Dante’s analysis of Dreams was naturally relative to the knowledge and tendency of his day. The presaging quality of Dreams—
... 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 interest testify; and his discerning interest in the dream-consciousness supplies a definite link between the thinkers of the Trecento and our modern Masters.
III
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 the Purgatorio; still less that it covers the whole area of such principles enshrined in the Divine 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 frequent Intramesse didascaliche which mark the XXIst and following Cantos of the Purgatorio—notably the discourse of Statius on “generation” in Purg. 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 the Vita Nuova into 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.