In the Christian system this cosmic circulation became only a figure or symbol expressing the true creation, the true fall, and the true salvation; all three being really episodes in a historical drama, occurring only once. The material world was only a scene, a stage-setting, designed expressly to be appropriate for the play; and this play was the history of mankind, especially of Israel and of the Church. The persons and events of this history had a philosophic import; each played some part in a providential plan. Each illustrated creation, sin, and salvation in some degree, and on some particular level.
The Jews had never felt uncomfortable at being material; even in the other world they hoped to remain so, and their immortality was a resurrection of the flesh. It did not seem plausible to them that this excellent frame of things should be nothing but a faint, troubled, and unintended echo of the good. On the contrary, they thought this world so good, intrinsically, that they were sure God must have made it expressly, and not by an unconscious effluence of his virtue, as the Platonists had believed. Their wonder at the power and ingenuity of the deity reached its maximum when they thought of him as the cunning contriver of nature, and of themselves. Nevertheless the work seemed to show some imperfections; indeed, its moral excellence was potential rather than actual, a suggestion of what might be, rather than an accomplished fact. And so, to explain the unexpected flaws in a creation which they thought essentially good, they put back at the beginning of things an experience they had daily in the present, namely, that trouble springs from bad conduct.
The Jews were intent watchers of fortune and of its vicissitudes. The careers of men were their meditation by day and by night; and it takes little attention to perceive that frivolity, indifference, knavery, and debauchery do not make for well-being in this world. And like other hard-pressed peoples, the ancient Jews had a pathetic admiration for safety and plenty. How little they must have known these things, to think of them so rapturously and so poetically! Not merely their personal prudence, but their corporate and religious zeal made them abhor that bad conduct which defeated prosperity. It was not mere folly, but wickedness and the abomination of desolation. With the lessons of conduct continually in mind, they framed the theory that all suffering, and even death, were the wages of sin. Finally they went so far as to attribute evil in all creation to the casual sin of a first man, and to the taint of it transmitted to his descendants; thus passing over the suffering and death of all creatures that are not human with an indifference that would have astonished the Hindoos.
The imperfection of things, in the Hebraic view, was due to accidents in their operation; not, as in the Platonic view, to their essential separation from their source and their end. It is in harmony with this that salvation too should come by virtue of some special act, like the incarnation or death of Christ. Just so, the Jews had conceived salvation as a revival of their national existence and greatness, to be brought about by the patience and fidelity of the elect, with tremendous miracles supervening to reward these virtues.
Thus their conception of the fall and of the redemption was historical. And this was a great advantage to a man of imagination inheriting their system; for the personages and the miracles that figured in their sacred histories afforded a rich subject for fancy to work upon, and for the arts to depict. The patriarchs from Adam down, the kings and prophets, the creation, Eden, the deluge, the deliverance out of Egypt, the thunders and the law of Sinai, the temple, the exile—all this and much more that fills the Bible was a rich fund, a familiar tradition living in the Church, on which Dante could draw, as he drew at the same time from the parallel classic tradition which he also inherited. To lend all these Biblical persons and incidents a philosophical dignity he had only to fit them, as the Fathers of the Church had done, into the Neoplatonic cosmology, or, as the doctors of his own time were doing, into the Aristotelian ethics.
So interpreted, sacred history acquired for the philosopher a new importance besides that which it had seemed to have to Israel in exile, or to the Christian soul conscious of sin. Every episode became the symbol for some moral state or some moral principle. Every preacher in Christendom, as he repeated his homily on the gospel of the day, was invited to rear a structure of spiritual interpretations upon the literal sense of the narrative, which nevertheless he was always to hold and preserve as a foundation for the others.[2] In a world made by God for the illustration of his glory, things and events, though real, must be also symbolical; for there is intention and propriety behind them. The creation, the deluge, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ, the coming of the Holy Ghost with flames of fire and the gift of tongues, were all historical facts. The Church was heir to the chosen people; it was an historic and political institution, with a destiny in this world, in which all her children should share, and for which they should fight. At the same time all those facts, were mysteries and sacraments for the private soul; they were channels for the same moral graces that were embodied in the order of the heavenly spheres, and in the types of moral life on earth. Thus the Hebrew tradition brought to Dante’s mind the consciousness of a providential history, a great earthly task,—to be transmitted from generation to generation,—and a great hope. The Greek tradition brought him natural and moral philosophy. These contributions, joined together, had made Christian theology.
Although this theology was the guide to Dante’s imagination, and his general theme, yet it was not his only interest; or rather he put into the framework of orthodox theology theories and visions of his own, fusing all into one moral unity and one poetical enthusiasm. The fusion was perfect between the personal and the traditional elements. He threw politics and love into the melting-pot, and they, too, lost their impurities and were refined into a philosophic religion. Theology became, to his mind, the guardian of patriotism, and, in a strangely literal sense, the angel of love.
The political theory of Dante is a sublime and largely original one. It suffers only from its extreme ideality, which makes it inapplicable, and has caused it to be studied less than it deserves.
A man’s country, in the modern sense, is something that arose yesterday, that is constantly changing its limits and its ideals; it is something that cannot last for ever. It is the product of geographical and historical accidents. The diversities between our different nations are irrational; each of them has the same right, or want of right, to its peculiarities. A man who is just and reasonable must nowadays, so far as his imagination permits, share the patriotism of the rivals and enemies of his country,—a patriotism as inevitable and pathetic as his own. Nationality being an irrational accident, like sex or complexion, a man’s allegiance to his country must be conditional, at least if he is a philosopher. His patriotism has to be subordinated to rational allegiance to such things as justice and humanity.
Very different was the situation in Dante’s case. For him the love of country could be something absolute, and at the same time something reasonable, deliberate, and moral. What he found claiming his allegiance was a political body quite ideal, providential, and universal. This political body had two heads, like the heraldic eagle,—the pope and the emperor. Both were, by right, universal potentates; both should have their seat in Rome; and both should direct their government to the same end, although by different means and in different spheres. The pope should watch over the faith and discipline of the Church. He should bear witness, in all lands and ages, to the fact that life on earth was merely a preliminary to existence in the other world, and should be a preparation for that. The emperor, on the other hand, should guard peace and justice everywhere, leaving to free cities or princes the regulation of local affairs. These two powers had been established by God through special miracles and commissions. An evident providential design, culminating in them, ran through all history.