Frank Sewall DANTE AND SWEDENBORG London 1893

DANTE AND
SWEDENBORG
WITH OTHER ESSAYS ON THE
NEW RENAISSANCE
BY
FRANK SEWALL
AUTHOR OF Il THE ETHICS OF SERVICE;" CI THE NEW METAPHYSICS ;
OR, THE LAW OF END, CAUSE AND EFJ'ECT," ETC.
~
JAMES SPEIRS
36 BLOOMSBURY STREET, LONDON
18 93
lInrbnrb <Œoll,g, Librnr~
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DANTE AND SWEDENBORG
DANTE AND
SWEDENBORG
WITH OTHER ESSAYS ON THE
NEW RENAISSANCE
BY
FRANK SEWALL
AUTHOR OF Il THE ETHICS OF SERVICE;" CI THE NEW METAPHYSICS ;
OR, THE LAW OF END, CAUSE AND EFJ'ECT," ETC.
~
JAMES SPEIRS
36 BLOOMSBURY STREET, LONDON
18 93
CONTENTS.
PAO.
1. SONNET-DANTE, 1
II. DANTE AND SWEDENBORG, 24
III. "THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF DANTE "-A

REVIEW, 60
IV. THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY IN ITS RELATION

TO THE LORD's.FIRST ADVENT, 81
V. THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE IN ITS RELATION

TO THE LORD'S SECOND ADVENT, • 91
VI. THE NEW RENAISSANCE, • 104
VII. FAUST IN MUSIC, 123
VIII. THE SECRET OF WAGNER, • 144
IX. SoNNET-THE ONE AND THE MANY, • ISO
X. SONNET-GOOD FRIDAY IN ST. MUNGO'S, • 151
XI. SONNET-cc ALL THAT DOTH PASS AWAY,". 152

ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
THE Author acknowledges his indebtedness to the

Editor of the Contem/ora", Revi'ew for kindly
allowing the republication here of the article on
"Faust in Music."
DANTE.
AH 1 not as one who builds a world while dreaming,

And wakes to find his shadowy visions ftee,
Oh, man of during wing, thine eye did see
The things ~hat are ta mortal sense but seeming.
In the strange stuff of shadows palely gleaming
Take awful shapes the things men dread to 1çnow,
From hell's abyss to heaven's high roseate glow,
Marking the pathway of our sou1's redeeming.
But now the night is .past; the sun is high.
Ghosts flee, and fancied action caBs for deeds.
Whither then, Dante, is thy shade-world going?
o wonder! see its very substance glowing !
Glitter in sunshine aIl its dewy meads!
Its dismal cliffs stand black against the sky!
A
DANTE AND SWEDENBORG.
1.
DANTE has been read and re-read, translated and
commented upon, now for five centuries. But has
any one ever undertaken to discover how much of
truth there is in Dante?
Perhaps the age for seeking the truth in any-
thing is gone by? Rather, the scientist would be
likely to say, it has never come, till now. For ages,
it would seem as if the world had never seriously
asked for the truth regarding the spiritual world, and
that which must constitute by far the most impor-
tant part of man's life and destiny. In Dante's own
time, if we may judge from Boccaccio's comments
on his life and his great poem, theology and poesy
were regarded as occupying nearly the same rank
in importance and in authority. Even the dogmatic
assertions of the church respecting the unseen world
were regarded with a kind of ceremonial respect,
as if they belonged to a class of things more
fictitious than reaI, sacred fictions, indeed, but still
fictions, like the myths of old and the tales of the
poets.
In the history of literature there have been
produced works which, while not claiming to be
Dante and Sweden60rg. 3
the utterances of revelation, have yet occupied a
place of authority and influence resembling that
which is accorded to the Divine oracles themselves.
Such, for instance, was the whole system of the
Platonic philosophy, but especially the doctrine
concerning the spiritual and intellectual nature or
man and the immortality of the soul 5uch we may
say has been the position allotted to the Div;NQ
Commedia of Dante, and perhaps, in less degree, to
the Paradise Lost of Milton. While not accepted
as Divine revelations on these hidden subjects, they
have been regarded as a treasury of consecrated and
hallowed fictions-d.escriptions which if not true are
about as likely ta he true as anything wc can know
on the subject, and as thercfore good substitutes for
the ttuth where no absolute or demonstrated truth
is to he obtained on the subjects in question. 50
have grown up, as Swedenborg describes such
phenomena in the world of spirits, a whole system
of artificial heavens and hells and their hierarchies,
having no immediate basis in anything revealed,
and yet held in popular religious estimation as
practically about as valid as revelation itself.
Says Milman in his History ofLatin Clm·stianity,
Book xiv. ch. 2,-a passage quoted by Longfellow
in the notes to his translation of the DiVlna
Commedia :
.. Throughout the Middle Ages the world after death
continue<! ta reveal more and more fully ils awful secrets.
Hel!. Purgatory, Heaven became more distinct, if it may
be so Illid, more visible. Their site, their topography,
4 Dante and Swedenborg.
their tonnents, their trials, their enjoyments, became
more conceivable, almost more palpable to sense: tiU
Dante summed up the whole of this traditional lore, or at
least, with a Poet's intuitive sagacity, seized on aIl which
was most imposing, effective, real, and condensed it in his
three co-ordinate poems. That HeU had a local existence,
that immaterial spirits suffered bodily and material
torments, none, or scarcely one hardy speculative mind,
presumed to doubt. . • .
"The medireval HeU had gathered from aU ages, aU
lands, aIl races, its imagery, its denizens, its site, its
access, its commingling horrors; from the old Jewish
traditions, perhaps from the regions beyond the sphere of
the Old Testament; from the Pagan poets, with their
black rivers, their Cerberus, their boatman and his crazy
vessel; perhaps from the Teutonic Hela, through sorne of
the early visions. Then came the great Poet, and reduced
all this chaos to a kind of order, moulded it up with the
cosmical notions of the times, and made it, as it were,
one"with the prevalent mundane system. Abo~e aU, he
brought it to the very borders of our world; he made
the life beyond the grave one with our present life; he
mingled in close and intimate relation the present and
the future. Hen, Purgatory, Heaven, were but an
immediate expansion and extension of the present
world. . . .
cc. • • Of that which HeU, Purgatory, Heaven, were in
popular opinion during the Middle Ages, Dante was but
the full, deep, concentred expression; what he embodied
in verse, aU men believed, feared, hoped."
The actual validity of these speculations and their
influence as touching the religious life of men must
always dependJ- however, on the amount of super-
natural authority ascribed to them or the amount of
revelation recognized in them, and, therefore, first of
aIl, on the amount and ki~d of truth recognized in
Da~le aod Swede..oorg. 5
revelation itself. It is a question whether the
Platonic philosophy, even its sublime doctrine of
the soul's immortality, exerted a strictly religious
etrect on the Hellenic people until after the Christian
Church had in a sense accepted, approved, and
given it its supreme sanction. 1n other wards,
Platonism did its refining, spiritualizing, and ete-
vating work more after the Christian theologians
accepted it as a precious vehicle of the church',
teaching than it had ever done before. What it
needed was a standard br which the actual truth
in it might he estimated, and 50 admiration for it as
a philosophy be turnf1d into reverence (or it as
rcvelation. This standard was round in the Gospel
of Christianity. That it had meanwhile exerted a
certain intellectual influence of the highest import-
ance in preparing, not ooly the Hellenic world, but
the whole rnind of the intelligent world at that
perlod, for ils future reception orthe revea.led Word,
cannot he questioned; rather we may say it was an
indispensable forerunner sent by the Divine Provi-
dence Cor this training of the "understanding, 50
that it migbt he elevated into the Iight of heaven,"
cven while the will of humanity lay still degradcd
iD its 100t and helpless condition.
ln an article elsewhere on the" ltalian Renaissance
in Its Relation to the Lord's Second Advent," 1 en·
deavour ta show how these extraordinary intel1cc·
t1IaI iUuminations have preceded alike, and in bath
instances by a period of about four centuries, the
two immediate revelations of Divine truth to man-
kind, namel)", that of the Incarnation, and that of
the opening of the Spiritual Sense of the Word,
which constitute in spiritual reality the first and the
~ond Advents of the Lord; and that the wide
prevalence of Hellenic culture, which anticipated
the first coming of the Lord as the W ord made
Flesh, has its remarkable counterpart in "the intel-
lectual influence of the ltalian Renaissance or the
revival of leaming in preparing the ,vorld for the
reception of that deeper revelation of the Word in
His Second Coming, which has enabled the Church
to cc enter intellectually into the things of faith."
Referring the reader to the following essays for
a treatment of this subject in its broader aspects, 1
wish in the present paper to examine in the briefest
possible scope the part which Dante's Com,nedia
has had to play in this providential course of the
world'g education, and the estimate ,,~ are to put
upon the description he gives us of the life aCter
death. While not contributing directly to the
. Revival of Learning, the great Italian epic may he
said to he a summary of all the learning of that
lime, whether astrological. geographical. poli tical,
1 theological, or moral. It is not 50 much a poem as
a great realistic picture of the ,,·hole universe, spiri-
tual and natural, as it then stood clearly outlined in
the vie,,· of the mighty intellect of its author. The
language in which it ,vas ,vritten became thereby
elevated to the dignity of a literary tongue to he
honoured by a glorious succession of poets,
7
biItorians, and phllosophers; white the subjcct.
matter became, as above described, a kind of
universa1ly acceptcd Il working hypothesis" regard.
!ng the nature of the spiritual world, whereby the
great gap in autbentic dogmatic teaching was con-
veniently filled out in a manner suited ta the
imaginative wants of the people, and to the practical
demands of moral and re1igious discipline. By a
comparison with such works as Milton's Paradisl
lAst and Bunyan's Pümm's Progrus, wc can fonn,
1 belicve, an approximate estimate of the aetual
eR'ect. produced by this grand epic of the unseen
werlcl upon the popular religious mind, not ooly of
contemporary, but of succeeding generations.-
remembering too, as wc must, that Dante prcceded
IlUton by a period as long as that (rom the discovery
of America by Columbus to the end of the Revolu-
tIonary War.
Referring to the analogy briefty alluded to above,
1 tbink wc shall find a dose resemblance between
the kind of authority hitherto attributed to Dante's
ftsions of the ather world, and that which, before
the Christian ua, was attributed to the teachings of
Socrates and Plato in relation to the life afterdeath.
According 10 the Iight of the time, thcse visions
wen:: neither improbable nor unreasonable; not only
DOt contrary to Scripture, they seemed like the
Wdest literai confirmation of the teaching of both
... BIble and the Church Fathers. Still there wu
MCb in them that could he traced directly to no
-.ed toW'CC of authority, and this sometimes
embraced principles of vast and fundamental
importance. How much, then, of truthful informa-
tion might men really look for in this vastly popular
allegory, this great myth that has been throwing its
awful lustre, now bright, now dark, over the groping
thoughts of the Christian \vorld during the centuries
that preceded the Lord's Second Advent?
To this question no answer could be given but by
comparing the visions of Dante with something that
could be accepted as a standard of truth on these
same subjects, and such a standard could only he
round in Revelation. But, as Revelation, beyond the
bare indications of a few broad, general truths on
the subject of the judgment and heaven and hell,
has been believed to contain no particulars regarding
the life after death, therefore there has been for the
Christian Church no means ofestimating the amount
of actual truth in Dante's description of heaven,
purgatory, and hell.
In a state of similar doubt, or mere guessing at
the reality, in regard to which there is no accepted
standard of revealed truth, stands the world at the
present day except for such as receive the revelation
given in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
This messenger and servant of the Lord has, so he
avers, been permitted by the Lord to enter that
hitherto hidden world, and to tell now in plain,
unpoetical, and unfanciful terms the facts regarding
its nature, its order, its govemment, and its life.
For the first time are men, in the possession ofthese
writings, possessed of a standard whereby, on the
na"te aM Swedenborg. 9
ground of their authenticity, they may, with an
accoracy and a certainty no less than scient.ific,
determine the amount of truth reatly embodied in
the visions of Dante.
It is not for a moment to be understood that
Dante ever gave his visions forth as other than pure
poetry, or as having more than an allegoric hasis
of truth; nor that the world has ever formally
sanctioned them as having anything of a super·
natural charader; neither has it done 50 with
Milton or Bunyan; and yet who will say that the
religious thought and the anticipations of the other
life of Protestant Christian minds for the past two
centuries, have not been greatly tingcd by the
reRections cast from the imaginations of these two
writers? 50 with Dante, while neither professedly
prophet nor secr, nor pope, nor doctor of theology ;
yet in reality the power of his great poem has been
that of all these combined in colouring the thoughts
and affections of men in their visions of the world to
come And, while granting to Dante his full title
of poet as a truly great creator of thesc imaginary
worlds through which hc leads us in his awful
pilgrimage, yet even the imagination must have
some matcrial, and sorne scaffolding of information,
of former doctrine or knowledge of sorne kind, on
which and with which to build. And it is this
question as to fundamental sources of Dante's
ideas of the spiritual world that chiefty interests
Us in attempting a comparison between Dante and
Swedenborg.
The natu raI inference would he that Dante, in
writing an account of an imaginary pilgrimage
through heU and purgatory and heaven, would
descrihe those realms according to the vulgar con-
ceptions then entertained, something as the miracle
plays have done, or that the common traditions of
the church and the few grand hints of the literaI
Scriptures would have sufficed for the material to
he employed. As a matter of fact, we find, in one
sense, the heaven and the heU of Dante a very
narrow, commonplace, every-day kind of world;
more so even than that of the Memorable Relations,
or those interviews with spirits and descriptions of
the scenery of the spiritual world which Sweden-
borg has interspersed in the course of his doctrinal
writings. The people that Dante meets with in
that world are his former over-the-way, Florentine
neighbours, who inquire about their relatives, or wish
to be informed as to the progress of public alfairs
in their quarrelsome little town. The rewards
and punishments of etemityare dispensed very con-
siderably according to the poet's own resentment
or favour towards his former political associates;
the scenery, the manners and customs, the cour-
tesies and the jeers and insults he meets with are
aU reftected from the narrow sphere of north
Italian life. When we come to broader subjects,
we find indeed the poet's vision and grasp widening
accordingly, but stiU subject to the limitations of
traditional learning.
Thus his cosmology and geography are those of
DMlt, a..a Sweikn6org-. Il
Homer, Plata, and the literai Bible combined ; the

earth being in the centre of the universe surrounded
by the seven planetary spheres, or revolving heavens,
beyond which is the heaven of fixed stars, then the
moving but unmoved sphere of the seraphim and
ange!s ail concentring above in the" Rose of the
blessed," on whose petais as on thrones in succes-
sive ranks are seated the saints and innocent
children ail surrounding the lake of the Light
inapproachablc, where dwells the Atomic Point,
the etemal Three-În-One. On the earth's surface,
in the middle of the eastem hcmisphere, i5 situated
Jerusalem, directly bcneath whicb the hells descend
in successive degrees to the inmost point or the
earth's centre, where is the ahode of Lucifer;
tbence is an ascent through the other side of the
earth to a high projection or mountain far out in
the midst of the ocean beyond the gates of Hercules,
fonning the middle point of the western hemisphere
and the exact antipodes of Jerusalem. On this
mountain are the successive planes or spheres of
purgatory, culminating in the terrestrial Eden, from
which the ascent opens into the lowest of the
planetary heavens or abodes of saved souls.
The assignment of souls to their severa! degrees
lad kinds and places of punishment and reward
fmoIves a classification of moral virtues partly
traceable to the Aristotelian ethies and partly to
the th~logy of the Christian Fathen; and the
clllcussions introduced, here and there, of profound
tbeoIogical tapies rcveal the poet's familiarity with
the best fruits of both the philosophy and theology
of ail the ages that had preceded him. 50 we find
the man mounting with his theme; minute, blunt,
and familiar in his descriptions of the Inferno; in
the Paradiso his language wears the garb of an
archangel, dazzling us with its splendour and open-
ing to us vistas of unsearchable light. lt is said
that his name was, in its original form, Durante,
and so his whole name, Durante Allighieri, might
he said to mean the Enduring Winged One. And
with an eagle's flight his imagination, his ardour,
and his philosophy and Christian faith combined,
mount straight upward to the sun, the more and
more unhindered in his gaze as he scars away from
earth.
But whether, taking him in his widest and
sublimest capacity as a poet, or in his most local
and personal narrowness as an exiled and embittered
Florentine, and giving due credit to bath contem-
porary and older philosophy and theology for his
ideas, whether of earth or heaven or of the nature
of man, wc shaH still, 1 bclicvc, find in Dante much
that is difficult to trace literally to any e'arlier
source, much that seems wholly heyond and above
the ordinary thcological scope of Christian teaching,
much that in its strong, direct dec1aring of things
untold before, makes the poet seem to speak rather
Iike a seer and prophet than like a mere rhymster
of the sacred fictions of his time.
1 refer especially to certain broad features of the
plan of the poem, involving principles of c1assifica-
D4"Û 4"" Swedenborg. '3
tian which bear a close resemblance to those of
Swedenborg, and also to certain ideas and defini-
tions, both of human and Divine nature, which
gleam with the unmistakable Iight of revealed truth.
That tbese were Dever understood (ully by even the
poet himself, in aIl their deepest significance, in (act
as anything more than poetic intuition or invention,
may he readily admitted; that they Dever have
brought to man any accredited Divine message is
also truc; but that theyare in reality foregleams of
that great dawn of light which has in this later time
risen upon the world through the revelations granted
to Swedenborg, and that the great poem is thus rich
in a wisdom whose worth will rather brighten than
diminish in lustre as it is brought under the Iight of
the knowledge DOW revealed, wc may confidently
believe. By the sicle of its numerous passages
luminous with spiritual truth, we shaH indeed find
others in dose contiguity 50 intrinsica11y absurd, 50
grossly offensive to our sense of charity and of
justice, or characterized by so rigid and blind an
adberence to the orthodoxy of the poet's time,
wbetber in things theological, political, or scientific,
tbat we can he in no danger of forgetting the frail
buman authorship of the poem and the wide dis-
tinction that must ever he drawn hetween this epic
of medi:eval imagination and the great relation
wlûch now cames ta us, in terms of unmistakable
authority, ex visis li auditis, from .. things heard
and seen." Nothing could more emphatically
declare this distinction than the words with which
14 Dante and SwedenIJorg.
Swedenborg, in aIl the consciousness of bis sacred
and responsible mission as a revealer of things
bitherto kept secret from the foundation of the
world, explains the purpose of his intromission into
the spiritual world. Here we find nothing of the
grey twilight of the land of dreams, nothing of the
splendours of ecstatic vision j rather is it the plain
testimony of a man charged with an important
message to his fellow-men, of which he was more
mindful that the substance be truly given than
that the form should be pleasing to the recipient
Henry James, sen., says of Swedenborg's style of
writing:
• • • • cc His books are a dry, unimpassioned, unexag-
gerated exposition of the things he daily saw and heard
in the world of spirits, and of the spiritual laws which
these things illustrate; with scarcely any effort whatever
to blink the obvious outrage his experiences offer to
sensuous prejudice, or to conciliate any interest in his
reader which is not pronlpted by the latter's own original
and unaffected relish of the truth. Such sincere books,
it seems to me, were never before written" (Su!Jstance
and Sluzdow).
Dante begins his poem by narrating how,-
Midway upon the joumey of our life
1 found me in a dark and dreary wood
Where the straight way to me no more appeared.
. . . . . . . . .
Nor know 1 how to tell how 1 did come there,
So full of sleep was 1 at that strange moment j
When the true way 1 had abandoned. \
,
He faUs in with three wild beasts, and lin his
terror cornes upon the shade of Virgil, who \ otrers
Da"', arui Swedet<6org. J5
to become rus guide through the fearful caverns of

