poet’s gaze steadily fixed on a few bright stars seen throughthe confined opening between the cliffs as he lies on the rocky stair.

Poco potea parer li del di fori;Ma, per quel poco, vedev’ io le stelleDi lor solere e più chiare e maggioriSì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle,Mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente,Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle.

Poco potea parer li del di fori;

Ma, per quel poco, vedev’ io le stelle

Di lor solere e più chiare e maggiori

Sì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle,

Mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente,

Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle.

This time the awakening is not sudden or violent.[224]After the altogether lovely dream of Lia—the sublimation of Dante’s desire, suggested, or coloured, by the natural anticipations of one on the threshold of the earthly Paradise—he wakes up quite naturally, his sleep “breaking from him” with the breaking dawn.[225]

Le tenebre fuggian da tutti latiE il sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’ mi.

Le tenebre fuggian da tutti lati

E il sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’ mi.

Dante’s analysis of Dreams was naturally relative to the knowledge and tendency of his day. The presaging quality of Dreams—

... Il sonno che soventeAnzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle;

... Il sonno che sovente

Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle;

like the proverbial belief that the truest dreams are those that come before dawn—

... Presso al mattin del ver si sogna[226]

is not for him the fruit of scientific psycho-analysis; but rather the unscientific or quasi-scientific deduction of untold generations of men on whom the dreams that “came true” left a far deeper impress than the large majority that proved fallacious.

Dante was, however, a real psychologist of his own time and date, as many qualities of his thought and interesttestify; and his discerning interest in the dream-consciousness supplies a definite link between the thinkers of the Trecento and our modern Masters.

It must not, however, be supposed that the somewhat specialised comparison of Dante’s purgatorial scheme with the Montessori Method sketched above[227]by any means exhausts the educational principles of thePurgatorio; still less that it covers the whole area of such principles enshrined in theDivine Comedy. The old-fashioned relation between Master and Pupil has still something to be said for it. The personal element cannot be eliminated, however great may be the need—especially in certain stages of self-restraint and self-effacement. This personal relation, in its permanently important aspects, is beautifully figured in the relation between Dante as learner and Virgil, Beatrice, and Statius as teachers.

Benedetto Croce[228]draws attention to the frequentIntramesse didascalichewhich mark the XXIst and following Cantos of thePurgatorio—notably the discourse of Statius on “generation” inPurg.xxv. “This poetry,” he says, “breathes throughout the spirit of the Master who knows, and desires to make clear the idea he is expounding; who stoops down towards the pupil to embrace him and lift him up towards the Truth.”[229]Beatrice, again, as Croce points out,[230]taking Virgil’s place in the journey through the skies, is like an elder sister patiently schooling her younger brother.She helps him to overcome his prejudices, to solve his problems, to conquer his doubts; now turning upon him the eye of a fond mother nursing a delirious child,[231]now laughing him out of his “childish notions,” the charm of her resplendent beauty and the illumination of her smile giving just that touch of romance to their relations that suggests the final stage of the transfiguration of the half-earthly love of theVita Nuovainto something wholly celestial. But the type of this relation between Master and Pupil is most surely and most prominently drawn in that which subsists all through the first two cantiche between Virgil and Dante.[232]“Mia scuola,” Virgil calls this relation in the beautiful scene with Statius;[233]and a striking feature of this “School,” recurring in the same Canto[234]and elsewhere, is the close, intimate, easy and even playful mutual understanding between Teacher and Pupil. To this point we shall return; but first a word may be said on the sterner aspect of Education, from the pupils’ point of view.

Granted that the “Primrose Path” is the only appropriate one for infant steps to toddle on; that path itself has its ups and downs—slight gradients from the adult point of view, but for the infant involving a demand for real effort and adventure. And the end of man—our human Good—lies above the zone where primroses bloom, on the heights: as Tasso sings—

... In cima all’ erto e faticoso colleDella virtù è riposto il nostro bene.[235]

... In cima all’ erto e faticoso colle

Della virtù è riposto il nostro bene.[235]

Let us glance, then, at what Dante has to say about the sterner side of Education—the necessary sacrifices that must be made for Liberty—and about the responsibilitiesof the teacher in his relation to the pupil whom he would guide up to freedom of mind and soul.

To the former we have already referred above (p. 102) in connection with the Montessori principle of the joyous facing of difficulties. The hard initial battle[236]is symbolically represented by the place which theInfernoholds in Dante’s quest of Liberty. For him indeed the “prime battaglie” are the hardest. No essential routine or inevitable drudgery which beset the path of learning can match in sheer distastefulness the weary horror of that first part of the Poet’s journey, of which his self-pitying anticipations are recorded in the lovely and pathetic opening lines of the second canto: “The day was departing, and the darkened air was relieving from their labours the animals on earth, and I was preparing all alone to sustain the struggle alike of the journey and of my piteous thoughts.”

