[209] Mme. Montessori’s earlier utterances were justly criticised for a too thoroughgoing individualism that claimed to have rung the death-knell of the “class system.” The individualist attitude and the collective have each a place in the New Teaching, though the former tends to be emphasised most. The characteristic Montessorian expression of the social instinct is the “Silence Game.” See The New Teaching, pp. 15, 16, 22.
[210] Op. cit., p. 234.
[211] Purg. x. 31 sqq.
[212] Purg. xii. 16 sqq.
[213] Very little transpires as to the office and function of those Angels except in the matter of removal of the P’s from the forehead of penitents as they mount up to the successive Terraces. In Purg. xvi. 142-5, there is a glimpse of their usefulness, where Marco Lombardo is reminded of the boundary of his “beat” by the nearness of the Angel of the Anger-Terrace. “L’Angelo è i’vi!”
[214] Purg. ii. 30.
[215] Purg. xvi. 76-78. For this reference and several others the writer is indebted to an illuminating article on “La Pedagogia in Dante Alighieri,” by Sac. Dott. Fernando Cento in Il VIº Centenario Dantesco, March, 1916.
[216] Purg. iv. 88-95.
[217] Purg. xii. 110; xv. 38; xvii. 68 etc.
[218] Inf. xxx. 136 sqq.