the lower world and out iota the upper spheres
again. After much fear and hesltation he consents
to follow bis guide upon this sombre pilgrimage.
And 50 they cnter the (carlul gatc which forms
the entrance to the heUs, over which is written the
memorable wards :
By me they enter to the doleful city,
By me they go iote etemal pain,
Hy me they seek the dwellings of the last.
Justice did move the band of my F t buildet j
] wu construeted by the power DIvine
The highest Wisdom and the primaI Love.
Delme my being, wcre no things created,
OntY th' etemal; and 1 shall ever be.
Bid bope rarewel~ ail ye who enter ben:.
Virgil explains the meaning of these words,leads
the poet within, and thus, says Dante,
He ushered me w;/!lù, llu mnl t/u'IIp.
Compare this witb the foUowing announcement
whicb Swedenborg makes at the beginning of his
H,..",. aJId HtI/:
.. In the end of the chun:h, when there i. no longer
loft and thence no faith, the Lord is to open the Word
u ta itll intemal sense and to reveal the bidden tbings of
beaven. The hidden tbings which are revealed in _bat
DOW foUows (that is. in the treatise on Hlatlt" au HII/)
coacem beaven and heU and the life of men after death.
Tbe man of the Church at this day knows scarcelJ anJ·
tbiag about beaven and belJ. nor about bis life after
cIeath, ahbougb the, are aU described in tbe Ward; yea,
...,. a1Io who were born _itbin the cburch deny thOlC
.......Jing, Who bas come thence and tald us l
cc Lest therefore such denial, which reigns especially with
those who have much wisdom of the world, should also
infect and corrupt the simple in heart and the simple in
faith, it has been given me to he together with the angels,
and to speak with them as man with man, and also to see
the things which are in the heavens and in the hells, and
tbis during thirteen years; and now to descrihe them
from things seen and heard, hoping that thus ignorance
may he enlightened and incredulity dispelled" (Intro-
duction to Heaven and Hell).
ln what manner, then, we are led to inquire, does

the picture drawn in the Divina C01nmedia bear
the test of that light of actual knowledge which
has now, according to this declaration, been given
to the world ?
To trace in detail all the coincidences of descrip-
tion between the poem of Dante and the Heaven
and Hell of Swedenborg \vould require volumes
rather than the few pages at our disposaI. The
most 1 can attempt will be to point out a few of the
remarkable analogies and resemblances between
the two works, leaving the reader at his pleasure to
pursue the subject more into particulars.-
The first thing 1 would call attention to is the
every-day, human reality which Dante gives to the
spiritual world. No world is more substantial,
visible, and tangible, or crowded with more busy,
• For a study of tbis kind 1 know of no English work more helpful
than the very interesting volume entitled, A SAadow of Dante j king
an Essq t()1JJ(Jrds stud)'ingHimself, His Wor/d, and His Pi!grimage,
by Maria Francesca Rossetti. London: Rivingtons. 1871. For
a translation, 1 believe Longfellow's to he far superiOl:, to any other.
17
practical. human activity than the spheres visited
by the poet's imagination. This is no world of
gbosts or of shades leading an unconscious exist·
CRee until sorne future judgment-day shall wake
them to lire again; theyare all intensely alive ROW•.
and alive as men and women in buman bodies,
recognizable and still possessing ail the leading
traits of character that they had in the world. Of
this human reality of the liCe after death Sweden.
borg writes as follows :
"That man when he passes out of the naturaI world
into the spiritual, as is the case wben he dies, cames
with him ail things that are his, or which belong to him
u a man, except his earthly body, has becn testified to
me by manifold cllperience; for man _hen he enters the
apiritual world, or the li{e afier death, 15 in a body as in
the werld; to appearance there is no difference, sinee
he does not perceive or see any ditrerence. But
bis body is then spiritual, and th us separated or puri-
6ed {rom earthly things. and when what is spiritual
touches and sees .hat is spiritual. it is just as .ben _bat
il Datural touches and sees wbat is natural: benoe a man.,
wben he bas become a spirit, does not know otbenrise
«ban tbat be is in bis body in .hicb he was in the world,
lDCl thUI does not know that he bas deceased. A man·
spiril also enjo)'1 every externat and internai JenSe wbich
he enjoyed in the world j be sees as before, he bears and
s:peùs as belon:. he also smetls and tastes, and .hen he
Il touehed. he (cels the touch as before; be aIso longs.
deIireI, craves, lhinu. reftects, is afl'ected. loves. .illSt as
befare; and he wbo is deligbted with stud~ reads and
wrilel u befOre. In a word. "ben a man passes (rom
ClDe Hfe Îale the ether, or from one world iolO the other.
ft il u il he pased from one place into another; and he
_ _ with 6im aU things wbich he posKmtl in binwetf
B
as a man, so that it cannot he said that the man aCter
death, which is only the death of the eartbly body, has
lost anything of himself. He also carries with him the
natura} memory, for he retains aIl things whatsoever
which he has in the world heard, seen, read, learned, and
thought, from earliest infancyeven to the end of life; the
naturalobjects however which are in the memory, because
they cannot be reproduced in the spiritual world, are
quiescent, as is the case with a man when he does not
think Crom them; but still theyare reproduced when it
pleases the Lord" (Hêaven and Hell, no. 461).
It is true, Dante speaks of the Last Judgment as

yet to come, but the wicked are in hell already,
notwithstanding, and aIl the change the final judg-
ment will effect in their case will be to finally close
the pits which still remain open only for more to
enter. So are the good already enjoying the
blessed life of heaven, and the spirits not yet puri-
fied are lingering a longer and shorter time in the
outer courts according to the preparation they need
to undergo. In a word, it is a perfectly human
world that Dante visits; it is almost a Florentine
world in parts, so real and familiar does the poet
make its scenes; even as Swedenborg speaks of
certain cities of earth having their counterparts in
the world of spirits. Unlike Milton, who makes
his personages wear a kind of stage-like, artificial
dignity in speech and bearing corresponding with
bis 10fty theme, Dante puts the commonest, every-
day phrases into his conversations, and so intensely
human are the very griefs and sorrows he describes,
that we are moved by a pathos that is irresistible.
Dante au Swedenborg'. 19
It may seem as as if the realism of Dante's
description must he largely destroyed by his intro-
duction of griffons, centaurs, and other monstrous
forms more suggestive of pagan mythology than of
ordinary human experience; but it is weil to re-
member that even the monsters of mythology were
not without a cause and a meaning, often a very
practical one; and how large a part such actual
perversions and distortions of humanity do actually
play in the real hells of Swedenborg, we need only
read such passages as the foUowing to learn :
.. At the apertures (to tbe infernal societies), whicb are
called the gates of hell, for the most part appears a
monster which in general represents the fonn of those
who are within. The fierce passions of thase who d'Weil
there are then at the same time represented by dreadful
and atrocious things, the particular mention of which 1
omit. . . . From an inspection of those monstrous fonns
of spirits in the hells, which as was said are ail fonns of
contempt of others, and of menaces against thase who
do not pay them bonour and respect, also fonns of
hatred and revenge against those who do not favour
them, it appeared evident that all in general were forms
of the love of self and the love of the world; and that
the evils of which they are the specific forms derive tbeir
origin from these two loves" (HetlfJen and Hdl, nos. 553,
554).
We have next to notice that in the general
divisions of the spiritual world, Dante adheres to
the numbers three, seven, and nine, in a manner
wholly in accord with their real spiritual meaning;
and in his trinal classification there is a strong
semblance of the doctrine of the degrees of the
1
human mind. These degrees are thus described br
Swedenborg :
cc He who does not know how it is with Divine order as
to degrees, cannot comprebend how the heavens are dis-
tinct, nor even what the internaI and the external man
are. Most people in the world have no other notion
conceming interiors and exteriors, or concerning superiors
and inferiors, than as of something continuous or of
what coheres by continuity from purer to grolser; and
yet interiors and exteriors are not continuous with each
other but discrete. There are degrees of two kinds;
there are continuous degrees and degrees not continuous.
Continuous degrees are as the degrees of the decrease of
light from flame even to its obscurity; or as the degrees
of the decrease of sight, from those things which are in
light to those which are in shade; or as the degrees of
the purity of the atmosphere, from the lowest part of it
to the highest: distances determine these degrees. On
the other hand, degrees not continuous, but discrete, are
discriminated as prior and posterior, as cause and etrect,
as what produces and what is produced. He who ex-
amines will see, that in all and each of the things in the
universa1 world, whatever they are, there are such degrees
of production and composition; namely, that from one is
another, and from the other a third, and so on. He who
does Dot procure to himself a perception of these degrees
cannot possibly know the distinctions of the heavens,
and the distinctions of the interior and exterior faculties
of man; nor the distinction between the spiritual world
and the natural world; nor the distinction between the
spirit of man and his body. Hence he -cannot under-
stand what and whence correspondences and representa-
tions are, nor what influx is. Sensual men do not com-
prehend these distinctions, for they make increments and
decrements even according to these degrees, continuous ;
hence they cannot conceive of what is spiritual otberwise
than as apurer natural. • . .
Da~le arui SwedeMorg. 21
"The interiors of man, which are of his rnind (nuItS)

r
and mind ("ni/ll"s). are also in similar arder of degrees] ;
he bas an inmost, a middle, and a lo"est: (or ioto man
_ben he was created, aU things of Divine order were
brought toger.her, 50 that he wu made Divine older in
fonn, and thence a heaven in its least efligy. Therefore
.1&0 man communicates .itb the heavens as to bis in·
terio~ and likewise cornes among the aogels arter death j
among the angels of the inmost hcaven, of the middle, or
of the lo"est, according to bis reception of Divine Good
and Truth (rom the Lord, while he live<! in the world •
(HUIfJt" ftNi Hill, no!. 38, 30)'
According to the Christian belier. universally

entertained up to the lime of the Reformation, the
world of the departed consists of three grand
divisions, hell, purgatory, and heaven; and the
descriptions of these in the order of the poet's
pngrimage through them constitute respectively
the three great canticles of the Dif/ina Commu/ia,
JlUl.ed accordingly, JI Itifn'JUJ, II PurcalorW, and .J.
~aradiso. Of thiS" trinal division of the whole
2~tual world, Swedenborg says:
The world of spirits is a middle place between hcaven
i
ell' and al80 it is a Middle state of man aCter deatb.
t it ill a middle place, WH manifeat to me from thit,
the hells are beneath, and the heavens aOOve; and
it is a middle state, from this. that man, 50 long u
.. tbere, is not yet in heaven or in hell. The ltale
,"ea,ven with man is the conjunction of good and trutb
..... bim, and the slate of heU is the conjunction of ml
.... fabity with him. When with a man-spirit good
... joined to truth, then he comes inta heaven, beaUIe,
.. said, that conjunction is heaven witb him; but
with a man·spirit evil is conjoined with l'alIit,.,
22 Da"'e and Swedenborg.
then he cornes iota heU, because that conjunclion is heU
with him. This conjunction Is made in the world of
spirits, since man is thcn in a middle statc. It Is alike,
whether you say the conjunction of the understanding
and the will, or the conjunction of truth and good "
(Héflflen and Rdl, no. 4U).
The purgatory or intermediate world between

heU and heaven corresponds to the world of spirits
of Swedenborg in 50 far as it is the place of pre-
paration for heaven for ail those dcparting (rom this
world who can he saved ; but those who are fit ooly
for hen are carried thither al once acress the clark
flood of Acheron, according to the poet; whereas
wc are taught in Swedenborg that al! those who
die, both good and bad alike, enter the intermediate
world of spirits, and that there thcy undergo the
judgment, and are prepared for their future lot
either in the realms above or bclow. Swedenborg,
however, draws this distinction between the use of
this intermediate world for those who can and
those who cannat be saved, that the former undergo
there the three states, namely, "of their exteriors"
and" of their interiors," which two states constitute
their judgment, or the determination oftheir ruling
love, and the third state which is that of "instruc-
tion and preparation" for heaven.
.. This third state is therefore only for those .....ho come
into heaven and become angel~ but not for those who
come ioto hell, sinœ tbese cannot be instructed, and
their second state is alsa their third" (lftafH1f and !,Htll,
no. 512). 1
Dante and Swedenborg. 23
1ndeed we read that there are sorne
"who immediately alter death are either lalten up ;nto
heaven, or cast into hell. Tbose who are immedîately
taken up into heaven are those who have been regenerated,
and thus prepared for heaven in the world. Thosc who
are 50 regenerated and prepared that they have need only
ta reject natura] impurities with the body, are bome
immediately by the angels into heaven. 1 have scen them
ta1r.en up seon aCter the hour of dealh. But those who
have been interiorly wicked, and exteriorly, as to appear-
ance, good, thus who have filled their malignity with deceit
and have used goodness as a means of deceiving, are
immediately cast into hen" (HltlfN1l aM Hell, no. 49r).
Here it rnay he weil to notice that in Dante as
in Swedenborg aU the bodily conditions and sur-
roundings of souls in the other world, are really
representatives and effects of inward moral con-
ditions. For in a letter to one ofhis patrons Dante
writes:
"The subject of ail the work, acœpted literally only, is
the state of souls aCter death, taken simply; because
respecting il and around il the ptocess of ail the work
tevolves. But if the work is accepted allegorically, the
aubject is man, in 50 far as by free-will meriting and
demeriting he is amenable to the justice of reward and
punisbment" (hile, /0 Caf. Gram della &ala, 7)· 7\.1
Il.
PURGATORY AND THE INTERMEDIATE WORLD.
THE purgatory of Dante is a mountain of seven

terraces, each occupied by the penitents who
patiently endure the sufferings necessary for their
purgation from their respective grade of sins.
These grades, seven in all, are divided into three
grand classes according to the perversion of love in
which they consist. The Angel of Judgment
engraves the sevenfold cc P U (peccata, sins) on the
poet's forehead, indicating that in the penitent the
consciousness of these inward defects is brought
forth and their. -stains' one by one removed as he
ascends the scale. The first three sins are those of
love distorted, namely, pride, envy, and anger; the
fourth is from love defective or indifferent, sloth;
the last three are from love excessive, avarice,
gluttony, lasciviousness. The first class, it will he
noticed, consists in the tuming of love from its
true object, its holy source and giver; the second
in a lack of determination, a state of vacillation
between the higher and lower objects of love;
the third, the excessive gratification of the lower
or natural loves to the detriment of the higher.
The ascent is from the inmost and most difficult
to overeome, which is pride. AU the terraces are
comparatively easy to climb aCter this one is
pused.
Wc now ",ere mounting up the !laCTed stain,
And il appeared to me by far more easy
Tban on the plain il has appeared before.
Whenee I? "My Muter, say, ",hat heavy thing
Hu been uplifted (rom me, so that hardi)'
Aught of fatigue is Celt by me in walking?"
He answered: "Whcn the P's which have remalned
Still in thy face, aImasl obliterate,
Shan _holly. as the I1rst is, he erased,
Thy (eet shall he 50 vanquished by good-will
Thal not alone they shall not (cel fatigue,
But nrging up will he to tbem delight."
(hrgal"io XII. 1140 ./A"Kftl/ouIs IrtltU/GtiIM..)
Thus with the overcoming of pride more than
hale of our human battle is (ought, and the" way
that leads to heaven is not 50 difficult as has becn
supposed." Moreover, the doctrine seems distinctly
atated bere that, as each evil is overcome in tempta-
!ion, the Lord gives a good will or good affection in
Its place which makes the way upward ever more a
delight and Jess a labour. Sins of appetite and of
worldly love are placed above those of pride, envy.
aDd anger. being more extemal and less deadly.
Jt iJ in the Purgatorio that, perhaps more than
in any other part of the whole poem, we find our
common human sympathies appealed to, and feeI
the singular tenderness that fonns 50 beauûful •
trait of the great poet. We find ourselves not
2 6 Dante an~ Swedenborg.
wholly lifted above the earthly atmospheres, 50

that, as it were, the sound of church bells, the
chant of evening hymn, the old, familiar anthems
sung by the Church on earth through centuries
after centuries, and the words of the old Bible,
still linger in our ears.
Of this first state of man on his entrance at death
into the spiritual world, Swedenborg teaches :
cc The spirit of man is held in its last thougbt when the
body expires, until it returns to the thoughts which are
from its general or ruling affection in this world". . . .
cc His first state after death is similar to his state in the
world, because then he is similarly in the externals ofhis
life. Hence it is that he then knows no otherwise than that
he is still in the world, unless he pays attention to those
things which present themselves, and ta those which were
said to him by the angels when he was raised up, that he
is now a spirit. Thus one life is continued into the other,
and death is only the passage. Because the spirit of
man recentIy departed from the worId is such, therefore
he is then recognized by his friends, and by those whom
he had known in the world; for spirits perceive this, not
only Crom his face and speech, but also from the sphere
of his life when they approach. Every one in the other
liCe, when he thinks of another, pres~nts also to himself
his face in thought, and at the same time sorne things
which are oC bis life; and when he does this, the other
becomes present, as if he was sent for and called. This
exists in the spiritual world Crom the Cact that thoughts
are there communicated, and that there are not such
spaces there as exist in the natural worId. Hence it
is that an when the}' first come into the other life, are
recognized by their friends, their relatives, and those
known· to them in any way; and also that they talk
together, and aCterwards associate according to their
Da"te and Swedenborg.
friendship in the world. 1 have frequently heard that
tbose who have come from the world, have rejoiced at
seeing their friends again, and that their friends in turn
have rejoiced that they had come to them" (Ifeatlt" au
n,II, nos. 493, 494).
Ailer this first state, according to Swedenborg,
f01l0ws the se<:ond, which is that of being admitted
into the interior knowledge of one's own nature and
undergoing the consequent judgmcnts, conviction,
and condemnation of one's evils: after which, for
those who shall enter heaven, follows the third state,
which is that of instruction and initiation inta the
angelic life. Thus wc read :
Il After spirits have been by instructions prepared (or
beaven in the above-mcnlioned places, which is etrected
in a short time, on accounl of their being in spiritual ideas,
wbich comprehend severa! things together, they are then
clotbed with angelic gannents, which are masUy white, as
of fine Iinen j and thus they are brought 10 the w.Y wbich
tends upwards ta heaven, and arc delivered ta the angel-
pards there, and are afterwards received by other angets
and introduced iota societies, and into man)" blessed
tbings. Every one is ncxt led by the Lord inta bis own
lIOciety, which alsa is etreeted by various ways, sometimes
by windiog plubs. The ways by which they are 100 are
DOt known ta any angel, but to the Lord alone. When
tbey come ta their own society, their interiors are then
opened, and sinee these are conformable to the interiors
oftbe angels who arc in that society, they are therefore
immediate!y acltnowledged and received with jar"
(.8,.". au n'II, no. 5(9)'
ln Dante's picture of the progress upward
tbrough Purgatory, as each sin is overcome, the
KlUDd oC angel voiccs is heard singing the anthem of
victory in the words of the corresponding blessing
(rom Matt V., and the approach of the liberating
ange! is thus described :
Towards us came the being beautiful,
Vested in white, and in his countenance
Buch as appears the tremulous morning star.
One penitent is heard softly singing the famniar

complin hymn, CI Te lucis ante terlll.inum JI_CC Before
the ending of the day," when .
'Twas DOW the hour that tumeth back desire
ln those who sail the sea, and melts the heart
t
The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell,
And the new pilgrim penetrates with love,
If he doth hear Crom far away a heU
That seemeth to deplore the dying day.
A great company of newly-arrived spirits brought