Lo giorno se n’ andava, e l’ aere brunoToglieva gli animai che sono in terraDalle fatiche loro; e io sol unoM’ apparecchiava a sostener la guerraSì del cammino e sì della pietate.[237]

Lo giorno se n’ andava, e l’ aere bruno

Toglieva gli animai che sono in terra

Dalle fatiche loro; e io sol uno

M’ apparecchiava a sostener la guerra

Sì del cammino e sì della pietate.[237]

The youthful scholar, in his quest for knowledge and truth and the freedom that is truth’s guerdon, has not, as a rule, to face this literal isolation in drudgery and painfulness. For him the social instinct and the companionship of fellow-victims, not to say the healthy stimulus of friendly rivalry and competition, are present to lighten his burden and sweeten his lot. Yet each, after all, has to tackle the drudgery and the difficulties for himself. There is no Royal Road. The Master may spur him on with the vision of the “gladsome mountain which is the origin and source of all joy.”

Dilettoso monteCh’ è principio e cagion di tutta gioia;

Dilettoso monte

Ch’ è principio e cagion di tutta gioia;

may encourage him to face the flames by the thought of the welcoming smile of Beatrice on the other side: “as you tempt a child with an apple!” “Mark you, my son, this barrier separates thee from Beatrice.”

Or vedi, figlio:Tra Beatrice e te è questo muro;[238]

Or vedi, figlio:

Tra Beatrice e te è questo muro;[238]

but, none the less, the grim journey has to be undertaken, the distasteful plunge to be made. It is largely the Teacher’s attitude and example that make this effort possible; that evoke the manly spirit in the pupil, and encourage him to persevere in face of difficulties.

All this is recognised by the best modern theory and practice. “The New Teaching,” says Professor Adams,[239]“does not seek to free the pupils from effort”—we have seen that this is really the case, even in its extremest form of Montessorianism, with its individualistic charter of Child-liberty—“not ... to free the pupils from effort, but to encourage them to strenuous work”; it “does not seek to get rid of drudgery, but to make it tolerable by giving it a meaning, and shewing its relation to the whole learning process in school, and to the whole process of living in the world.” This is exactly Virgil’s attitude towards Dante. He is, first of all, alert to cheer and encourage him in moments of special difficulty. He encourages Dante both by example and by precept to mount the grisly back of the monster Geryon, their sole means of descent into the Abyss[240]; and later, when the flame has to be faced before entering the Earthly Paradise,[241]he reminds him of the success of that past experiment of faith, much in the manner of the noble self-encouragement of that Homeric hero, who, known to Dante onlyat second-hand, yet captured his imagination. “Be of good cheer, my heart, we have suffered worse things ere this.”

τέτλαθι δὴ κραδίη, καὶ κύντερον ἄλλος ποτ’ ἔτλης.[242]

Or again, when at the foot of the mountain Dante is dismayed at its steepness, the Master explains: “It is ever easier as you ascend.”[243]When Dante is frightened as the Mountain trembles (Purg.xx. 135) Virgil interposes with a call to confidence—

Non dubbiar mentr’ io ti guido

But Virgil not only encourages; he explains. From time to time he pauses with the double object of giving his companion a breathing-space and of enheartening him by an exposition of the end and purpose of the drudgery—of the whole scheme, of which the experience they are now undergoing is an integral and necessary part. Thus he expounds to his disciple the topography of Hell when they have passed within the rampart of the City of Dis, and before they begin the steep and terrible descent, and encounter the Minotaur.[244]Again, after the uncomfortable ordeal of the suffocating fumes on the Terrace of Wrath, he diverts his pupil’s attention with a sketch of the order and inner meaning of the purgatorial terraces, and explains how Sin, in all its deadly forms, is just “disordered Love.”[245]And we may note in passing how this postponement of the explanation and the detailed scheme till the movement of learning is well on its course, is itself typical of the New Teaching,[246]and grounded on sound psychological principles. Virgil supplies, indeed, in the first Canto of theInferno, a summary forecast of the journey, but does not sit down at the beginning and burden his Pupil’s mind with an elaboration of details. Nor can we leave the lecture on “Disordered Love” ofPurg.xvii. without drawing attention to the ideal relations of Teacher and Pupil depicted in the following Canto, and especially to the masterly way in which Virgil suggests ever fresh problems to Dante’s mind and draws him on with an increasing “thirst to know.”[247]

The liberty which Education “goes seeking,” and in which its nobler forms live and move as in a bracing atmosphere, demands some sacrifice alike from Teacher and from Pupil. From the Pupil, especially in its earlier middle stages, it demands a degree of submissiveness and docility, and courage and perseverance to face distasteful drudgery; from the Teacher, that self-restraint of which we have already spoken—yet not mere self-effacement. Like the Divine Master, he must “begin to do and to teach.”[248]He must be a fellow-pilgrim, sharing the toils of the road, and over the roughest places a leader, even as Virgil volunteers to go first where the grim descent begins into the “cieco mondo”: “I will go first and thou shalt follow me.”

