Che, tutto libero a mutar convento,
L’ alma sorprende, e di voler le giova.
Prima vuol ben, ma non lascia il talento
Che divina giustizia, contra voglia,
Come fu al peccar, pone al tormento.[208]
When the soul is ready for another task, it moves on, naturally and spontaneously,—like a Montessori child!
This consideration accounts for a feature of the purgatorial discipline which at first sight would appear quite contrary to the Montessori spirit. On the lower slopes of the Mountain, below the gate of Purgatory proper, the souls whom Dante meets are grouped informally, or encountered individually; but within the gate, on each of the seven terraces where the seven capital sins are successively purged, the souls are engaged in groups on the same task, or similar ones. How is this consistent with free, spontaneous, individual development? Is not this simultaneous occupation at the same lesson more like a Froebel class, or even an old-fashioned Public School form than a Montessori group? The answer, surely, is in the negative. Collective work has indeed its permanent value, and simultaneous movements at intervals, their ample justification. In the Purgatorio, as in the Montessori School, the class-system in its extreme and rigid form has been superseded; though scope is given, in certain ways (as in the revised Montessori scheme), for the expression of the social instinct.[209] When the pupil is inwardly fit for a move, he “feels it in his bones”; and then—and not till then—he moves. The task in which he is engaged in company with his fellows holds him just so long as it is needful and appropriate to his own case: the moment of its beginning and that of its ending are entirely independent of the doings of his fellow-learners.
Once more, the Terrace of Purgatory resembles a Montessori group rather than a Kindergarten class in its freedom from obvious direction. There is no attractive, central, dominating figure, like the Froebelian teacher, on whom all eyes are fixed in the spirit of Psalm cxxiii, Ad te levavi oculos meos. The grouping of the learners is apparently spontaneous, and different groups are sometimes engaged simultaneously on different tasks.
Again, the School of Purgatory is essentially modern in its emphasis on “expression work,” and its abundant supply of “didactic material.”
By expression work we mean the endeavour to enforce a lesson, to hasten its assimilation and ensure its retention, by means of some appropriate activity on the part of the learner. This is of course much older than Montessorism, as even our best Sunday school teachers can testify; it can be traced back also beyond Froebel. Its origin is, surely, lost in the prehistoric ages of pedagogy. But it was Froebel in the nineteenth century who first claimed for this factor the importance which it holds in modern education. Yet if we study Dante’s Purgatorio we shall find expression work on every terrace of the Mountain, from the humble, stooping march of the cornice of Pride to the significant exclamations wherewith the once Lustful, on the uppermost terrace, punctuate the chanting of their hymn, Summae Deus clementiae. Purgatory is not for Dante, as for Aquinas, merely penal suffering—“something to be borne.” It must be (as Mr. Wicksteed observes)[210] something active—“something to be and to do”—somewhat more definite, more specific, more varied than mere suffering is needed for the building up of the new life which is to be at home once more in Eden.