by the angel of death to the shores of this world of
trial, is heard chanting altogether in one voice the
Psalm, cc When Israel ,vent out of Egypt" ; and as
the gate is opened admitting to the first terrace, T,
D",,,, Lmu/m,,1U is heard resounding from within.
At length from the suffering throng of the penitents
(or pride-
-more or less bent down
According as they more or less were laden,
and of ,vhom-
-he who had most patience in his looks,
\Veeping did seenl to say, cc 1 cao no more, JI
19 heard this utterance of the Lord's Prayer:
Dant, and Swedenborg. 29
Our Father, Thou who dwellest in the heavens,
Not circumsc::ribed, but (rom the greater love
Thou bearest to the lirst effects on high,
Praisec\ he Thy Name and Thine Omnipotence
By every creature. as befitting il,
1'0 render thanks to Tby sweet effluence.
Come unto us the peace of Th)' dominion,
For unto il we cannot of ourselves,
If il come not, wilb a11 our intellect.
Even as Thine a'Wn angels of their will
Make sacrifice to Thee. hosanna singing.
50 ma)' ail men rnake sacrifice of thei",.
Give unto us this day our <laily manna,
Withouten which in this rough wildemess
Baduvard goes he who toils mast to advance.
And even as we the trespass we have suffered
Pardon in one another, pardon Thou
Benignly, and regard not our desert.
Our virtue. wbicb is easfly o'ercome,
Put not ta proof with the cid advenary,
But Thou froro him who spurs il so, deliver.
A spirit reRecting on the utter corruption of the

world, thus instructs Dante on the cause of evil and
011 man's responsibility :
Ye who are living every cause refer
Still upward to the heavens, as if ail things
They of necessity moved with themselves.
If this were SOt in you would he destroyed
Free-will, nor any justice would tbere he
ln baving joy (or good, or grief (or evil.
The heavens your movements do initiate.-
1 say Dot all; but granting that 1 say il,
Ught bu been given JOU (or good and ml
And Cree volition, which, if some fatigue
In the first battles with the heavens it sutrers,
Afterwards conqûers ail, if weIl 'tis nurtured.
To greater Corce and to a better nature,
Though free, ye subject are, and that creates
The mind in you the heavens have not in charge.
Hence if the present world doth go astray,
ln you the cause is, be it sought in you.
(Purgatorio XVI. 67-85.)
Of this free volition of man, or his fol1owing his
life's ruling love as determining his future state, and
no intervention of God's mercy, which would
destroy that freedom, Swedenborg teaches:
cc 1 can testify Crom much experience that it is impos-
sible to implant the liCe of heaven in those who have in
the world led a life opposite to the life of heaven. There
were some who believed that they should easily receive
Divine Truths after death, when they heard them from the
angels, and that they should believe thelD, and should
then change their lives, and thus could be received into
heaven. But this was tried with very Many, yet only with
those who were in such a belief, to whom the trial was
permitted in order that they might know that repentance
is not given aCter death. Some of those with whom the
trial was made, understood truths and seemed to receive
them, but as soon as they turned to the life of their love,
they rejected them, and even spoke against them. Some
rejected them immediately, being unwilling to hear them.
Some were desirous that the life of their love, which they
had acquired in the world, might be taken away from
them, and that angelic life, or the life of heaven might be
infused in its place. This likewise, by permission, was
accomplished, but when the life oC their love was taken
away, they layas dead, and had no longer the use of their
faculties. From these and other kinds of experience the
Dante and Swedenborg. 3'
simply good were instructed, that the lire of any one cano
not in any wise he changed alter dealb, and lhat evil life
cannot in any degree he transmuted iota good liCe, or
infernal life iota angelic, inasmuch as every spirit, (rom
head to foot, is in quality such as his love is, and thence
such as his life is, and thus to transmute this life ioto the
opposite is altogether to destroy the spirit. The angel!
declare tbat il were easier to change a night-bird iota a
dave, and an owl iota a bird of paradise, than an infernal
spirit iota an angel of heaven. Man aCter death, there·
(ore, remains of such a quality as his Iife had been
in the world From these things il may DOW he manifest,
that no one caR he received iota heaven by Immediate
merey" (Ifeaven and Rtil. no. 531)'
1 cannot lcave this brier notice of the Purgatorio
without quoting a few lines of rare beauty, describing
the appearing to the poet of two noted women, the
one supposed to he identified with the Countess
Matilda of Tuscany, a wealthy and zealous adherent
of the Guelph party in the eleventh century;
and the other the saintly Beatrice, who on earth
had been the idol of the poet's early love, and
afterwards had, in his almost religious devotion,
become transfigured into the embodiment of celes-
tial wisdom, and who as such now, when the
earthly Eden is reached on the uppermost plain of
purgatory, is ready ta conduct Dante upward
through these heavenly spheres which the unbap-
Uze<! Virgil may not presume to enter. Of the
fint vision of Matilda we read :
And la 1 my further course a stream eut off
Wbicb toward the left: band witb its !ittle waves
Bent down the grau that on ils margin spraDg.
With feet 1 stayed, and with mine eyes 1 passed

Beyond the rivulet, to look upon
The great variety of the fresh May;
And there appeared to me (even as appears
8uddenly something that doth turn aside
Through very wonder every other thought)
A lady all a10ne, who went along
8inging and culling floweret after floweret,
With which her pathway was ail painted over.
(Purgatorio XXVIIL 24.)
A great procession is seen in which patriarchs,
prophets, and eiders, the symbolic living beings of
Ezekiel's vision, the eagle and the lion typical of
ourLord's Divine and human natures, the theological
and the cardinal virtues, the evangelists and apostles,
pass by in impressive pomp amid the shining of
the seven golden candlesticks and the singing of
hosannas; and at last the descent of Beatrice is thus
announced:
Ere now have 1 beheld as day began,
The eastern hemisphere aU tinged with rose,
And the other heaven with fair serene adorned ;
And the sun's face, uprising, overshadowed
80 that by tempering influence of vapours
For a long interval the eye sustained it;
Thus in the bosom of a cloud of flowers
Which from those hands angelical ascended,
And downward fell again inside and out
Over her snow-white veil with olive cinct,
Appeared a lady under a green mande
Vested in colour of the living flame.
(Purgatono XXx. 23.)
Is there not a kind of heavenly atmosphere
Dante and SwedenIJorgo 33
about these visions, reminding us of similar passages
here and then!"in the Afemorabilia of Swedenborg?
The following is his description of the approach of
an ange!:
"There appeared to me an angel f1ying beneath the
eastern heaven with a trumpet in his hand, which he
beld to his mouth, and sounded towards the Dorth, the
"est, and the south. He 'l'as clad in a robe whieh waved
bebind him as he fiew along, and was girded around the
wais! "ilh a band whieh seemed as il wcre on tire and
radiant wilb carbuncles and sapphires: he flew with bis
body in a horizontal posture, and gently aiighted on the
ground near wbcre 1 was standing. AfJ soon u he
touched the carth "ilh his (cet, he stood creet and walked
to and fra; but on seeing me he immediately directed
hi. steps loward mc. 1 wu in the spirit, and was stand·
ing in that state on a hill in the sauthem quarter of the
spiritual world n (Co"jllgl'a/ Low. no, 2).
But before following the poet upward in bis
joumey tbrough tbe heavens, we must now for a
moment tum back and notice sorne interesting
coïncidences between the picture of the bells which
Dante bas drawn, and the teacbings afforded us in
Swedenborg on that subject
1
III.
THE HELLS.
ACCORDING to Dante the hells like the heavens

are nine in number, but exist in three grand divisions
or degrees. These three degrees of the hells may
be named those of Incontinence, FoUy, and Malice.
Incontinence comprises the bodily lusts and pas-
sions, the victims ofwhich are punished in the upper
circles and in descending arder; these are lascivious-
ness, gluttony, avarice with prodigality, and anger
with melancholy. The middle circle or intermediate
degree is occupied by the sins of folly, or to use the
poetJs term, bestialism, by which he means that
character cc like unto the beast that perisheth," which
belongs to him who cc is in honour and understandeth
not" Sins of heresy, infidelity, and materialism
are here included-in a word of the cc fools that
have said in their hearts, There is no God."
Beneath these are the hells of malice in their
descending degrees, ~ivided chiefty into the two
classes, of the hells of violence and the hells of
fraud and treachery.
Here we see a division corresponding to the three
degrees of the human mind, the natural, the spiritual,
and the celestial, but with their respective love
perverted to their opposites. In the bells these
become degrees of the natural mind, for the
spiritual and celestial degrees are oever opened in
those who go there, and the trine is that of the
perverted sensual appetites, the perverted scientific
and rational faculties, and the perverted inmost
love. Wc read in Swedenborg:
.. Most of the heUs are tbreefold, the superior ones with-
in appearin~ in thick darkness, because inhabited hy those
in the falslties of evi~ but the înferior ones appearing
l1ery, because inhabited by those who are in the evils
tbemselves. In the deeper hells are thase who have
acted interiorly from evil, but in the less deep those: who
have acted exteriorly" (HétnJe1f attd Htl!, no. 586)-
Now it is not a Uttle remarkable that in the lowest
clrcles of hell, among the lowest of the malicious,
Dante places the treacherous and fraudulent, and
these emhrace a11 seducers, ftatterers. hypocrites,
discord breeders, and thieves ; and Swedenborg says,
in treating of the firth Commandment, ., Thou shalt
not steal:"
10 The evil of theft enters more deeply inta a man than
any other evil. because it is conjoined with cunning and
deceit; and cunning and deceit insinuate themselves even
into the spiritual mind of a man, wherein ia his thought
with the undeutanding" (Dod,im of hJt, no. 81).
The trinal division of the heUs follows that of the
baveRS in, of course, an inverted arder. And as
tbcre are the three heavens corresponding to the
celestiaJ, spiritual, and natura] degrees, sa must there
he corresponding hells.
36 Dante and SwetienbfJrg.
cc Inasmuch as in general there are three heavens, there-
fore also there are in general three hells: the lowest which
is opposed to the inmost or third heaven, the Middle
which is opposed to the Middle or second heaven, and the
bighest which is opposed to the lowest or first heaven"
(HeafJe" and Hell, no. 542).
The lowest of the hells must therefore be in-
habited by those who are in the most intense lust of
dominion from self-love, and in the most intense
hatred to the Lord. Dante caUs these the violent
and the fraudulent, observing a kind of distinction
ioto the two kingdoms of the voluntary and the
inteUectual, but still placing the fraudulent at the
bottom because of the interior nature of their
cunning and deceit.
The love of falsity and the selfish love of the
world occupy the middle degree, corresponding to
the perverted rational principle, and here Dante
places the City of Dis, the habitation of the fools,
or those who have become as beasts through
infidelity and heresy. Of these two hells, namely,
of the perverted loves of the world and of self which
constitute, we may say, the corruption and death of
the spiritual and celestial degrees of man's mind,
Swedenborg says :
cc The hells in the western quarter are the worst of ail,
and are most horrible; in these are they who in the world
have been in the love of self, and thence in' the contempt
of others and in enmity against those who did not favour
themselves. It is their greatest delight to exercise cruelty;
but this delight in the other life is turned against them-
selves. . •• The dreadfulness of the hells decreases from
the northern quarter to the southern, and likewise toward
the east. To the east are they who have been haugbty,
and have not believed in a Divine, but still have not
been in such hatred and revenge, nor in such deceit, as
they who are in a greater depth there in the western
quarter" (Hlavel'l aM ffi//, no. 587).
How horrible these hells are, how grievous the
punishments there suffered, how gloss and revolting
the delights of evil in which the wicked find their
life, and how monstrous the forms into which their
bodies are distorted, we are enabled by Swedenborg
to judge from the examples he bas given in Heavtn
and Hell, and especially when we reRect tbat there
were seen things so revolting that he was not per-
mitted ta reveal them. He tells us of the appear-
ance as of ruined cities and houses arter fires, of
habitations offilth; ofbarren, sandy deserts, ragged
rocks and dark caves and dens, chasms and wbirl·
pools and bogs and lakes of fire (see nos. 583-587).
Of the appearance of those in hell we read :
"In general they are forros of their own evils; thw of
contempt of others, of hatred of various kinds, and of
various kinds of revenge. Fierceness and crue1ty from
their interiors are manifest through ail their forms: but
",hen others commend, venerate, and worship them, their
(aces are contracted and have an appearance of Kladness
hom deljghl In general their faces are dreadful and
void of life like corpses; in sorne black; in sorne fiery
like little torches; in sorne disfigured with sores and
ulcers; in some no face appean, but in its stead sorne-
thinghairy or bony; and in sorne teeth on1y are exhibited"
(Héat'ln and Iftll, no. 553).
What reader of Dante will not recalJ here that
most fearful picture ever drawn perhaps by human
pen, the scene in the lowest hells where two heads
are seen, the one fast frozen in the ice, the other
protruding above it and cc gnawing, gnawing it."
At Dante's inquiry :
That sinner from the savage meal his mouth
Uplifted, wiping it upon the hair
Of the head which he had wasted from behind,
and proceeds to tell who he is, and at the close we
read:
When he had spoken this, with eyes askew
He took again the wretched skull with teeth
Which like a dog's upon the bone were strong.
(I"ftrno XXXIII. 1-7 8.)
We see here a man tumed into the likeness of a
dog, and we reftect on the correspondence of the
teeth and the hair, and we feel that from this one
picture of Dante's imagination we may sufficiently
understand how it was possible that there \vere
things seen by Swedenborg too horrible to reveal.
In the deepest abyss ofhell, Dante places Lucifer
in the appearance of a gigantic monster, and
Swedenborg says :
"By Lucifer are meant those who are of Babel or
Babllon, or those who extend their dominion unto heaven,
[but J that there is not any one devil to whom the hells
are subject, since aIl who are in the hells, like aIl who are
in the heaYens, are from the human race ; [and yet] the
universal heU in one mass resembles one devil, and may
likewise be presented in the image of one devil " (Heaven
and Hell, nos. 5447 553).
Dante and Swetknborg. 39
One further interesting coincidence lies in the
doctrine given and the pictures the poet draws
regarding the intense cold of the lowest hells.
Dante in reaching the circ1e, next ta the abyss itself
where Lucifer is held fro7.en in the ice, cornes upon
those " whose tears, congealing evcn as they sprang,
blocked up the cavity of the eye with ice, which
while permitting sight greatly increased torment by
stopping up the vent of pain."
And one of the moumful of the freezing rind.,
Cried unto us: 0 spirits cruel, 50
As that the tinal frest is given ye,
Take from my face the hardened veils that 1
May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart,
A little, ere again the weeping freeze.
And Swedenborg in speaking of the tire of hell
says:
.. It is to he known that tbose who are in the hells are
not in tire, but that the tire is an appearance j for tbey
are not sensible there of any buming, but only of a heat
sueb as they experienced in the world. The appearance
of tire is from correspondence,. for love corresponds to
tire, and aU tbings which appear in the spiritual world
are according to correspondences.
fi The ahove described tire or infernal heat is tumed iota
intense cold when heat from heaven nows in ; and then
the infernal inhabitants shiver like those who are seized
with a cold fever, and are likewise inwardly tonncnted "
(Htatltn andHéIJ, nos. 571, 572).
IV.
THE HEAVENS.
THE heavens, like the hells, in Dànte, are divided