Io sarò primo, e tu sarai secondo.[249]

As fellow-pilgrim, he will not hesitate to let the Pupil witness something of his distress. The Master girds himself to the descent pallid with sympathetic suffering—tutto smorto[250]—nor does he hide the tokens of shame and confusion when he becomes conscious that he has beena party to an unwarranted delay.[251]And we note the effect of this frankness on the Pupil—an enhancement of loyal admiration for the Master; and, for his own conscience, a more delicate perception of moral values: “He appeared to me self-reproached. O noble, stainless, conscience, how bitter to thy taste is a trifling fault!”

El mi parea da se stesso rimorso;O dignitosa coscienza e netta,Come t’ è picciol fallo amaro morso!

El mi parea da se stesso rimorso;

O dignitosa coscienza e netta,

Come t’ è picciol fallo amaro morso!

Even so pleads the spirit of the New Teaching.[252]Let not the Teacher “put on airs of omniscience and solemnity. He must be a part of the gay company; he must not mind ‘giving himself away,’ he must be a human being, not a wooden stick; gladly must he learn, and then he will gladly teach.” Thus Virgil moves in Dante’s company as a fellow-learner, not omniscient, not infallible; ever ready to confess with frankness his own limitations, and to own up to his mistakes. In this spirit he apologises to Pier delle Vigne[253]for the inconsiderate act to which he was forced owing to his inability to convince Dante through the medium of his own verses. In the same spirit he gives place to Nessus when a description is needed of Nessus’ own region of the Inferno, reversing hisdictumabout the original descent: “Regard him (Nessus) as thy prime authority, and me as secondary.”

Questi ti sia or primo, e io secondo.[254]

In like manner he gives way to Statius when an explanation is wanted of the emaciation of spirits no longer subject to bodily hunger,[255]and leads Dante to expect from Beatrice the completion of his own careful but yet not fully satisfying exposition of a heavenly matter: “And if this argument of mine doth not appease thycravings thou wilt see Beatrice, and she will fully relieve thee of this and every other desire.”

E se la mia ragion non ti disfamaVedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamenteTi torrà questa e ciascun altra brama.[256]

E se la mia ragion non ti disfama

Vedrai Beatrice, ed ella pienamente

Ti torrà questa e ciascun altra brama.[256]

Dante in his portrait of Virgil reminds us that the quest of Truth demands “truth in the inward parts,” that a humble and limpid sincerity is essential. Finally, he shews us this humility transfigured into a Divine self-effacement, where the elder Poet hands over his disciple entirely into his own guidance and that of Beatrice, in humble acknowledgement of his own limitations.[257]This act of self-effacement has indeed been in his mind from the first. When the time shall come for Dante’s ascent to the realms of thebeate genti, “a spirit more worthy than I shall be appointed thereto, with whom I will leave thee at my departure; for that Potentate who reigns in heaven above, because I was rebellious against His law, wills not that any by my guidance should enter His city.”

Anima fia a ciò più di me degna;Con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire;Chè quello imperador che là su regnaPerch’ io fu’ ribellante a la sua leggeNon vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna.[258]

Anima fia a ciò più di me degna;

Con lei ti lascerò nel mio partire;

Chè quello imperador che là su regna

Perch’ io fu’ ribellante a la sua legge

Non vuol che ’n sua città per me si vegna.[258]

And so Virgil’s work is done, and the Teacher shews himself sublimest in the last act. “The hardest lesson,” says the apostle of the New Teaching, “for a clever teacher to learn, is to let a clever pupil be clever in his own way,” nor “has a teacher been really successful” until “he has, by skilful preparation, enabled his pupil to do without him.”[259]This final self-effacement of the Teacher, with its corollary, the achievement of self-masteryand self-determination in the Pupil—the achievement of thatliberty of soulwhich is the supreme aim of the pilgrimage—is best described in Virgil’s matchless words of farewell, which we may now quote in their fulness. His “skilful preparation” has all led up to this ... to make itself dispensable! “By force of wit and skill I have conducted thee hither; henceforward let thine own pleasure be thy guide; from both the steep and the narrow ways thou art now free.... No longer await either word or sign from me; free, sound, and upright is thy will, and it would be amiss not to do its bidding; wherefore over thyself I invest thee with supreme control.”

Tratto t’ ho qui con ingegno e con arte;Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce;Fuor sei de l’ erte vie, fuor sei de l’ arte....Non aspettar mio dir più, nè mio cenno,Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrioE fallo fora non far a suo senno:Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.[260]

Tratto t’ ho qui con ingegno e con arte;

Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce;

Fuor sei de l’ erte vie, fuor sei de l’ arte.

...

Non aspettar mio dir più, nè mio cenno,

Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio

E fallo fora non far a suo senno:

Perch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio.[260]

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