Those who know the Divina Commedia best, will best know how hard it is to be the interpreter of such a mind; but they will sympathise with the wish to call attention to it. They know, and would wish others also to know, not by hearsay, but by experience, the power of that wonderful poem. They know its austere, yet subduing beauty; they know what force there is, in its free and earnest and solemn verse, to strengthen, to tranquillise, to console. It is a small thing that it has the secret of Nature and Man; that a few keen words have opened their eyes to new sights in earth, and sea, and sky; have taught them new mysteries of sound; have made them recognise, in distinct image or thought, fugitive feelings, or their unheeded expression, by look, or gesture, or motion; that it has enriched the public and collective memory of society with new instances, never to be lost, of human feeling and fortune; has charmed ear and mind by the music of its stately march, and the variety and completeness of its plan. But, besides this, they know how often its seriousness has put to shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faintheartedness, its living energy their indolence, its stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its thrilling tenderness overcome sullenness and assuaged distress, its strong faith quelled despair and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp imparted the sense of harmony to the view of clashing truths. They know how often they have found, in times of trouble, if not light, at least that deep sense of reality, permanent, though unseen, which is more than light can always give—in the view which it has suggested to them of the judgments and the love of God.[150]
DE MONARCHIA.
BOOK I.
I.—It very greatly concerns all men on whom a higher nature has impressed[151] the love of truth, that, as they have been enriched by the labour of those before them, so they also should labour for those that are to come after them, to the end that posterity may receive from them an addition to its wealth. For he is far astray from his duty—let him not doubt it—who, having been trained in the lessons of public business, cares not himself to contribute aught to the public good. He is no "tree planted by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in due season." He is rather the devouring whirlpool, ever engulfing, but restoring nothing. Pondering, therefore, often on these things, lest some day I should have to answer the charge of the talent buried in the earth, I desire not only to show the budding promise, but also to bear fruit for the general good, and to set forth truths by others unattempted. For what fruit can he be said to bear who should go about to demonstrate again some theorem of Euclid? or when Aristotle has shown us what happiness is, should show it to us once more? or when Cicero has been the apologist of old age, should a second time undertake its defence? Such squandering of labour would only engender weariness and not profit.
But seeing that among other truths, ill-understood yet profitable, the knowledge touching temporal monarchy is at once most profitable and most obscure, and that because it has no immediate reference to worldly gain it is left unexplored by all, therefore it is my purpose to draw it forth from its hiding-places, as well that I may spend my toil for the benefit of the world, as that I may be the first to win the prize of so great an achievement to my own glory. The work indeed is difficult, and I am attempting what is beyond my strength; but I trust not in my own powers, but in the light of that Bountiful Giver, "Who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not."
II.—First, therefore, we must see what is it that is called Temporal Monarchy, in its idea, so to speak, and according to its purpose. Temporal Monarchy, then, or, as men call it, the Empire, is the government of one prince above all men in time, or in those things and over those things which are measured by time. Three great questions are asked concerning it. First, there is the doubt and the question, is it necessary for the welfare of the world? Secondly, did the Roman people take to itself by right the office of Monarchy? And thirdly, does the authority of Monarchy come from God directly, or only from some other minister or vicar of God?
Now, since every truth, which is not itself a first principle, becomes manifest from the truth of some first principle, it is therefore necessary in every inquiry to have a knowledge of the first principle involved, to which by analysis we may go back for the certainty of all the propositions which are afterwards accepted. And since this treatise is an inquiry, we must begin by examining the first principle on the strength of which deductions are to rest. It must be understood then that there are certain things which, since they are not subject to our power, are matters of speculation, but not of action: such are Mathematics and Physics, and things divine. But there are some things which, since they are subject to our power, are matters of action as well as of speculation, and in them we do not act for the sake of speculation, but contrariwise: for in such things action is the end. Now, since the matter which we have in hand has to do with states, nay, with the very origin and principle of good forms of government, and since all that concerns states is subject to our power, it is manifest that our subject is not in the first place speculation, but action. And again, since in matters of action the end sought is the first principle and cause of all (for that it is which first moves the agent to act), it follows that all our method concerning the means which are set to gain the end must be taken from the end. For there will be one way of cutting wood to build a house, and another to build a ship. That therefore, if it exists, which is the ultimate end for the universal civil order of mankind, will be the first principle from which all the truth of our future deductions will be sufficiently manifest. But it is folly to think that there is an end for this and for that particular civil order, and yet not one end for all.