into three great divisions according to mental traits
which prevail in them. Thus between the heavens
of the more or less sanctified will, those whose
affections cc are still within the reach of the earth's
shadow," being placed below, and those of pure,
unshadowed heavenly love being above, there
intervenes the mediate or transitional heaven of the
understandirig sanctified by the wisdom and know-
ledge growingoutoffaith and true heavenly doctrine.
Here then, as in the hells, is clearly seen a distinction
of the heavenly societies which corresponds to the
natural, the intellectual or spiritual, and the inmost
or celestial degrees of the human mind as taught
by Swedenborg.
cc There are three heavens, and these most distinct (rom
each other; the inmost or third, the middle or second,
and the lowest or first. They (ollow in succession, and
subsist together, as the highest of man, which is the head,
his middle, which is the body, and the lowest, which is
the (eet; and as the highest part o( a house, its middle,
and its lowest. In such order also is the Divine which
proceeds and descends (rom the Lord: thence; (rom the
necessity of order, heaven is three(old.
Dante and SwedenIJorg. 41
.. The Divine which fio"'l in from the Lord and il
received in the inmost or third heaven, is called celestial,
and hence the angels who are there are called celestial
angels. The Divine which fio",s into the second or middle
heaven, i, called spiritual, and henre the angels ",ho are
tbere are caUed spiritual angels. But the Divine which
fio"l in from the Lord and is received in the lowest or
fint beaven, is called natural. But because the natural
of that heaven is not as the natural oC the world, but bas in
it the spiritual and celestial, therefore that heaven is calle<!
spiritual and celestial·natural j and hence the angell who
are thert: are al50 called spiritual and celestial·natural.
"The love in which thase are who are in the celestial
kingdom is caIJee! celestial love j and the love in which
those are who are in the spiritual kingdom il called
spiritual love. Celestial love is love to the Lord, and
lipiritual love is charity towards the neighbour. And
because all good is of love, for what any one loves is ta
bim good, therefore also the good of one kingdom il
called celeslial, and the good of the other spiritual n
(Htaf1ttf fiNi Hell, nos. 29, 31, 23).
Especially do we find a c1ear indication of the
celestial sphere in those "blessed babes" who,
according ta Dante, are placed in the bosom of the
white rose of the enthroned worshippers of the
eternaL Of the infantile character of the celestial
or third heaven, Swedenborg states :
<1 Thase of the Third He.aven tire the very innocences
or heaven, for they, above ail, love to he 100 by the Lord,
u infants by their Father. Before the eyes of the angels
of the lower heavens they appear as infants and as f litUe
ooes.' and as not very wise, although they are the wisest
of the a~11 of beaven. Il was representOO "bat
senaine innocence i, by a most beautiful infant full of
ure, and DÙ:ed: for the innocent themselves, who are in
42 Dante and SwedenIJorg.
the inmost heaven, and thus nearest to the Lord, before
the eyes of other angels do not appear otherwise than as
infants, and some of them naked; for innocence is repre-
sented by nakedness without shame, as is read concemîng
the first man and his wife in paradise (Gen. H. 25);
wherefore aIso, when their state of innocence was lost,
tbey were ashamed of their nakedness, and hid themselves
(chap. iii. 7, 10, 1 1 ). In a word, the wiser the angels
are, the more innocent they are, and the more innocent
they are, the more they appear to themselves as infants;
bence it is that infancy in the Word signifies innocence"
(HeafJe" and Hel/, no. 341).
No one is in heaven who is not a worshipper of
Christ, either as having once looked forward, or as
now looking back to Him and His redemption.
Central in this white rose of heaven is the lake of
Divine light whose circumference would outreach
the sun. And above and beyond this there is and
can be nought save the Alpha and the Omega, the
First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the
eternal Trinity existing in the glorified Humanity
of God incarnate. Says Swedenborg:
cc In the universal heaven no other is acknowledged for
the God of heaven but the Lord alone. They say there,
as He Himself taught, that He is one with tlte FatM';
tbat tM FatM' is in Him and He in tM FatM';
that Ile tltat seetn Him, seetn tlle FatM,~· and that e'Oery..
tlling M/y /J,oceet/eth Irom Him (John x. 30, 38; xiv.
10, II; xvi. 13-15). 1 have often spoken with angels
on this subject, and they have always said, that they can..
not in heaven distinguish the Divine into three, since
they know and perceive that the Divine is one, and that
it is one in the Lord. They said, aIso, that those members
of the Church who come from the world, entertaining
an idea of three Divines, cannot he admitted inta
beaven, sinee theirthought wanden from one to another;
and it is not lawful there to think three and say one,
because every one in heaven speaks from thought, for
there speech is cogitative, or thougbt-speaking. Those
therefore who in the world have distinguished the Divine
iDto three, and received a separate idea oonceming eacb.
Ind have not made that idea one, and ooncentrated it in
the Lord, cannot he reeeived: for there is given in heaven
a communication of ail thoughts j on which account, if
one should come thither who thinks three and says one.
he would he immediately discovered and rejected. But
it is to he known, that all those who have not separated
tnuh from good, or faith from love, in the other life, when
ïnstructed, receive the heavenly idea conceming the Lord,
that He is the God of the universe" (IùtWe1l atul HélI.
no. 2).
The nine heavens succeed one above another
according to the order of the planets, and in visiting
them Dante seems to he conversing with the inhabi·
tants of the planets in succession, uDtil in the last
two or highest heavcns he reaches the abode of the
fixed stars and the crystalline sphere which sur-
rounds the Eternal Light.
Beatrice, in explaining to Dante the appearance
of the saints from the highest in the spheres of the
lower planetary hcavens, says :
These have not in any otber heaven their seats
But all make beautiful the primai circle,
And have sweet life in different degrees
By feeling more or less the elernal Breath.
They mowcd themselves here, not because alletted
This sphere bas been to them, but to give sign
Of the celestialll'hich is least exalted.
44 Dante and Sweden6tWg.
To speak thus is adapted ta your mind,
Since only through the sense it apprebendeth
What then it worthy makes of intellect.
On this account the Scripture condescends
Unto your faculties, and feet and hands
To God attributes, and means something else ;
And Holy Church under an aspect human
Gabriel and Michael represent to you
And him who made Tobias whole again.
(Pa,at/iso IV. 31-48.)
Here we recognize a resemblance to what
Swedenborg teaches, not only concerning the
descent of angels from higher to lower heavens for
purposes of instruction, but aIso concerning the
descent of truths in the Word by means of corres-
pondences from the celestial to the literaI sense.
Regarding the descent of the Word by its succes-
sive adaptations to lower planes of the minds of
angels and men, we read in Swedenborg:
cc From the Lord proceed the celestial, the spiritual, and
the natural, one aCter another. That which proceeds (rom
the Divine Love is called celestial and is the Divine
Good: that from the Divine Wisdom is called spiritual,
and is Divine Truth: and the natura! is (rom both these,
and is their combination in the lowest. ~he angels of
the Lord's celestial kingdom, of whom is the third or
highest heaven, are in the Divine proceeding from the
Lord which is called celestial, for they are in the good of
love from the Lord. Those o( the spiritual kingdom, of
whom are the second or middle heaven, are in the Divine
proceeding from the Lord which is called spiritual, for
they are in truths o( wisdom (rom the Lord. But men
o( the Church in the world are in the Natural Divine
Dant, and Swtdenborg. 45
which alsa proceeds (rom the Lord. It fo11ow5o t here-
fore, that the Divine proceeding from the Lord to its
outennost fonns descends by three degrees, and is n ame<!
celestial, spiritual, and natural. The Divine which
descends from the Lord to human beings descends
through these three degrees, and when it has descended
it contains these threedegrees in itself. Such is the case
with everything divine; therefore, when it is in its
outermost degree it is in its fulness. SUCH 15 THE WORD.
In its outennost sense this is natural j (Il its interior
sense it is spiritual j in its inmost it is celestial ; and in
every sense it is Divine!
.. That the Word is such is not apparent in the sense o(
ita letter, which is natural, for the reason that man in the
world has heretofore known nothing concerning the
heaven50 and 50 has not known what the spiritual is, nor
_bat the celestial: and consequently he ha.s not koo_n
the differencc between them and the naturaI " (DoctriIU
(btWnIit.g th Sacnâ &riphtrt, no. 6).
And of the appearance of the archangels, Sweden·
borg says:
" Man eotire society is a heaven in less (OtOl, sa like·
wiee an ange! is a heaven in lcast fonn : (or heaven is not
ootside an angel, but within him; for his interiors,
whK:b are o( his mind, are disposed inta the form o(
beaven, thus (or the reception of ail things of heaven
_bkh are without him. He alsa receives those tbings
Iccording to the quality of the good which is in him
&om the Lord: hence an angel is aIse a heaven.
.. An entire angelic society sometimes appears as one, in
the form of an angel j which aise it bas becn granted te
me by the Lord te Bee. When a150 the Lord appears in
the midst of the angel50 He does not then appear encom·
paIed by several, but as one [angel1 in angelic fonn.
Theoce it is !hat the Lord in tbe Ward is called an
q d j and a1so tbat an entire society is 50 caDed.
Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are ooly angelic societies,
wbicb are so named from their function " (HeafJe" and
Hell, nos. 53, 52).
ln the cc heaven of Mercury JI Beatrice unfolds to
Dante the doctrine or what she caUs the cc Gran
Sentensia JI of the Incarnation, from which 1 will
quote ooly the following remarkable lines :
By not submitting to the power that wills
Curb for his good, that man who ne'er was born
Damning himself damned all his progeny ;
Whereby the human species down below
Lay sick for many centuries in great error,
Till ta descend it pleased the Word ofGod
To where the nature, which from its own Maker
Estrayed itself, He joined to Him in persan
By the sole act of His etemal love.
(Pa,.atliso VII. 25-34.)
Continuing in this explanation, Beatrice states
that after man cc by sin had become disfranchised,"
there remained only two ways by which he could
he restored to his pristine dignity and freedom :
Either that God through clemency alone
Had pardon granted, or that man himself
Had satisfaction for his folly made.
But inasmuch as man in his limitations has no
power to render satisfaction for his sins :
Therefore it God behoved in His own ways
Man to restore unto bis perfect life,-
1 say in one, or else in both of tbem,
meaning the two ways of justice and mercy :
But sinee the action of the doer is
50 much more grateful, as it more presents,
The goodness of the heart {rom wbich it issues,
Goodness Divine, that doth imprint the world,
Has bœn conlented to proceed by each
And aIl Ita ways to lift you up agaiD;
Nor 'lmt the tirst day and the final night
Sucb high and such magnificent proceeding
Bf one or by the other, was or shall he ;
For Cod more bounteous "as Himself to give
Tc make man able to uplift himself
Tban if He only of Himself had pardoned;
And ail the ether modes were insufficient
For justice. were it not the Son of Gad
Himself had bumbled to become incarnate.
(Paradiso VII. t03.)
This condescension of God to man's estate in
order to redeem it is thus stated by Swedenborg in
his Doel,.;,u concerning tk Ltwd (nos. 29-36) :
.. The Lord (rom etemilY who is Jehovah look on
Himself a buman nature in erder to save men: from the
Divine in Himself He made the humanity Divine by
mean. of temptations admitted into Himselr, the lut of
..hicb temptations was the passion of the cross. Thus
He sucœuively put ail' the humanity assumed from the
mother aDd put on a humanÎty from the Divine in Kim·
se14 and thi. is the Divine Human and the 'Son or God.'
Thus Cod became man, as in first principles 10 in the lut
mdm.-"
It is when among the blessed in the heaven of
the • (reckoned at that lime as (ourth in the
order of the planets), that a voice instruets Dante
regarding the vesture of Iight with wbich the saints
are clolhed,
--As long as the festivity
Of Paradise shaH he, so long our love
ShaH radiate round about us such a vesture.
Its brightness is proportioned to the ardour,
The ardour to the vision; aljd the vision
Equals what grace it bas above its worth.
(Pa,adiso XIV. 37':'42.)
And it is. here that the holy circles or choirs "in
their revolving and their wondrous song" so show
forth the joy of their life that the poet cries :
Whoso lamenteth him that here we die
That we may live above, has oever there
Seen the refreshment of the eternal raine
Here is beautifully expressed not only the truth
which the Word utters in saying, cc He clothes
Himself with light as with a garment," but also the
interior °truth that it is the inner heat or ardour of
love that radiates this light, and that thus furnishes
its own substance ,vith a visible forme The power
of vision is also said to be equal to the inward
reception of Divine grace in accordance with the
truth, that aIl the life, delight, and beauty of the
angels is according to their acknowledgment that
their life is from the Lord, that is, a" grace above
their own worth." Swedenborg thus speaks of the
clothing of ~he angels, and of the spheres of light
about them :
cc The things which appear before the eyes of angels in
the heavens, and are perceived by their senses, appear and
are perceived as much to the life, as the things which are
on the earth appear to man; yea, Inuch more clearly,
distinctly, and perceptibly. The appearances which are
&om this source in the heavens, are caUed nalap/JtaraNU,
because they exist realty. 'Ibere are al50 given appearances
not real, which are those things which ind~ed appear, but
do not correspond ta the interiors. As angelic wisdom
exceeds human wisdom in such a degrec that it is called
ineffable, 50 likewise do ail things which are perceived by
them, and appear to them; sillce ail things which are
pereeived by the angels, and appear te them, correspond
to theîr wisdom.
"The garmcnts with which angels are c1othed, corre-
spond ta their intelligence; therefore ail in the heavens
appear c10thed according to intelligence; and because
one excels another in intelligence, one bas more excellent
garments than another. The most intelligent have
garments glowing as (rom Rame, sorne shining as (rom
l~bt; the less intelligent haVI: bright and white garments
,"theut brilliancy i and the still Jess intelligent have
garments of various colours; but the angels of the in·
Most heavens are ",lthout clothing.
.. Because the garments of the angels correspond ta their
intelligence, therefore also they correspond to truth, since
aU intelligence is (rom Divine Truth; whether therefore
you say that angels are c10thed according to intelligence,
or according to Divine Truth, it is the same thing. That
the garments of sorne glow as from flame, and those of
othen shine as from ligbt, is because fl3me corresponds ta
good, and light to truth from good. That the garments
or IOme are brightand .hite without brilliancy, and thase
oC othen of various colours, is because the Divine Good
and Trutb are lCS1 refulgent, and also are variously ft-
ceived, with tbe less intelligent: brightness alsa, and white
ness correspond to truth, 3nd colour to it!l varieties. That
tbose in the inmost heaven are without clothing, is because
tbey are in innocence, and innocence corresponds to
nudit," (Ht4fInI (1"" Hell, nos. 175, 177, 178~
The doctrine of the Divine operation (rom centre
o
to circumference is thus expressed by Dante, in the
course of a discussion in the planet Jupiter regarding
the Divine justice and the fate of the heathen :
The primaI 'Vill, that in Itself is good .
Ne'er from itself, the Good Supreme, has moved.
So much is just as is accordant with It:
No good created draws It to itself
But It, by raying forth, occasions that
. • . . . Unto this kingdom never
Ascended one who had not faith in Christ
Before or since He to the tree was nailed.
But look thou, many crying are, "Christ, Christ! U
Who at the judgment shall be far less near
To Him than sorne shaH be who knew not Christ.
Such Christians shaH the Ethiop condemn,
When the two companies shaH be divided,
The one forever rich, the other poor.
(Paradiso XIX. 86-111.)
Regarding the salvation of the heathen, and
especially of the African race, Swedenborg thlls
writes:
"That the Gentiles are saved as weil as Christians,
those may know who know what it is which makes
heaven with man; for heaven is in man, and those who
have heaven in themselves come into heaven. Heaven
in man is to acknowledge the Divine, and to be led by
the Divine. The first and primary thing of every religion
is, to acknowledge a Divine. A religion which does not
acknowledge a Divine, is not a religion; and the precepts
of every religion have respect to worship, thus they teach
how the Divine is to be worshipped, so that the worship
may he acceptable to Him; and when this is fixed in
one's mind, thus as far as he wills it, or as far as he loves
it, so far he is 100 by the Lord. It is known that the
Dante and Swedenborg. S'
Gentiles live a moral life as weil as Cnristians, and tbat
mani of them live a beUer 1ife than Christians.
.. have been instructed on many occasions, that the
Gentiles who have 100 a morallife and in obedience and
subordination, and have 1ived in mutual charity accord-
iog to tbeir religion, and have thence received something
of conscience, are accepted in the other life, and are
there instrueted with solicitous cafe br ange1s. in the
goods and truths of Caith; and that when they are being
instructed, tbey behave themselves modestly, intelligently,
and wisely, and easily receive truths, and ar~ imbued
"tb them. They have fonned to themselvcs no prin-
ciples of falsity contnuy to the truths of (ait11, which
are to he shaken off, still \es!I scandais against the Lord,
like many Christians, who cherisb no other idea of Him
than as of a comman man. The Gcntiles, 011 the contrary,
...hen mey bear that Gad became Man, and thus mani-
feste<! Himself in the world, immediately acknowledge
and adore the Lord, saying that Gad has fully manifested
Himsel{ because He is the Gad of heaven and of earth,
and because the human race are His. It is a Divine
Ttuth, that without the Lord there is no salvation; but
this is te be understood mus, tbat there i. no salvation
but from the Lord. There are in the universe many
earths, and ail full of inhabitants, of whom scarcely any
Imow tbat the Lord llSSumed the Homan in our eartb.
Vet beaUIe they adore the Divine under a human form,
they are aecepted and 100 of the Lord. Among the
Gentiles in heaven, the Africans are most beloved, for
they reœive the goods and truth. of heaven more eaaily
than othen. They wish especially te be ca1led obedient,
but not faithful; they SAy that Christians, because they
bave the doctrine of (aith, may be called faithful, but not
tbey, unlns they receive the doctrine, or, as they say, are
able to receiYe it" (HtaW" au IftIJ, nos. 3190 321, 3:16).
ln his ascent into the higher heavens, Dante is
examined in succession by St Peter as ta his raith,
by St James as to his hope, and by St John as to
bis love. In his confession of faith there occurs
this singular expression, reminding one strongly of
Swedenborg's use of the singular verb with a plural
subject when the two subjects are distinctly one,
like love and wisdom, or esse and eziste,e. The
poet believes in three eternal persons" and these-
One essence, 1 believe, so one and trine,
They bear conjunction both with sunl and est.
(Pa~atliso XXIV. 140.)
Compare this with Swedenborg's mode of expres.
sion in his work SapientiaAngelica de Divino Amo,e ..
cc Quod Divinus Amor et Divina Sapientia sit substantia
et forma, mox confirmatum est ... Quia ipsa ilIa substantia
et forma est Divinus Amor et Divina Sapientia, sequitur
quod sit ipse et unicus amor ac ipsa et unica sapientia,
consequenter quod sit ipsa et unica essentia, tum ipsa et
unica vita, nam amor et sapientia est vi~" (nos. 44, 45).
Dante's confession of his love, in answer to the
inquiry of St John the evangelist, begins thus:
The good, that gives contentment in this court,
The Alpha and Omega is of aU
The writing that love reads me low or loud.
For good, so far as good, when comprehended

Doth straight enkindle love and so much greater
As more of goodness in itself it holds.
Theo to that Essence (whose is such advantage
That every good which out of It is found
Is nothing but a ray of Its own light)
More than else whither must the mind be moved
Of every one in loving, who discerns
The truth in whiëh this evidence is founded.
Da~te aM Swede~borg. 53
The voice reveals il of the truthful AUlhar,

Who says to Moses, speaking oC Himself•
.. r will make all My goodness pass before thee."
Thou, too. revealest il to me, beginning
The Jaud evangel that proclaims the secret
Of heaven and earth aboYe ail other ediet.
Here Dante evidently refers to the opening of

St John's Gospel: "ln the beginning was the
Ward, and the Ward was with God, and the Ward
was God ;" and then he conc1udes :
The being of the world, and my own being,
The death which He endured that 1 may live,
And that which ail the faithful hope, as 1 do,
With the forementioned vivid consciousness,
Have dr.:awn me from the sea of love perverse,
And of the night have placed me on the shore.
The leave! wherewith embowered is ail the garden
Of the Elemal Gardener, do 1 love
As much as He has granted them of good.
That is to say that true love loves even the truth
not for its own sake but (or the good which is in it ;
and then the poet continues:
As SCIOn as l had ceased, a song most sweet
Throughout the heaven resounded, and my bdy
Said witb the O1hers, " Holy, holy, holy !"
(ParadiS{} XXVI. 16-69.)
The emanation of creative spheres from the
Divine Love in the beginning, and thus the creation
of the universe, not from notbing but from itself,
by discrete degrees of proceeding, is thus beauti·
54 Da"le a"d SwedenIJorg.
fully outlined by Beatrice's instruction to Dante in
the twenty-ninth canto :
Not to acquire some good unto Himsel~
Which is impossible, but that his splendour
In its resplendency May say cc Su6sisto 1"
In His etemity outside of time,
Outside aU other limits, as it pleased Him,
Into new loves the Etemal Love unfolded.
Of this unfolding of heaven and of all1ife out of
the Divine Love, Swedenborg writes :
"The Divine proceeding from the Lord is caUed in
heaven DivineTru'th. This Divine Truth flows into heaven
from the Lord out of His Divine Love. Divine Love, and
thence Divine Truth, are comparatively as the fire of the
sun "and the light thence, in the world; love as the fire of
the sun, and truth thence as light from the sun. From
correspondence also fire signifies love, and light the truth
thence proceeding. Thence it nlay be evident, what the
Divine Truth proceeding from the Divine Love of the
Lord is, that it is in its essence Divine Good conjoined to
Divine Truth; and because it is conjoined, it vivifies
aIl things of heaven, as the heat of the sun conjoined
to light in the world fructifies aIl things of the earth,
as in the- time of spring and summer. It is otherwise
when heat is not conjoined to light, thus when the
light is cold; then aIl things are torpid, and lie without
life. The Divine Good, which is compared to heat, is the
good of love with the angels, and the Divine Truth, which
is compared to light, is that by which and from which is
the good of love.
"That the Divine in heaven, which makes heaven, is
love, is hecause love is spiritual conjunction; it conjoins
angels to the l"ord, and it conjoins them one with another ;
and it so conjoins, that they are aU as one in, the sight of
the Lord. Moreover, love is the very esse of life to every
Dante and Sweden6org. 55
one, hence from it an angel has !ife, and also man has
life. That from love is the inmost vital [principle) of
man, every one may know who considers; for from the
pl'eSence of it he groW'5 warm, from the absence of it he
grows cold, and from the privation of Îl he dies. But it
is to he known that the life of cvery one is such as his
love is" (Hlavm ami Héli, nos. 13, 14).
And of the inflnite multiplying of angelic forms
according to the various modes of reception of the
Divine life, we read :
This nalure doth so multiply itself
ln numhers, that there never yet was speech
Nor mortal faney that can go 50 far.
And if thou notest that whieh is revealed
By Daniel, thou wilt see that in his thousands
Number determinate is kept eonceaJed.
The primai Light that ail irradiates it
By modes as many i5 received therein,
As are the splendours wherewith 1t is mated.
The height bebold now and the amplitude

Of the etemal Power, sinee it hath made
HIeU 50 many mirrots, where 'tis broken,
One in hself remaining as before.
(Panuiiso XXIX, 130')
It is from hence that the poet now mounts up in
his final ftight to the blessed vision of the Divine
Light in its various forms, as of a river and of
,parks thence issuing, and of the ftowers upon its
banks i of the Jake and the rose and the angelic
becs of which we read :
-the other host, that ftyîng .sees and sings
The glory of Him who doth enamour il,
And the goodness tbat eteatoo it so noble,
Dante and Swelknôorg-.
Even as a SW:lrm of becs that sinks in Rowers
One moment and the next returns again
1'0 where ilS labour ;s ta sweetness turned,
Sank into the great Rower, that is adomed
With leaves sa many, and thenee reaseended
1'0 where itslove abideth evermore.
Their faces had they aU of living Rame
And wings of gold, and aU the rest so white
No snow unto that limit doth attain.
Then the poet beholds his Beatrice enthroned,
and the" faithful Bernard," and Mary the mother
of our Lord,· the spheres of blessed infants, the
angels and arehangels, and finally thus he tells, "as
best he may," ofhis crowning vision of the Incarnate
God,
Not because more than one unmingled substance
\Vas in the living Light on which 1 looked,
For It was always what ft was before,
But through the sight, that fortified itself
ln me, by looking, one appearance only
1'0 me was ever changing as 1 changed.
Within the deep and lu minous subsistence
Of the H igh Light appeared ta me Three Creles
Of threefold colour and of one dimension,
And by the Second seemed the First reReeted
As Iris is by Iris, and the Third
Seemed Fire th30t equally from Bath is breatled.
• Compr.~ Ibis witb Swedenborg'. reverent Ilnd imfeasi'e
mention of what he calls a mO$/. memorable e,enl : A« Jiff7Jis~llm:
"MAJ,V TH!. MOTHKIt or Tlllt LoItD once passed ~ and
appeared Ilbove my head in wbite raiment; Ihere me P',1ed a
moment and lAid Ibal she wu the motber of the Lord, that le "'Ill
indeed bom or ber, bul that being made God He hlld pUI offll the
hllmanity wbich He bad rrom her; .a tllllt now Ihe wonhif Him
as her Cod, and iSllnwilling tbllt an)' one ~ld Ilcknowledll Hlm
"',
as ber IOD .sinet ail in Iiim b Di'll:le" (Tnu CÀn"sl;/UI. RigiMt,
~
Tbat Circulation, \ll"bic:h being thus conc:eived

Appeared in Tbee as a reflee:t.ed Light
When 50mewhat contemplated by mine eyes,
Within hself, oC Its own very colour,
Seemed to me painted with our cffigy,
Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein.
Here the poet is referring to the Divine Humanity
of the Lord as bearing the image of our nature, and
being the abject of our sighl Compare Sweden-
borg's sublime statement oC this truth:
.. Ali the angels in the heavens never perceive the

Divine under any other Corm but the human; and what
is wonderful, thase who are in the superior heavens
cannat think otherwise of the Divine. They are brought
into that necessity oC thinking, from the Divine itself
which ftows in, and al50 from the fonn of heaven, aœord-
ing ta which their thoughts extend themselves around:
for every thought which the angels have, has extension
into heaven, and according ta that extension they have
intelligence and wisdom. Hence it is that ail there
acknowledge the Lord, because the Divine Human is
given only in Him. These things have not only been
lold me by the angels, but it has al50 becn given me ta
pel'Ceive them, whcn elevated into the interior sphere of
beaven. Hence il is manifcst, that the wiser the angels
are, the more c1early they percehe this; and hence it is,
tbat the Lord appears ta them: for the Lord appean in
a Divine angelic form, ,,'hich is the human, ta those who
acknowledge and belie"'e in a visible Divine, but not ta
thoee who ac1mowledge and believe in an invisible
Divine; for the former can see their Divine, but the
latter cannat" (Btow" a"d Htll, no. 79).
58 Da"le and Swedenborg.
1 wished to see how the Image to the Circle
Conformed Itsel~ and how It there finds place;
But my own wings were not enough for this,
Had it not been that then my mind there smote
A flash of lighlning, wherein came its wish. .
Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy,
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and other stars.
(Paratliso XXXIII. 10g-145.)
Thus ends the Divina Conztltedia in the acqu~
escence of the poet's own \vith the Divine central
will of the universe, 50 that he is content with the
shortcoming of his own endeavour to fully compre-
hend the Divine Being and His being made Man,
since the all-guiding Love so mIes.
In these extracts from the great Italian epic 1
think the reader will see how, with the elevation .of
the subject, the poet's own mind seems to become
itself elevated, refined, and il1umined, and into what
wisdom almost angelic, and into what heatific visions
of heaven hi~ prophetic intuitions admitted him.
The poem remains a poem and a poem only, but
in the light of the doctrines we now enjoy, we see
how many deep truths lie here imbedded, truths
which could heretofore be only half received, as in-
genious rancies and daring guesses, but which· now
not only shine with the clear and holy light that
revelation alone can give, but may remain for our
delight still enclosed in all the rich and variecl
setting which the language of the poet has given
them.
My thought in conducting my readers through
this comparative study of Dante and Swedenborg
has becn not ta prove Dante a prophet, even though
he spoke often wiser than he knew, but ta show the
unity of truth, and the power of revealed truth, to
vivifyand reduce to order and beautyall the other-
wise dcad and inert fragments of the true that lie
scattered here and there in the wide realrns of our
knowledge, whether of nature, art, or literature. It
is spiritual truth that quickens ail knowledge; and
even Dante, wide as is his repute and lofty his place
arnong the great poets of the world, must yet come
to he read and studied with highcr cnjoyment, troer
appreciation, and more profit by those who can read
him in the light afforded by Swedenborg, than he
has ever yet becn by even his warmcst adrnirers
and profoundcst commentators.
FI.OUNCE, ITALV, 11189.
.
"THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF DANTE."*
A REVIEW.
IN view of the materialistic tendency of thought

prevailing at the present time, it is encouraging ta
find a public writer recognizing a cc spiritual sense"
in anything; but when the writer is one who holds
the position of Dr. Harris, among the deeper thinkers
of our time and country, and his topic the great
religious poem of Latin Christianity, the " spiritual
sense," so inquired into, becomes a subject of more
than ordinary interest
In the brief but very complete and in every way
. interesting treatise by Dr. Harris, on cc The Spiritual
Sense of Dante's Divina Commedia," we have a new
interpretation added to the long catalogue of the
explanations of Dante, dating from the poet's own
statement of the four ways in which a poem is to
he understood: "There is in a poem a literaI, an
allegorical, a moral, and a mystical sense" (Dante's
Convi·to, Ch. 1.). But it is in neither of these senses
that the new interpretation here offered us consists.
Rather we must caU this of Dr. Harris the philo-
* cc The Spiritual Sense of Dante's Divina COl1zf1zedia," by W. T.
Harris [United States Commissioner of Education]. New York:
D. Appleton & Co., 1889.
Tite Spirilu4l Sense of Dante. 61
sophie interpretation, or that of the ground or the
"supreme principle," in the knowledge of which
consists, according to our reviewer, the .. angelic
knowing" itself, as weil as the genuine poetic and
prophetie faculty.
The" spiritual sense" which the writer here dis·
covers, is that which is grounded in philosophy.
• The Divina CQmmtdÙl," he says, "may he justly
c1aimed to have a spiritual sense, for it possesses a
philosophie system and admits of allegorical inter-
pretation. 1t is /4r uceUence the religious poem of
the world. And religion, Iike philosophy, deals
directly with a !lrst principle of the universe, while
like poetry it c10thes its universal ideas in the garb
of special events and situations, making them
types and hence symbols of the kind which may
become allegories."
Any poem that "exhibits a supreme principle
operating in the affairs of a world, and henee
exhibits a philosophy realized or inearnated," as it
were: .. under the fonn of events and situations
chosen ta he universal types," may he said ta bave
a" spiritual sense" The discovery of this spiritual
sense therefore must helong only ta philosophie in-
sight, or ta the mind capable of apprehending these
6rst principles oC things. But the poet's insigbt
reaches Carther than any rormulated system of
philosophy. and the" art structure or the poem
reveals a deeper spiritual sense than is covered
by the Allegory." This art structure grows out
of the poet's nationality, in Dante's case the
62 Tne Sjn:rltual Sense of Dante.
Roman, as distinguished from the Hebrew and the
Greek.
The Hebrew discovers the highest principle
through the emotions of the heart; the Greek
realizes it intellectually, as the pure or essential
Form ; the Roman experiences it as will or volition.
We would say, rather, as the act in which both the
will and the intellect find the outmost expression
and power. According to the view which regards
the absolute first principle as Will, each being, in
acting, acts upon itself and thereby becomes its
own fate. It creates its environment. The re-
sponsibility of the free agent is infinite. And here
fol1ows the interpretàtion, in the briefest forrn, of
the deep ethical meaning of Dante's poern, as based,
according to the author, on this poetic intuition of
the supreme principle as will.
cc If the will of the free agent acts so as to make for
itself an environment of deeds that are in harmony with
its freedom, it lives in the' Paradiso.' If it acts so as
to contradict its nature, it makes for itself the' Inferno.'
cc As the individual man by his will creates an environ-
ment through society, therefore his deeds are to he
judged by their effect upon society, whether they re-
enforce the freedom of others, or curtail that freedom."
It is in Christianity that the perfect freedom and
perfect responsibility of man is recognized, and this
is done in the Church's Doctrine of Hell as that of
the complete return of the deed upon the doer.
cc A man can conjoin himself to the social whole or
cao sunder himself from it. He can on the one hand
The Spiritual Sense of Dante. 63
mediate himself through ail men, placing his personal
intere51 al the most distant part of the uni verse, and
seeking his own good through fint serving the interest of
all others; or he can seek his sellish ;nterest directly.
and before that of ail others, 3.nd in preference to theirs.
Thus he can malte (or himself one of two uuerly different
worlds, an Infemo or a Paradiso."
It is on entering bel! that Virgil informs Dante
that here dwell the wretched people who have lost
the" good of the intellect," meaning, according to
Arlstotle's doctrine of the highest good, the vision
of absolute Truth and Goodness. The wicked do
not sec God. Ta them He seems an extcmal
tyrant, oppressing them and inflicting pain on them.
They are conqucred but not obedient "This state
is hell, and even this is the evidencc of Divine love
when rightly understood."
"Were God a fonnless abyss, as in the Oriental idea,
ail finite heing would be lost in Him. and ail rebellion or
imperfection would constitute annihilation. But with a
Christian idea of God as pure Fonn the finite can sub-
sitt as real and true substance, Ynd Gad in pTotecting
the absolute free-will of the individual gives him im-
mortal existence, even in hell. HeU is the alienation
from Gad. but not annihilation. It arase with the creating
of f1nite things and theiT limita.tions, and it will exist as
long u the finite is created-that is etemally.
.. Before me [sa15 the inscription over the gate of heU]
were no things created, but etemal: and etemal te
endure. . . . HeU therefore signifies the conti nuance of
free.will, supported by Divine Grace. . . . It is astate
of rebelliob against the Divine world-order; the indi-
ridual seeks his sel6sh good before the goad of his
fellow·men and instead of theiT goad. Accordingly he
wills that humanity shaH he his enemies. . . . The con-
tradiction hence arising exists in the shape of pain and
hellish torment.
cc The sinner is in heU because he looks upon his own
pain, not as produced by his own freedom, but as thrust
upon him undeservedly from without. . . . CouId he see
that his pain comes frolu his own act of freedom, from
his opposition to the social whole, then he \vould welcome
pain as the evidence of his own substantial participation in
his race and in the Divine Being. Then he would be at
once in purgatory, and aU his pain would become purifying
instead of hardening to his sou1. . . . In purgatory the
individual looks upon society as the centre and measure,
and strives to rid himself of his selfishness. He struggles
against the lusts of the flesh and the pride and envy of
his soul. Such lusts and passions now seem to him
horrible when they arise within him, and this is
the torment of purgatory. In purgatory aU pain and
inconvenience, ail the ills of the llesh and of the soul are
made means of purification, means of conquest over
selfishness."
1 have quoted thus abundantly from Dr. Harris

to illustrate what he means by the art structure of
Dante's poem. This consists of the threefold world
of will exercise: man at enmity with society and
suffering from the evil without, the state of hell ;
man at enmity with himself and suffering from the
evil recognized as from within, or from the absence
of his o\vn freedom, the state of purgatory; final1y,
man at peace with himself and with his fellow-man,
which is heaven. In the second-the purgatory-
we see the struggles endured in the spiritual
temptation; the being faithful nnto death in the
hope and confidence of final victory. In the last
The Spir"ual Seuse of Danle. 65
the final victory and peace of heaven itself. Thus
the poem is eminent1y the Christian epic; it is the
great poem of salvation---of the restoration of man
to the truc saJus, health, or the Divine arder of
things. That the ordinary readeT would sec, in the
various scenes depicted by Dante in heU and in
purgatory, the representation of these deep-Iying
principles is not to he supposed. The question
rnight arisc whether, as philosophically-defined
principles, the poet himself ever saw them, and
whether, thererore, they are not rcarl iota the plem
by the phiiolOphic insight of the interpreter. There
would he nothing in the latter supposition inconsis·
tent with the true" spiritual sense" of the poem,
provided the charaeters and scenes introduced are
such as rcaUy helong to the hells and to the inter·
mediate and the heavenly worlds; for, given any
fact of nature or of humanity, which is true in its
own plane, it must contain depths of spiritual
meaning far outreaching any knowledge possessed
by the narrator of the fact itse1f. In seeing, there·
fore, the spiritual meaning of Dante, Dr. Harris Îs
really penetrating not sa much into the JX>et's
individual meaning as into the Divine meaning
itself of the great facts of an etema! hell, an inter·
mediate world. and a heaven. These he interprets
according to the philosophie system which he sees
underlying all Christianity. It is interesting ta
read Dr. Harris's description of the change which
bis own feeling toward the man Dante undergoes,
regarding him first as "more of a fiend than a man,"
E
66 Tite Spiritual S,,,,, of Da~t'.
and at length .. struck with the apt correspondence
between the punishments of the' 1nCema' and the
actual state of rnind of the sinner on committing
the sin." The conviction arises that Dante has
done nothing arbitrary-that what seemed at first
.. his fertmty of genius in inventing extema!, physical
symbols for the expression of internai states of the
sou1," proves to he ooly the poet's deep sense of
justice and truth to what he has actually observed
ln the world about him. Thence wc come to
recognize" the tenderness and divine charity of this
world-poet and see his loving-kindnes! in the very
instances in which we at fint could see ooly malig.
nant spite or heartless cruelty."
More than this could hardly he said orthe Ward
itself as the Creative Logos, or truc World Poet,
and we find it difficult to see wherein Dr. Harris
draws a line between Dante's poem and Revelation
itself. Perhaps he means, indeed, to dra...... no such
Une, but would regard bath the Italian poem and
the Christian Scriptures as alike the self-revealings
of the Supreme Reason or Absolute Idea in the
consciousness of the human mind
The .. angelic knowing" is accotding ta Dante
that of CI pure illumination i" ",hile ta men it is
accorded to know CI br means of the symbalism
involved in objects perceptible bythe senses.." The
progress of human knawledge Is, according to Dr,
Harris, from that of the classilication offacts to that
of laws, and finaUy ta the knowledge of principles
or energies acting in the fonn of laws. Sweden·
l
Tire Spiritual Sense of Dante. 67
borg defines it as progress through the three stages
or degrces of: knowledge (sa'mtia), intelligence,
and wisrlom ; and as contemplating in these, respec-
tively: cffects, causes, and ends. Thus in the Divine
LAvt and Wisdtmt, no. 202, he says: "Ta think
from cnds is of wisdom: to think from causes
is of intelligence: to think from effects is of
science."
" Could a man become," says Dr. Harris, "50 weIl
acquaintcd with principles as to habitually make
his knowledgc a deduction from first principlcs, he
would then know by 'pure illumination' as angels
are said to know." In the passage of Dante to
which Dr. Harris rerers for illustration of this
knowing, wc do not see defined, although it may
be symbolized, this deduction from first principles.
What Dante actually says is in correction of those
who have asserted that the angels "can hear, re·
collect, and will;" and he would describe, in its
purity, that truth which men on earth see and
teach only confusedly :
These substaneesfthe angelslsinee in Cod's countenanœ
They jocund were, tumed not away their sight
From that wherefrom not anything is hidden ;
Henee tbey have not their vision intercepted
By abject new, and hence tbey do not need
Ta recollect, tbrouKh interrupted thought.
50 that, belo"", people do dream, awake,
Believing they speak truth, and not believing,
And in the last is greater sin and shame.
Below you do not joumey in one path,
Philosophizing: 50 transporteth you
Love of .ppearance and the thought thereof.
68 The SjJz-ritua/ Sense of Dante_
And even this, above here, is endured
With less disdain, than when is set aside
The Holy Writ, or when it is distorted.
They think not there how much of blood it costs
To sow it in the world, and how he pleases
Who in humility keeps close to il.
Each striveth for appearance and doth make
His own inventions: and these treated are
By preachers, while th' Evangel holds its peace.
(Paradiso XXIX. 76-96.)
Any one will find here a suggestion of the pas-
sage of the W ord where are described the "pure in
heart who see God," and the little children " \vhose
angels do always behold the face of My Father
in heaven," and of those things which are" hidden
from the wise and prudent, but are revealed unto
babes," and especiaUy when by these infantile
states, are understood, as Swedenborg explains,
~e innocence of the third or celestial degree of the
angelic heavens. The angelic and human knowing
is described by Swedenborg as progressing through
three discrete planes or degrees-the natura], which
is 'knowledge of effects and appearances of truth ;
the spiritual, which is knowledge of causes or the
spiritual laws controlling aU natural phenomena;
the celestial, which is knowledge of ends, or what
Dr. Harris caUs the first principles_ Swedenborg
says of the several planes of the angelic know-
ledge:
cc The thoughts of the angels of the highest or third
heaven are thoughts of ends, those of the second heaven
are those of causes, those of the lowest or first heaven
Tke Spiritual Sense 0/ Dante. 69
are those of effects, . . . The angels of the lower heavens
think about causes and about ends; the angels of the
higher heavens think (rom causes and Crom ends"
. (Divine Love and Wùdo11l, no. 202).
The progrcss (rom the thinking (rom appearanccs,

such as Dante dcscribes as helonging to the lowcr
or natura! plane, to the thinking (rom ends which
belongs to those "who rejoice in their unchanging
vicw of God's face," finrls illustration in the contrast
drawn by Dr. Harris between the secming cruelty
of the hells whcn regarded purely as ciTeet, or as
ultimated in suffering and pain, and the mercy
which is implied in thcir permission when vicwed
from the ends of DivÎne love in creating and pre·
serving the freedom of man. As to the means of
attaining this angelic knowledge of ends, or im-
mediate vision of truth in first principles, Dr.
Harris seems to restrict this to the philosophie
order of minds, or to admit, if any others, only the
poets into the ranks of those enjoying this pure
illumination. It does not appear from this treatise
whether the author regards the Word as the
source itself of such illumination, or whether the
life of regeneration in accordance with the revealed
Word is the path into this highest light He
speaks, indeed, of this highest wisdom as being the
gift of the Holy Spirit to those who are of the
Church, but he seems to use these terms in the
Hegelian philosophie sense rather than in the
strictly religious sense--the Holy Spirit being,
aceording to Hegel, the Absolute Idea or the
70 Tiu SjJt·rt:tual Sense of Dante.
Supreme Reason realizing Itself objectively in the
kingdom of God or the invisible Church. 1n this
infinite, immortal Church man reaches perfection
and the knowledge of the highest truth, but as
philosophy, and not as religion or objective revela-
tion; for religion, according to Hegel, is the truth
in the form of mental representation or imagination,
probably as the myth, while philosophy is the
thinking of absolute truth, or the true in the form
of truth. Dr. Harris says that this, according to
Dante, is revealed and knowable :
Weil 1 perceive that never sated is
Our intellect unless the Truth illumine it
Beyond which nothing true expands itself.
It rests therein as wild beast in his lair
When it attains it; and it can attain it :
If not, then each desire would frustrate be.
(Paradiso IV. 124.)
cc And it can attain it"! Dante was, then, no
agnostic. Not only to him was that" Truth beyond
which nothing true expands itself" attainable, but
without it the ideal human life itself would perish,
. for" each desire would frustrate be." It is not of
the humble, patient agnosticism which limits its
denial to the confession, cc 1 do not know," while
still holding the eyes lifted to where the Light
shaH shine, that this desire is spoken, but rather
of that denial of the possibility of Divine revelation
which is contained in the arbitrary but persistent
assumption, "1 can not know." This is what cuts
the chain of lifting desire, that which destroys the
Tiu Spintuat Se1lSil of Da"'e. 71
faith·principle; which blots out that "wisdom
which is the knowledge of ends, and that intelli-
gence which is the knowlege of causes," and Jeaves
the mind the blinded victim to the pseudo-science
which "knows" only effects. Of this kind of
agnostidsm and its fatal effect upon the whole
interior structure of the mind, Swedenborg says in
the SjJl'n"tua/ Diary:
"The majority of these are such as bave thought in
the world-when they heard (rom preaching, or came
ioto any thought {rom the speecb of another, and seemed
to he vanquished by sorne reason which tbey could not
gainsay-that, whether it is or is not true, they do not
know; whether thue is a Gad, whether tbere is a heaven,
whether there is faith, whether sucb things as belong to
the Church; (saying to themselves.,) '1 might easily
believe them if 1 were to sec them in another Iife-if l
come thither;' supposing that they will helieve if they
see for certain or hear for certain. But this by no meanl
happens. Tltey wllO MW nolfailli Ulhen in lhe rtNWId, tfq
1I()1 MW' failli in lhe ol!«r Ifle. 1 have speken with such
ones; and they were convicted of being in error. They
seiz.ed upon the truth. And when they turned the face
to me Ihey believed. But immediately they turn thern·
selves 10 their own loves, or tum themselves away from
me to Ihemseives, then they are instantly in the like
faith to that in which they were in the world and alto-
gtther against those things which they have heard. Nor
are lhey any /oll,gl' ab4 10 IN 4d 10 lM /nillls offailli: for
the whole interior intellectual lire is from these principles:
where(ore to he 50 led would be to destroy that life"
(no. 5659).
As to the manner by whlch this angelic knowing
or contemplation of the truth is attainable, both reve·
1
72 The SjJz·ritual Sense of Dante.
lation and philosophy are named as the available
means to this end. But according to Dr. Harris
these means are not co-ordinate; philosophy is the
prior and chief, and religion the secondary and in-
strumental means. Or we may better say that, as
philosophy, this knowledge of the truth is the self-
thinking of pure reason, rather than the contempla-
tion of a Divine revelation to the finite mind. Dr.
Harris spéaks of ·the cc world view of Christianity "
as that of "nature and human history as a revela-
tion of Divine reason." To him Beatrice is the
symbol at once of Divine knowledge, Christian
theology, or revelation, and so of philosophy,
because aIl these mean "the insight into a Divine
Reason as First Cause," and as cc Reason is Divine
Human" the contemplation of this is the" vision of
Gocl " (p. 112). But the doctrine of the Logos, or
the Word, and of the operation of these both in
creation and redemption as weB as that of the
Holy Spirit or "the institutional Spirit" CP. 135),
are traced by Dr. Harris from Aristotle and Plato
down through the Alexandrian mysticism to St.
John and St. Paul. The redemption and the Re-
deemer of the Gospels seem therefore to be the
mythos, which is the representative, symbolic, and
religious form of the absolute truth, rather than the
truth itself: Christianity seems to be evolved from
philosophy rather than philosophy from Christianity
as itself the highest and fullest Divine revelation,
the "Word made Flesh in whom we behold the
Only-Begotten of the Father full of grace and
The Spir#ual Sense of Da.te. 73
truth." Of the cvolution or self·development of the
Logos, Dr. Harris says :
.. In religious symbolism He is spoken of as redeeming
finÎte beillgs through His incarnation and death on the
CTOSS. This expresses symbolic:l.lly the aet of the Logos
in creation" (p. 138).
Thus the rcdemption of man through the over-
throwing of the dominion of the hells by Jesus
Christ in His warfarc in our flesh and in the glaTi-
(ying of His Humanity, becomcs, apparently, ooly
one of the farms of that my/Iros or religious sym-
bolism which poets use to convey the truths of the
highest wisdom revealed to their philosophy. In
the same way the mY/Ms of the three worlds-hell,
purgatory, and heaven - are traccd down (rom
Homer, through Plata and Virgil to Dante, and in
this \Vay this worid poem is represented as the
sensuous or representative fonn in which the Divine
idea embodies itself in the conceptions of art,religion,
and philosophy. Singularly, in all this, the funda·
mental ground of Dante's gTeat pocm is set aside to
make way for the Hegelian interpretation of it.
The ground of Dante's theology is the Revelation
of the Christian Scoptures and the traditions of
the Catholic Church. If in their literaI form these
rcvelations are symbolic, it is the Divine Ward itself,
and neither 1[omer nor Plata, that has dictated the
choice of symbols, and sa an infinite truth ties within
them.
Such is the teaching of Swedenborg, who in
giving the "spiritual sense" of the Word daims to
74 Tiu SjJz·ntual Sense of Dante.
give not the self-revealing of his own reason, but
revelations vouchsafed to him by God Himself;
equally in his visions of the hellsJ of the intermediate
world, and of heaven, Swedenborg declares that aIl
that he saw was truly symbolic or representative,
corresponding exactly to the interior qualities and
states of spirits and angels there. These repre-
sentatives resulted from the very law of spiritual
creation itself, or the correspondence existing
between cause and effect, between the spiritual and
the natural worlds. The" spiritual sense" of the
Word, or of any symbol or representation grounded
in the Divine law of correspondence, means there-
fore the truth of the spiritual world or world of
causes lying within the truth as it " appears" in the
world of nature or of literaI revelation. The angels
and spirits in the spiritual world are in these higher
truths, and therefore perceive the vast number and
the vast reach of truths which are contained within
each literai truth of the Word. Those angels are
in the knowledge of Divine ends which are nearest
God, or are in the celestial or highest heavens;
they are therefore in the deepest senses of the truth
embodied in the letter of holy Scripture, but their
attainment of the highest knowledge is not a pro-
cess of philosophizing, but the result of the real
illumination which is given in heaven to those who
see God, that is to the pure in heart. In Sweden-
borg the Lord and the Word stand first as the
sources of revelation itself: and the elementary
principles of the spiritual rational faculty.
The Spiritual Sense 0/ Dan/e. 75
These and the knowledge of the spiritual world
ex vins et auditis, arc the elementary but inductive
knowledges, to he "Ieamed (rom without," (rom
which as the basis of a great Divine science, the
deductive principles of a truc philosophy are to be
obtained. With these fixed knowledges of the
truc, because Divinely given, symbols, we nem
"not go by various paths in our philosophizing,"
as we are sure to do if we accept as the symbols of
truth every imaginingofthe poet, and every vagary
of Christian dogmatists. 1n this case it has too
often happened that
Each striveth for appearance, and dolh malte
Its own inventions; but these treated are
By preachers. and the Gospel holds its peace 1
What we find (ault with, therefore, in Dr. Harris,
is not his regarding ail literal rcvelation as in a
sense symbolical or representative, for this must he
the case. Swedenborg says :
" By m~ans of his natural rnind being elevated iota the
light of beaY~n, a man can think with the ang~ls, yea,
speak with them; but the thought and speech of the
angels then flow iota the Datural thought and speech of
the man, and oot cOlltrariwise. Humao wisdom can by
no Oleans he elevated into ange1ic wisdom. but only iDto •
certain image of it " (DiviM.Lovt alUi Will/om, no. 257).
But the defect lies in there being no apparent
tine of demarcation betweell the Divine and revealed
symbolism of the Word and the arbitrary symbolism
of the poets and the philosophers as such. If thcse
latter are true, we would trace them not to the
general intuitive power of the human reason, but
to a Divine source in sorne special earlier revelation.
To the existence of such earlier revelations of the
supernatural world to the human race, in ages pre-
historic, but which have yielded, through various
channels, their contributions to what ·may seem now
the natural inheritance of the human reason, Mr.
Gladstone alludes in an article cited elsewhere in
this volume:
• • • • le It is of the deepest interest to ex-
amine whether in any and what particulars, now recog-
nized by Christians as undoubted portions of revealed
truth, those religions (of the Assyrians and Egyptians)
were more advanced and more enlarged than the religion
of the favoured race. . . . No doubt if it be
found that these extraneous and independent religions
taught in any point more {ully than the Hebrews what
Christians now acknowledge, this will he for Christians a
new and striking proof that, in the infancy of the race
of Adam, and before ils distribution over the earth, the
Almighty imparted to it precious knowledges which it
could hardly have discovered and was but indifferently
able to retain." .
Swedenborg did not invent the punishments of
the hells or the paradises of hèaven from any im-
agination of his own. He beheld these things as
real creations not of his imagining, but as created
by the one Creator. Speaking of objects seen about
the angels in heaven, Swedenborg says :
cc AU these things exist according to the affections and
thence the thoughts of the angels, for theyare correspon-
The Spin1ual Sense of Dante. 77
dcnces; and because things tbat correspond make one
with that to which tbey correspond, they are therefore an
image representative of it. They do not exist
aTound the man-angel {rom the ange!, but from the Lord
through the angel; {or tbey exist from the influx of the
Divine Love and Wisdom of the Lord into the angel
who i5 a recipient. and before whose sight it i5 ail
produced Iike the creation of a universe!" (Divine
LorJt and Wùdom, nos. 3::2, 326).
It might look indee<! as if this kind of creation
were identical with that which the Hegelians ascribe
to the Divine reason. and which is the source. ae·
cording to Dr. Harris, of the myths in the great
world poets, and 50 of the visions which Dante
describes. The supreme rcasan operating through
the poet's mind produces thus its mythical, sym-
bolic world. But the defcct thatseems to belong to
this conception is, that the abject thus crcated is but
a myth, haviog its existence ooly in the human
consciousness or contemplation, and not in sub-
stantia! rcality or facto The symbolic myths,
however truc and admirable, would seem to lcave
us, if we read Dr. Harris 'aright, without any actual
heaven, hell, or intermediate world, as the sure
destination of himself and ourselves, to he reached
by us in a few years from now ; and cqually with·
out anyactual historie incarnation of Deity in the
persen of Jesus Christ, and 50 any actual battles
fought by Him with the bells for our deliverance
from the power of accumulated evil will-without
any wrÎUen rcvelation, and without any visible
Churcb. In place of these as fads the Hegelian
78 Tiu Sp,:ritual Sense of Dante.
philosophy seems to content itself with the con-
templation of them as ideas or representations
created in the imaginations of the human mind,
or as what Swedenborg designates as merely an
ens rationis, having no ultimation in the plane of
actual effect. To inquire into the spiritual sense of
things that are, or actually have been, is to make a
step forward in our learning; but to find a spiritual
sense in things that have no being but as fictions of
the reason in human imaginations, can add but
little of practical value to our stock of information.
Dante's mention of the angels as those who
cc happy in God's countenance turn never away,"
reminds one of Swcdenborg's staternent in Heaven
and Hell, that cc the reigning love is the origin of
all determinations with angels and spirits, and as
this love is constantly before their faces, and the
face exists from the interiors, therefore that love
which reigns is always before their face," and which-
ever way they turn "the East is ever before their
eyes-the whole heaven turning itself toward the
Lord as its cornmon centre." Aiso in the Divine
Providence (no. 29), he says: cc AlI the angels turn
their faces to the Lord, but not of themselves, but
the Lord turns them to Himself through an influx
into their life's love, and so into their perceptions
and thoughts." As to the superiority of the angelic
wisdom, Swedenborg says, cc It is so ineffable, that
only one of a thousand ideas in the thought of the
angels from their wisdom, can come into the thought
of men from their wisdom."
Tlu Spin~ual Sense 0/ Da"te. 79
As to the means of attaining this wisdom, there-
fore, far (rom its being the result of philosophizing,
Swedenborg declares that no onc cao come iota
this ineffable wisdom of the angels except through
conjunction with the Lord and according to it.
.. The angels cao reccive sucb great wisdom because
they are devoid of self-love, and being witheut this,
the heavenly loves in which they are, open the
interiors, because thcse loves arc from the Lord,
and in them is the Lord HimselC" (Heavm and
Htll, no. 27I).
How ineffable is angelic wisdom may he iIlus-
trated by $wedenborg's statement that, .. In one
angelic ward there are innumerable things that
cannot he expressed at all in the \Vards of human
language, for in each ward that angels speak there
are arcana of wisdom in a continuous connection to
which human sciences nevcf'" attain" (Ibid., 269).
And although in heaven .. aH long for wisdom and
have an appetite fof'" it, yet the infinite or the
perfect wisdom is never attained," for although
"the angels are continually being perfected in
wisdom, still to eternity they cannot be 50 far per-
fected that there can be any proportion between
their wisdom and the Divine wisdom of the Lord"
(Ibid., 273). Man may therefore forever approach
but never attain to the pencet reason; al the same
time from the revelation of the Divine end or
principle, even man in his humblest estate on earth
may sec earthly and temporal things in the Iight of
heaven and of the ctemal wisdom.
..
80 The Sjrin·tua/ Sense of Dante.
It is not through the intuitions of reason, but by
saintly guidance and the great light of Christian
theology, that Dante acknowledges, in the last
canto of the Paradiso, that he has been led ta
the vision of the Supreme Good and True which
caUs forth this rapturous song of adoration :
o Light Supreme, that dost so far uplift thee
From the conceits of mortals, to my mind
Of what thou didst appear re-Iend a little,
And make my tongue of so great puissance,
That but a single sparkle of thy glory
It may bequeath unto the future people;
For by returning to my memory somewhat,
And hy a little sounding in these verses,
More of thy victory shaH be conceived !
1 think the keenness of the living ray
Which 1 endured would have bewildered me,
If but mine eyes had been averted from it;
And 1 remember that 1 was more bold
On this account to bear, so that 1 joined
My aspect with the Glory Infinite.
o grace abundant, by which 1 presumed
To fix my sight upon the Light Eternal,
So that the seeing 1 consumed therein !
1 saw that in its depth far down is lying,
Bound up with love together in one volume
What through the universe in leaves is scattered;
Substance, and accident, and their operations,
AlI interfused together in such wise
That what 1 speak of is one simple Light.
(Paradi'so XXXIII. 67-90.)
GREEK PHILOSOPHY IN ITS RELATION
TO THE LORD'S FIRST ADVENT.
ONE of the most profound as weB as universal

themes treated of in the writings of Swedenborg
is the relation orthe will and the intellect, and the
modifications they mutually undergo in the progress
of man's regeneration. The intellectua! and volun-
tary principles of the rnind are shown to he as
fundamental to our liCe, spiritually, as are the
respiratory and circulatory principles of our physio-
logical nature to our bodily liCe; and the complete
solution of aU the problems of human anatomy is
declared to he contained in a truc knowledge of the
Carm, functions, and relations of these two principles
of the human mind. As man is a microcism, it
will follow that in society as a larger man these two
principles must also exist, and the same relation
and mutual operation he manifest; and, since
history is the .. rnind writtcn large," it also must
find the solution of its problems in the mutual bear-
ing of these two fundamental forms and organs of
life-the human will and understanding.
A wonderful and most interesting exhibition of
the presence of mentallaw in human history, show-
F
82 Greek Philosophy in its Relation
ing how the progress of society is no haphazard suc-
cession of events, but is controlled by a law of growth
as real and unerring as that which govems a plant
or a single human mind, seems to me to he found
in certain remarkable coincidences in the circum-
stances attending and preceding the two greatest
epochs of the W9r1d's annals-the First and the
Second Advents of the Lord. 1 refer to the pro-
cess of the world's preparation for these two events
respectively. Both events were for essentially the
same end-the regeneration of society, the re-
opening of a spiritual plane of life in human souls,
and the infiowing and reception there of new im-
pulses of life from above. The First Advent pro-
vided for a new birth of mankind into a heavenly
life on the natural plane, a follo\ving of the Lord in
child-like obedience, in heroic confession, in faith-
fulness unto the death of this body-the body in
which He, our Master, was crucified. The Second
Advent provides for a new birth of mankind into a
spiritual knowledge of the W ord and a spiritual
following of its precepts, and so into a more interior
and spiritual reception of the Lord and life in Him.
To prepare the world for the Advent of the Lord
meant, in both instances, to prepare the mind on a
large scale, or in the sense of human society, for the
descent of Divine Truth, and thereby of Divine
Good, into the two great organic receptacles of life
-the human intellect and the human will.
The writings of Swedenborg contain the remark-
able statement that, since the fall of man and the
10 tlu Lord's First Adve"'. 83
decadencc of the successive Churches on this earth,
the human will, or man's voluntary part, has become
sa wholly corrupt or spoiled as to he incapable of
regeneration, and that the ooly possible salvation
remaining for man will consist of the building up of
a new will ft. Ais inte//ectuaJpart. This is equivalent
to saying that man cannot he regenerated im·
mediatcly by and in the love of good, but that
the truth and the love of truth must he first ae·
quired, and must serve as a medium for the im·
planting of the higher and truly heavenly love,
which is the love of good for its own sake.
In accordance with this law, in aoy great cpoch
of the world's reformation we are led to expect not
aoy sudden breaking out of new higher impulses of
good, until, at least, a preparation has first been
made in the .. intellectual part" of human society.
The truth is ever to he the instrument by which the
good effecls ils ends ; even as it was the Divine
Ward, or Truth itself, which was made Resh, that
thereby God might dwel1 with man and effect
man's redemption. But the receptacle of truth in
the" intellectuai part" of man, and the preparation
of this intellectual part for the reception of new
truth, that thcreby a "new will" may afterwaros
he implanted, is what we may expect to find
exhibited in any true and complete history of
those periods which have preceded bath the First
and the Second Advenu of the Lord into the
World.
1f we were asked whcre we might have looked
84 GreeA; Pkilosopky in ils RelaiWn
for the '1 intelledual part" of the human race in the
time pre<:eding the Lord's First Advent, 1 think we
would readily agree in answering, in the Hellenic
people. ln the fourth century before Christ, Greeœ
might not improperly have been called the intellect
orthe Grand Man upon this eartb. And it is just
here, in this rnighty mind which sent forth frorn the
acadernies and the fora of the Greek cities impulses
of thought and imagination more powerful even
than the great Reets that sailed from her harbours
ta conqueT and ta colonizc distant lands-herc it is
that wc witness a wonderful intellectual movement,
sucb as the world nowhere else exhibited, and such
as could have taken place in no other race of people
then existing. It was the birth and culmination of
a system of philosophy 50 original, 50 sublime in its
scope, 50 elevated and pure, and 50 full of Iight in
its higher planes, as to seem more akin to Divine
revelation than to mere human invention. "Divine"
we may indeed calI it, in so far as we recognize in
it something Divinely prophetic-something ~rovi
dentially given to an exceptional and high c1flss of
human intellects, to kindle anew a desire for d a
love of the truth among men, and to cultiva
ability to recognize the truth, and to receive it
it should be revealed.
The broad mind of that distinguished states
and scholar the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone has
failed to fully recognize this important fact in
mental development of the race, and has admi
described it in the following passage extracted fi
10 lite Lonfs Firsl A dvenl. 85
an article in the Nj"ttltntlt Ctntury for October
1891, entitled, Greeet and Cltristianity:
"It has been the betief of the Christian Chureh and
community that the history l'lot only of the chosen people.
but of the world throughout a very "ide circle, was, beCOTe
the coming of the Lord, a grand prajJaratio lf)(lllgdiaJ.
In sorne respects the (onns of the preliminary discipline
were obvions enough. The conquests of Alexander secured
for that marvellous instrument of tbongb! the Greek
language, sucb a currency as, when backed br the
influence whieh in the West had been acquired by its
literary monuments, dispensed, as il were, Wilh the day
of Pentecost, in the general action of the Christian Chureb,
and supplied a channel of communication and a vebicle
of worship availahle in most parts of the civjJjzed world.
What the genius of Greece was to secure in the region of
thought, the vast extension of the Roman Empire effected
in the world of oulward facto It prepared the way of the
Lord and made the rough places plain. ImmediatelJ'
before and after the Advent it leveJled the iJarriers between
separated and hostile communities, and for the first lime
established the idea of police in its highest fonu, and
made peaceable and safe intercourse everywhere possible
among men. Everywhere it was as with us in Britain,
'When the Roman left us,' thcn it was that again •the
ways were filled with rapine.'
" Another stage to the comprehension of a truth of the
widest reach and highest value was attained when the
world began to be sensible of its debt to ancient Greece.
It may weil he. to us of this day, a marvel to conceive
how it could have becn that, down ta a time when poetry
and the arts had already achieved the most splendid
progress, the Christian world remained insensible to the
superlative dignity and value of the ancient Greek litera-
ture and art. In Italyat least, the compositions of the
Greeks must ail along have survived in numerous manu-
scripts. But the Greelts had not rnerely produced a
86 Greek PhllosojJlty in lis Relalt·on
certain number, not after all a very large one, of great
works of mind and hand; they had established habits of
mind and of performance alike in art, in letters, and in
pbilosophy, such that they fumished the norm for civilized
man in the ages to come. Hellenism became a capital
fact for the race. Greece supplied the intellectual factor
under the new dispensation of Christianity as truly as the
Hebrew race supplied us with the spiritual force which
was to regenerate the heart and will of man. And this
was done for millions who knew but little but the name
either of Greeks or Jews. And if this transcendental
funetion was assigned to the Hellenic race outside the
bounds of any continuous revelation, the question surely
arises whether other races may through their power of
religion or otherwise have made their special contribution
to the fulfilment of the grand design for establishing the
religion of the Cross, and for giving it an ascendency
wbich is already beyond dispute, and which may be
destined even to hecome in the course of time, universal
over the face of the earth."
The history of Greek philosophy has been called
the history of the world's philosophy, as if there
had been and could be no other. And this we
must admit to be true, if we have regard to the
great human organism which society and its history
presents, and observe the distinct function allotted
to each part in the grand ordering of the whole.
Beginning with the comparatively gross conceptions
of the elemental or physical philosophy of Thales
and his followers, and ending with the sublime
speculations of Socrates and Plato on morals, on
the nature of the sou1, on the beautiful, the true and
the good, on the soul's immortality and the nature
of the gods, on the truly blessed life, the perfection
to the Lord's First A dvent. 87
of the human nature in the individual and in the

model state; and, in immediate sequence, the
splendid inductive philosophy of Aristotle, who,
with revcrence for the gads and for the supernatural,
yet lifts again the study of nature into its true
dignity, and sa completes the ideal survey of the
whole universe, spiritual and natural; such a com-
plete intel1ectual growth was this whole beautiful
creation of the Hcllcnic philosophy, that it seems
more like the ordcr1y development of a single
human mind than the result of scatteroo frag-
mentary efforts of successive scholars, extending
over sorne two hundred years. Can we fail to see
heresome altogether unexceptional and remarkable
preparation going on under an overseeing and
directing Divine providence, "in the intellectual
part" of the human race? *
What may seem at "rst an objection to this
exceptional position being a5Signed ta the Greeks--
a people entirely remote in race and religion (rom
that people distinguished as the chosen of Gad and
the dcpository of Divine revelation-will, on further
examination, be found to rather corroborate than
invalidate our view.
In the first place, the direct influence of Hellenic
culture-embracing leaming, philosophy, and the
fine arts, and aIl the intellectual stimulus which
these imply-upon the Hebrew nation and upen
• Ste De1I.n Stl.oley'. His/Ill')' D/t1u. Jewisll CII,mA, especiallJ' the
thapter on Socrates, for 1. very instructin .urvey of the rdl.tion of
Hdlenism 10 ChrUtÎl.nÎty.
88 Greek Phl/osophy 1:n lts Re/atÛJn
all the various races going to make up the Roman
empire in the time of the Cresars, is evident at a
glance into the literary and political history of the
three centuries preceding the Lord's First Advent.
The conquests of Alexander carried the language
and, in sorne measure, the leaming of the Greeks
into Egypt, to Palestine, and the far east, and gave
them predominance. 1t was Greek learning that
gave Alexandria its intellectual pre-eminence under
the Ptolemies; it was to translate the Old Testa-
ment into Greek that the great college of the.
Seventy were assembled in that Egyptian capital j
the Greek language thus hecame more and more
the one avenue of intellectual intercourse in all the
eastern world; and· it was in the Greek language
that the books of the New Testament were ulti-
mately to he given to the whole race of mankind
on earth.
But, together with this historical corroboration,
we have the remarkable doctrine set forth in S\ve-
denborg's writings, that in raising up a new Church
or new Divine dispensation in this world, the Lord
never makes use of the former or fallen church, but
rather of a foreign and Gentile race, who hitherto
not having known, and thus not having profaned
and rejected, the Divine Truth already revealed, are
in a state of comparative innocence, and so can
receive and he profited by the new truth to be given
to men. "Taking the two doctrinal statements to-
gether-namely, that referring to the forming of the
new or regenerated will in the intellectual "part of
to the Lord's First Advent. 89
man, and this concerning the setting aside of the
former Church in the introduction of a new one-
does it not appear as if the Jewish people at the
time of our Lord's First Advent represented the
corrupted will which could not he regenerated, and
whose house is therefore "left unto them desolate j"
while the Hellenic race was pre·eminently the
Gentile people-the people that sat for a long time
in spiritual darkness, and yet upon whom more im-
mcdiatelyand more fully than elsewhere the .. great
light" was to shine? The first extensive sawing of
Christianity was, it will be remembered, not among
the Hebrews, not among the Romans, but among
the Greeks-Roman subjects it is true, but Greek
in language and in culture-the people of Asia
Minor, of Athens and Corinth and Alexandria. It
was at Byzantium, the Greek capital of the cast,
that Christianity was publicly owned by the Roman
emperor as the acknowledged religion of the world ;
and it was in this language that its great creeds
were written, and its great battles carried on with
the prevailing systems of pagan religion and philo-
saphy. The whole doctrinal formulating of Chris-
tianity in creeds, apologies, sermons, apostolic
epistles and rituals, was essentially Greek--done
in the Greek language, and the rcsult of centuries
of Hellenic culture. In this way did the intellect
of OUr race, as represented or actually embodied in
that extraordinary people, serve as the vehic1e by
which the Word of the New Testament, and sa the
Gospel of rerlemption, could he given to humanity ;
Greek Phi/osoplty.
an intellectual instrument not itself regenerated or
perfect, but providentially prepared for receiving
and giving abroad the truth. This truth was an
absolutely new gift to the world; it was higher
than all philosophy and than ail science; it was that
of which a Roman govemor asked, What is truth ?
the truth as at once the discoverer and the con-
queror of sin; the truth as the W ord incarnate;
the truth, not as the world-mak~r only-for as such
had the Platonists already kno\vn it-but as the
World-Redeemer, the Anointed One, the Messiah!
It was in anticipation of this truth that Socrates
talked of virtue and duty, and Plato depicted the
struggle of the soul between the spiritual and the
sensual loves, and the true life of the philosopher as
one who was governed by his knowledge of the
etemal ideas. Is it not a beautiful historie coinci-
dence that we read in the gospel of the Incarnation
of the W ord, that "There were certain Greeks
among them that had come up to the feast, saying,
We tao would see Jesus" ?
THE lTALlAN RENAISSANCE IN lTS
RELATION TO THE LORD'S SECOND
ADVENT.
ABOUT four hundred years elapsed between the
highest perfection ofGreek art and philosophy and
the First Advcnt of the Lord. That length oftime
was necessary. we are justified in believing, for the
diffusing of the intellectual spirit as weil as the
language of the Greeks among ail those nations to
whom the Gospel was first to come, and sa to pre~
pare them in/Llltctua/ly for its reception and ils
subsequent transmission to ethers. No one cao
doubt that parts of the fourth Gospel are in the
letter couched in language as perfectiy suited to a
world to whom Hellenic ideas were (amiliar, as is
the epistlc to the Hcbrews ta the people of that
name. The translation of the Old Testament iota
the Greck of what is known as the Septuagint, not
ooly secms likc an anticipation of a complete Bible
of bath Old and New Testaments in that language,
but it actuatly became the vehicle of the translation
afterwards of the üld Testament into the Latin
edition known as the Vulgate, and so of the diffu·
sion of the W ord throughout the whole of western
Christendom.
92 Italian Renaissance in its Relation
Another four hundred years, constituting a period
of a similar preparing of mankind for another
Divine advent, seems to he clearly manifest in the
history of the centuries that elapsed between the
beginning of the 1talian Renaissance and the time
of the Second Coming of the Lord; and it is to the
remarkable and interesting historical coincidences
fumished by these two periods that 1 chiefty desire
now to caU attention.
The movement known as the Renaissance or the
Revivalof Leaming had its origin chiefty in Italy,
and pre-eminently among the princes, the scholars;
the poets, the artists, and the monastic orders of
Florence. If we begin with Dante and Boccaccio
and Petrarch, the two latter of whom were impor':
tant contributors to the introduction of the new
leaming, while the first we may caU the creator of
the ltalian language as a literary repository, we are
carried back to the latter part of the thirteenth or
the beginning of the fourteenth century. Thence
the movement lasted to the downfaU of the Floren-
tine republic, under the later Medicean dukes, a
space of about two hundred and fifty years ; ·during
which time the Roman Empire of the east had come
to its end in the capture of Constantinople by the
.Turks. The great religious and political revolution
known as the Reformation had been going 'on in aIl
Europe, and special revivaIs or new births of science
and literature had been taking place in the leading
cities of France and Germany, but especially in
England during that which we caU the Elizabethan
10 llu Lord's Second Advenl. 93
Age. Chaucer-who, although later than Dante
by a lifetime, yet occupies a position 50 similar to
the great Italian as the father of his nation's poetry,
if not of its language-will serve as a convenient
landmark for our fixing the heginning of tbat period
of revivaJ, of great intellectual activity, and of crea·
live power, which extended for over two hundred
years after his death, and embraced the times and
productions of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon,
as weil as the whole beginning, rise, struggles, and
6nal establishment of the Protestant Church of
England.
This revivaJ of learning-a movement which ex·
tended throughout Europe,and constituted a genuine
intellcctual awakening of the mental liCe of the
various nations-had, as t have said, its chief
centre and source in Florence. Again was human
society to enter upon a new preparation in its
.. intellectual part" for the reception of a new, re-
generating, spiritual life Like the era of Grcek
philosophy, the Italian Renaissance preceded by
four hundred years the advent of the Lord in a
new revelation of Divine Truth ta men. In what
consisted this second intellectual preparation of
mankind for the reception of this truth?
First, we observe that the Renaissance was itself
a revival of that same Hellenism, and even, we may
say, that same Paganism, which, fonning no part of
the former or Jewish Church, in Athens, B.e. 400,
equally formed no part of Christianity, in Florence,
A.D. 1400. ft was essentially an introduction, not
•
94 Itatian Renaissamt ,n Ils Relation
only of the Greek language, but of the pagan Greek
Iiterature and pagan philosophy into the learning
of Latin or Western Europe. Pico della Mirandola,
Petrarch, Ficino, Boccaccio, and others, seized upon
the treasures of Greek pagan litcrature which the
pocr scholars, driven from the east by the inroads
of the ever-advancing Turks, had brought with
them to the hospitable doors of the wealthy
Florentine patrons of learning, like nuggets of gold
or strings of pearls washed up on the shore after the
wreck of a costly merchantman. Greck leaming
was the fashion of the day j Greek grammars and
lexicons hegan to he elaborated and published i
Plato's philosophy began to he placed high above
the theology of the Christian {athers j and the
Greek poets, their mythology and maraIs, began to
either supplant-or, more frequently, transfonn
into semblances of themselves-the religion, the
superstitions, and the worship of the Church. Hos~
tHe as this pagan revival may scem at first thought
to the Christianity of the timc, it was not more 90
than the Hellenism of old to the Jews in the time
of the Maccabees j and just as the Greek language
became the vehiclc of the revelation of the whole
Word to the nOIl-Hebraic world, sa did it now again
become the vehicle of its new dissemination, through
the revived study of the Ward in i15 original fonns,
the translation of its multiplied texts into the vari~
ous popular languages of Europe, and i15 publica~
tion by the now newly-invented printing-press.
Hither then to Florence, in these days of the
to tlu Lord's Seeond A dvent. 95
intcllectual new birth of Europe, came the scholars
of England and France and Germany. Erasmus,
More, Colet, Melancthon, and Reuchlin drank alike
at the pure source of the Grcek texts of the New
Testament hcrc brought to light; and those
draughts of new mental vigeur and life were ta
set a11 Europe astir in the pursuit of a deeper
and trucr knowledge of the fundamental racts of
Christianity. Not ooly began now a sifting of old
traditions and dogmas in the light of the newly.
Cound standards of revelation j but the stimulus of
this new leaming-or, rather, of this cil! learning
revived, because released (rom the restraints of
bigotry and superstition-had set minds to enquiT-
ing in every direction, and science and invention,
and the various industries and arts belonging to our
modern civilization, began now a course of refined
developmenL The religious and political upheavals
that accompanied the Italian Renaissance are evi-
dences indeed of something more than any mere
intellectual in8uence. The reformation preached by
Savonarola in Florence was in many senses a far
more genuinely religious movement than that of
Luther and of John Knox; and while it attracted
the attention of Lorenzo de Medici and the Pla-
tonists of bis court, it can hardly he said to bave
owed anything to either Greek texts or pagan
leaming. The fermentations, the terrible disturb-
anees attending the breaking up of an old and
corrupted churcb, were beginning even then te
make tbemselves fclt in the spiritual world. and
96 Italian Renaissance ln lts Relation
thence in socièty in aU its forms upon earth: but,
at the same time, in the ordering of Divine Provi-
dence, while everything was becoming only more
corrupt and demoralized in the voluntary and
affectional part, in the intellectual part of society
there was a quickened life, a process of cleansing,
repairing, and putting in order; so that in. this
renewed or reformed intellect of Christendom the
truth to be revealed in the Lord's Second Advent
might at length find a suitable abiding-place, and
so help to the birth of a new will, the restoration of
a living Church on earth once more. The agen-
cies of ~his intellectual renewal were, as 1 have
said, chiefly the stimulus afforded by the fresh
delight of contact with pagan myth, art, poetry,
and philosophy, consequent upon the introduction
of Greek letters from .the east; the access this
afforded also to the books of the New Testament
in their original tongue; the awakening of the
critical spirit, and the sense of freedom in matters
of helief; and, finally, the translation of the Bible
in various languages, and its dissemination through
the printing-press. These were not only means of p'
intellectual quickening and discipline; but the

more we examine, the more we shaH find these
the absolutely necessary requisites for the subse- .
quent reception by Christendom of the truths to be
revealed in the Lord's Second Advent. Sweden-
borg caUs this great intellectual change cc the coming
into a freer way of thinking about spiritual things: "
but this acquiring of cc a freer way JJ is not the work
10 lite Lord's Second Coming. 97
of a few years, but of hundreds of years; although
the final result-the final casting off of the broken
shackles-may seem like the work of an instant in
the striking of a blow.
It was the death of charity, and the ultimatc
separation of faith (rom charity, even by the force
of a dogma, that constituted, says Swedenborg,
the death or consummation of the First Christian
Church. ln Rome, its utterly corrupt fountain-head,
allCatholic Christendom beheld the death of charity,
the trampling under foot of the moral law, the
substitution of the authority of man Cor that of the
De<:aIogue and of Christ-the ever-living Ward.
ln Germany and England the spirit of Cree enquiry
and the protest against religious tyranny resulted
in the twofold eife<::t, on the one hand of a rational-
ism leading ultimately to the total unbelief or the
agnosticism of to-day, on the other, of the terrible
dogmas of a Trinity of Gads, and of faith in the
vicarious atonement of one of these as the sole con-
dition of human salvation. Truly the regeneration
of .the world required the implanting of a new will
in a new intellect, totally apart from bath of these
corruptions of the Christian Church. Again it
became necessary that a new intellect should he
formed, IlOt in the Church already corrupt, but
somewhere outside of il This new intellect was
formed in the new leaming-pagan in ongin, and
necessarily, at that day, in6del, because critical in its
tendency---()fwhich the Italian Renaissance was the
chief vehicle ta the nations of western Christendom.
G
98 Ita/ian Renaissance in its Relation
It may he urged-and not unreasonably, 1 am
weIl aware-that the parallelism is still lacking
between the ancient and the more recent periods
and processes of preparation for the Lord's Advent,
in that, whereas the New Dispensation at the Lord!s
First Coming was manifestly granted to a wholly
Gentile world-the old or Jewish Church proving
itself unable to receive the W ord in spirit, whom in
the body they had crucified-on the other hand, the
dispensation now given in the Lord's Second Com-
ing is, not only as a matter of fact but of necessity,
addressed to the former or the consummated
Church; inasmuch as cc the Chucch is there where
the W ord is," and the invitation to ail the cc Seven
Churches which are in Asia JI to come and enter
inta the New Jerusalem, is expressly held by
Swedenborg to he addressed, in its spiritual mean-
ing, to ail those who are in the light of the W ord
(Apocalypse Revealed, Nos. 10, II). In what sense.
then, can it he still true that the new will in the
cc intellectual part" of the Grand Man of the New
Age is not to be witnessed in a renewal of the Old
Church itself, but in the choosing of a new stock, a
Gentile people, as foreign to the old or discarded
Christianity as Hellenism was foreign to the Jews "1
It is in admitting fully the many difficulties
attending this part of Swedenborg's teaching, that
1 nevertheless think 1 can see much helpful light
thrown on the problem itself by the historical
parallel 1 have attempted to draw.
ln one sense, we must admit that the truths of
to tlu LOI'd's 5ecOtUi Advent. 99
the Lord's Second Advent have been given directly
and solely to the Christian Church, as to those
nations of mankind Cl who have the Ward;" since.
if for no other reason, the Second Coming Is
nothing else but the revelation of tbis same Divine
Ward in its spiritual sense.
But, on the other haod, in what sense has the
Churcb truly the Ward at the present day il and
how far is the "ïntellectual part" of mankind-In
which the" new will" of the Lord's New Church 15
necessarily to he implanted-how far is this to he
identificd with the old or former Christian Church,
as represented by its leading denominations or
establishments as now existing?
In this connection we may weIl bear in mind that
a Church is a Church, not through its possession of
the Bible, but "according to its understanding of
the W ccd" (S. s. 76~ If the present Churches of
Christendom. even though they possess copies of
the Bible. still do not understand the Ward. they
have in 50 far ceased ta he a Church in a true
sense: they may still he nurseries of religion. more
or Jess benellcial ta the various sections of man-
kind. but still not the genuine Cluistian Church at
ail j even as we are distinctly taught that Roman
Catholicism, while a religion. yet farms properly no
part of the Christian Cburch (Apocalypse Re1Jeaût/,
no. 718). A new Church. then, will have as
one of its chief conditions a new understandlng
of the Ward. But this Ward, to he newly
understood, must 6rst he possessed as a book or
•
100 Itaiia" Re1UJÎJsMI&, i" üs ReJatiq"
Bible in ail the integrity of its letter, and freed
utterly from the shackles of traditionai interpretation
and the bias of the dogmas of the past. Ta provide
for the new age such an Absolutely free Bible geeU15
ta me the manifest Providenee.leading in ail the
history of Christendom, from the Italian Renais~
sance down ta the present day. The Bible bas
become itself, in one sense, an entirely new book i
new in its literai fonn, as translated into the various
modem languages; new in the manner of its use i
new in the senses in which it is studied and undet-
stood. Even though Swedenborg gave the doctrines
revealed from the internai sense of the Ward in the
Latin language, the home language of the old Of'
Roman Church, still in their ditrusion in the world
it is rather through those languages, once wholly
barbarous and pagan ta the Christian capital, the
English, German, French, and Scandinavian, that
the doctrines of the New Church, by which alone
the Ward is henceforth ta be understood, are made
known, as weil as the Divine text of the Ward it·
self. The English and the Dutch, whom Sweden.
borg places in the centre of the Christian world
because of their possession of the Ward and their
freedom of thought in religious things (Tnu C/Iris-
Iiatt Religion, nos. 800, 80;), were p::>ssessed of
neither of these qualifications, we may say, at the
time of the beginning of the Renaissance What
elevated them ta this high distinction was nothiog
but tbis new leaming which England, pre..eminently
among European nations, imbibed from the Floren·
to tlu Lor"'s Sec01UiAm-t. 101
tine sc.hools. It was England and Geneva and

Holland that gave us the new Bible in newly-
authenticated texts, and in the introduction of the
sacred languages of the Ward iota the curriculum
of the schools. The Greek was thus the medium
of the new leaming and the new Bible, just as the
Latin is the medium of Swedenborg's own com-
munication of its doctrines alike to ail the nations
of the world; but neither in the Latin nor the
Greek, neither to the Latin nor the Greek race,
are the doctrines of the New Church given
primarily, but rather to "a people of a strange
language," ta "barbarians and Gentiles," rcmate {rom
lxrt:h Rome and Constantinople and Jerusalem
physically, and hardly less 50 in ail their mental
characteristics and religious instincts. And what [
have endeavoured to show is that, apart (rom aU
the established fonns and institutes of the Christian
Church, there has been going on for the !ast four or
6ve hundred years in the midst of Christendom, but
distinct from all the accepted or established fonns
of Christian teaching, a purely intellectual training;
as wholly foreign to the Church meanwhile existing
as the Hellenic inftuence, which widened itself to
almost universal prevalence, was nevertheless really
foreign to the spirit and institutions of Judaism.
This newly-acquired intellect, thus won by our
modem Grand Man at the cast of 50 much bard
struggle, 50 much doubt and despair, 50 much
wrestling with past traditions, 50 much païnful
breaking of old attachments and going out from
.
102 Italian Re""issanee ,,·n ils Relation
the father's country-a struggle lasting through the
many long years of religious warfare which the
states of Europe have witnessed since the days of
the Reformation-this intelIectual state, so acquired,
may seem only partiaIly to meet aIl the conditions
of that Gentile world, cc remote from Christianity,"
to which the new dispensation seems to he particu-
larly promised (Last J-gment, no. 74). Yet,
viewed in the broad light of history, it assumes
more and more this character. If we remove
the idea of earthly distance and think of remote-
ness of state, nothing could he more remote from
former or even the present dogmatic Christianity
than just this attitude of the free intellect of
the modern civilized mind. It assumes aIl kinds
of guises; it .lives in aIl climes; it takes and
survives on aU kinds of food. One thing atone
it rejects; one country it shuns; one house it nevèr
seeks-namely, that of the old Christian theology
with its couneil-made dogmas, its falsifiedi Bible, its
irrational demands upon the human reason, its
offensiveness to the sense of morality alj1d justice.
The modem human intellect - freed ~from the
restraints of the past, equipped with the ~c forces of
the Gentiles" (Isa. Ix. S, II)-in its rich} stores of
natural knowledges and its ability t<i. explore
subjeets with philosophical insight, see1lllS to me
ta be the speeially-prepared ground in which the
seeds of the new dispensation are ta be sown. It
surely is not the ground of the still dog ma-bound
theologian of the existing Churches; n r is it thé
10 lM Lord's Sec01U/ Adveftl. 103
ground of the ranting atheist and blasphemer j nOf

of the proud agnostic, who is more bigoted in his
no-faith than was ever a papist of alden lime in his
faith. The attitude of the thought of the present
day-Cree to admit the errers, the shortcomings,
the uUer incapacity of the existing Churches to
rebuild a living faith in the world, yet humbly
distrusting even ils own doubts, and steadfastly in
secret turning its face to the light in prayer that
It may yet sec and believe-attests, to my mind,
the new intellect which constitutes the Gentile land
to which the truths of the New Church are sent.
These are the Gentiles that shaH come to that light
which shines forth (rom the newly-opened Ward at
the Set::ond Advent of the Lord (Isa. Ix. 3). These
are, in our own day, the Greeks who also would see
Jesus Gaho xii. 20, 21).
THE NEW RENAISSANCE.
CENTURIES in the world's history are as years in a

man's life. No man in looking back can assign to
each dayor to each year its own event, and the part
that each has played in making up the total of
his life's experience; at most he can single out
certain decisive moments and prominent events
which have had a controlling influence in shaping
his life's career, and these will stand as monuments
marking a whole series of years-an epoch in bis
life history. A retrospect over the history of the
world yields much the same vision. Years, decades,
centuries fall at no great distance inta a vast
monotone of obscurity to the eye of the uncritical
observer of the history of the past. 1t is only here
and there that a great event or a great persanage
looms up, and brings with itself into prominence
sorne influence that gave character ta a wide group
of years or centuries, which the historian thence
names an age or period.
If now we examine those age-forming events and
influences, we shall find them,-not as we might
expect, prirnarily personal and heroic, but rather
intellectual and spiritual. The person, the hero,
the achievernent is there, but only as subordinate
Tlu New Renaissante. lOS
ta a certain spiritual or intellectual inflowing from
sorne vast re50urce of age·forming power, and not
as originating this power from themselves. The
primary spiritual quality of this mysterious power
is acknowledged in thc term 50 happily applied to
it by the Germans-the Zeit Geis(~r, as we use il,
although in a less philosophical sense, the Spirit of
the Times. This spirit is supreme j individuals are
but its instruments, and events are but its working
out into the surface of the Iife of humanity.
1f we look back into the earliest beginnings of
human traditions-the legendary and heroic periods
-we, therefore, find not the histories of men but of
the gods. What we see are not the petty aehieve-
ments of man, but ItI'cat age.dramas in whieh some
mighty Divine agencies are revealing themselves for
the warning and instruction of mankind. Thus aU
the primitive histories are not of nations, but of
religions i not of kingdoms, but of Divine dispensa.
tions, which we may designate as vast world or
race Churehes. And the faet remains through ail
the panorama of history, rrom those carly
legendary periods till to-day, that the epocb.
making changes in the wor!d's tire have been
those of religion.
The history of the world resolves itselr, when
vicwed from its inward forces, into a history of
Churches. It is the Church that looms up in mysteri-
DUS majesty as the great age-shaping agency in the
world's growth, and the Church is but the gnmder
man of each age-the universal soul acknowledging
106 Tiu New Renaissance.
certain truths of faith, and reception thereby of
certain spiritual inftowings from the spiritual world.
Thus the Eden of the world's history is the
Golden Age of a celestial religion, which ended in
à deluge of monstrous falsity and sin. The Noatic
age is a sueeeeding Church embracing the whole
religions sense of mankind for a vast and in-
definite period of years-pre-historie except as
written in the spiritual development of mankind,
and ending with a second great Judgment Day
and Word's End-Consummatio sœculi-in "'the
Dispersion of the Races at the Tower of Babel.
Eden-The Deluge-Babel!
These three vast scenes lying across the distant
horizon of our earliest world's history in fields one
above and heyond another, like strata of clouds
in a clear deep sky at sunset, are what form the
earliest life events of every race or nation whose
traditions have been preserved for record. Savage
and civilized races, Assyrian, Egyptian, and
Hebrew, alike behold these great essentially re-
ligious forms, when their eyes tum to the pastJ
looming dimly up, and, alone, out of the abyss
of darkness taking any definite shape.
With the Hebrew Church began the authentic
literaI history of revealed religion, but oC only that
line of it which found its instrument in the Hebrew
race. The extemality and racial obstinacy of
'this people fitted them to he the depository of,
the monotheistic worship, and of a system of
holy symbols or representations whereby certain
Tlu Nno Renaissance. 107
Divine impressions could he kept alive in the
sensuous chambers of the mind of humanity, as
by no other means. These same symbols, con-
stituting the Mosaie ritual and the inspired
history of the Chosen People, were at the same
time wholly prophetie and spiritual in their hidden
meaning, and were such as could he infilled when
the time should come with the Divine Spirit, and
})e(:ome the instrument of making over the moral
and spiritual world into a veritable kingdom of
God, and of "creating Jerusalem, forever, a joy
upon the earth."
Thus this Gld Covenant of the ritual law and
letter was in time succecded by that grace and
truth that came by Jesus Christ, not however by
His destroying the law, but by His fulfilling Il.
The Incarnation was the real tuming-point ln
the world's history, from that of the involution of
the Divine in the letter, and sa in the Word made
F1esh, to the evolution thence of a Divine Iife inta
humanity and the beginning of the reign of the
Spirit.
It is surely not difficult to see how from the he-
ginning of the historie period the development of
the civilized world had for its goal and centre the
Roman Empire. The implanting therein of
Christianity, the diffusion thereby of the Gospel
in the Greek and Latin tangues, and 50 the making
of a new world-the inaugurating of a Fourth
world-age.
1 bave shawn in another essay how the way for
the implanting of Christianity in the world was
laid in the intel1ectual preparation brought about
by the Greek learning and philosophy which
preceded the Incarnation by sorne four hundred
years, and how a revival ofGreek learning occurred in
Europe in the age known as that of the Renaissance
-the I4th to the I6th centuries-as if preparatory
in like manner to another great day of spiritual
illumination which was to he ushered in upon the
world.
The Greek enlightenment which was to refine
the intellectuai sense of the vast rude' hordes of the
Roman Empire, and, like the inscription on the
Cross in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, was to hecome
the channel of revelation to the early and medizval
Empire of the KING OF THE ]Ews,-the same
enlightenment had now begun to make itself felt
again, not only in awaking out of its superstitious
stupor and blind obedience the medireval ChurcbJ
but in raising from its racial sluggishness and
dreams the great rude Scandinavian savage of the
north. In the Revival of Learning the great trumpet
was truly sounded announcing the coming of the
Son of Man, of the Day of ] udgment, and of the
End of the Worid.
Four hundred years have passed away since the
discovery of America by Columbus; and that
sound, as of a mighty rushing wind, has been
heard through the courts and the schoois and,
Churches, the hovels and the palaces alike, bidding
the world awake and get ready, although by a still
Tlu New R,naissan&8. 109
long and toilsome and b100d·marked progress, (or a
new advent of the Spirit, the beginning of a new
historie age. '
The spirit of the Revival of Learning was essen-
tially religious, as is proved by its result, that
uptuming of the ecclesiastical world which we cali
the Reformation. Truly regarded, however, the
immediate influence of that movement was a1most
wholly intellectual, and as such only preparatory to
a much more rcmote religious result The Refor-
mation was hy no means con6ned to religion. The
severance of the Protestant sects from the Roman
mother Church was but a small part of the reform-
ing the world underwent at that time. The
immediate religious change il wrought, whether
in men's hcliefs or moraIs, were not of vast import·
ance. Morally, the Catholic Church underwent as
great an improvement as did the Protestants; white
doctrinally considered, Calvinism was only the wine
of Augustine tumed sour.
The real change wrought in the Reformation
was the intellectual one, the change in the recep-
tivity of human minds toward new truth. It was
a setting free from the traditions and superstitions
and siavery of the past: the entering upon a freer
way of thinking about spiritual things.
The remark has frequently becn made, How
slight a part of the life of humanity is written in
the history of the world's kings, herces, and wars.
This is because the spirit of a time is vaster and
broader than any of its severa! agencies taken
110 Tiu New RelUlisstlllU.
singly. The Greek philosophy was the message
which Alexander's conquests eut the road for iota
ail parts of the intellectual world of that date.
Czsar became the roler of Europe io order that bis
successor Constantine might fasten the cross to the
standards of the imperial army. The wars from
the seventh to the fifteenth century, when the last
sigh of the Czsars was breathed out at Constanti-
nople, including the conquests of the Saracens, the
invasions of the Moors, the ravages of Tamerlane,
the Crusades, and the final settlement of the Turks
in the Palace of the first Christian Emperor, were
ail religious wars; that is, they were not for the
conquest of lands but of souls, for the extension
and ascendency of a religious faith. The religious
idea was what filled Europe for the whole period
from the Nicene Council to the downfall of Con...
stantinople. In the awakening of the Renaissance
a new spirit spoke; not to make wars cease, but to
point to a new goal, a new victory, a new redemp-
tion of the world. Liberty,-not mere civil, but
intellectual and spiritual liberty-the entire release
of the human spirit from bandage-this became
now the aspiration of the minds that were to control
the movements of the world, and everything began to
shape itself to this end as if by magic. The crooked
paths began to be made straight and the rough
places plain. Education, the restoration of the
learning of the Greeks which for ages had been
obliterated, the translation of the Bible and its
publication through the printing-press, the circum-
Tlu New Renaissa1l&e. III
navigation of the world, the beginnings o( modem

physical science and the invention o( labaur·saving
machines,-these ail united as tributary inRuences
in preparing mankind (or entrance upon an entirely
new stage of life.
But while religion, in its active and reactive inftu·
ences, bas been at the heart o( ail the great world-
movements during the nineteen Christian centuries,
yet it cannot he said to have undergone, meanwhile,
in itse!(, any essential change since the first great
change (rom the Church of the Apostles to the
Church o( the Empire. The Reformation did not
sa much change the traditiona! (aith as open the
way to its total rejedioll, and to the substitution
of nationalism and the modem agnosticism in its
place. The great fundamental doctrines o( Augus.
tine and Calvin, the Tripersonal Deity, the VicarioU9
Atonement, the Resurrection o( the Materia! Body,
and the persona1 Second Coming of Christ attended
with a physical destruction of the universe,-these
have rernained practically unchanged, whether by
Catholic or Protestant Councils.
But in the minds of the people there bas been a
vast change going on, and, as i( the preparatory
process exhibited by the (our centuries which bave
elapsed since the Revival o( Leaming had barn its
inteUectuai fruit, the whole world of thought seerrlS
now to have assumed again Il receptive and expec.
tant attitude toward a new revelation of the Word,
a new descent o( a world<rea.tive, epoch·making
Spirit.
1
1 12 The New Renaissance.
And, as in the former great critical transitions of
the world, so it is now again the religious, that is
the vital change. At last, after eighteen centuries,
the Pauline interpretation of Christianity, based
upon a lawyers reading.of the letter of the Gospel,
is to give place to a revelation of the Divine Doc-
trine contained within the Word itself: No longer
stagnant, the whole vast surface of religious
thought is now being stirred; so that on the stan-
dard which the closing century holds up to our
gaze as she wanders back in the long ranks of the
departed ages, if there is any record the world can
read more unmistakably than another, it is that
which proclaims her to the future historian as the
century of the making over of religion.
1t is not the revision of the creeds, the cc higher
criticism JI of the Bible, nor any movement eccle-
siastical or ritualistic among the various Christian
denominations,that constitutes this newage-forming
movement. These are all only special and inci-
dental phases of religious life among the organized
sects of the Christian Church. But the new reli-
gious movement embraces those without :as weIl as
those within the communion of the Church, and it
extends its thrilling impulse into all avenues of
human life and interest of the present day. Olt stirs
in the mind of the inventor, the artist, the writer,
the musician, the scholar, and the statesman.
Realistic to the most unsparing degree, it lays bare
the life of society as never did a Judgment Day
before. It removes concealments and conventional
Tiu New Renaissance. 113
hypocrisies; it proclaims its readiness to look upon

the truth. In political, in social, and morallife it
lays its axe to the root of the tree. But none the
less does it bring the vision of a new ideal, the
delight of a new bope, the thrill of a new love to
the heart of humanity. It bids man to he content
no longer with the mere life in symbols and
sbadows, as it bids science to grovel no longer,
with face down, in the mere dust of effects. It
opens a fair and entrancing vision ioto the realms
of spiritual causes, and of the Divine and heavenly
tntis or purposes of things. .. Behold," says the
spirit of this new religion, "a New Heaven and a
New Earth: for the former things are passed
away."
That the world is actually entering upon a new
age seems to he universally acknowledgcd by wit-
nesses from every grade and department of human
Iife. New incentives are stirring men's hearts, new
ideals inspire their arts, new physical achievements
beckon them on to one marvel10us mastery after
another of the mysterious forces of the universe,
until it seems as if mankind were on the verge of
demonstrating, even to their natura! senses, the
universality of spirit as the only substance and
force and the comparative non-substantiality of
matter. The reaction against the blind literalism
of Christian dogma in its interpretation of the
Scriptures, as weil as against the essential injustice
and savagery of the Calvinistic scheme of atone--
ment, have driven thoughtful and refined natures
H
114 The New Renaissance.
to the extreme of rejecting altogether the" idea of a
written revelation and of a physical incarnation of
Deity. These revolts are however more often against
the perverted traditional interpretations of the
Church of the past than against the sublime mys-
teries themselves which have been so profanely
handled ; while, on the other hand, much of the
pretended " higher criticism " of the Bible by those
within the Churches is pursued with a far more
destructive and agnostic spirit than inspires the
humble and reverent seeker of God through the
paths of nature's revelations to science. But both
agnosticism on the one hand, and a dessicated
theology on the other, stand equaUy witnesses to
the fact that an old order of thought and motive
in spiritual things is passing away, if it has not
already passed away, as a vital agency in human
life, and that a new religious impulse and a new
religious vision is coming over the world.
Contrasting the new life, the wonderful awaken-
ing in every branch of human activity, individual,
national, and international, and the general exten-
sion of human knowledge and achievement since
the French Revolution, with the stagnation, cor-
ruption, and darkness into which the world seemed
to be settling, and chiefty the Church, before the
middle of the last century, aU the historians agree
in declaring that the world has passed through a
mysterious and stupendous crisis, that the present
century has witnessed a new Renaissance-a birth
into a new life and a higher plane of activity than
TM New RelUlissQ",e.
the race has ever known before. While writing
this article, my eye has fallen on the following
utteranccs of a writer in the current number of the
Atlantic M01I.tltly in an article on "The Prometheus
Unbound of SheUey:" *
"The beginning of our century witnessed the dawn of

a new cosmic day. We may say in sober reverence that
not since the Coming of Christ bad 50 vital a renovating
power entered human Ji(e as entered it one bundred
years aga.
.. The world was indeed born anew j but this its second
birth was the birtb of the Spirit. . . .
"The Ideal toward whicb the drama presses is far
diB'erent from the temperate uprightness of tbe Greelts;
it is no less tban the absolute union with the spirit of
Divine Love. For the time when the holtlttnnu U,,·
lxnJ"d is written is the nineteenth Christian century, and
the vision of holiness bas becn beheld by the world"
But it is to writers in every !ine ofliterature and to

the leaders and moulders of human thought in these
days, that we may look for the evidence of this new
age-forming Spirit. The characteristics, universaJly,
of this New Renaissance are: Freedom in spiritual
thinking, by whieh is meant the disposition to look
at ail topies, religious and other, from the ground of
rational thinking, and not from that of dogmatic
tradition; a profound reverence for the externat
actuality of facts and the sacredness of matter as
the emlxx:liment, somehow, ofa Divine Wisdom and
a beneficent purpose; a recognition of Law as
• See Âlliul/ic M.-J/IJy for JlIly 1&92.
1 16 The New Renaissance.
universal and the acceptance therein, although un-
consciously with many, of the sacred doctrine of
the Divine Omnipresence and Providence; a re-
cognition of the inmost force and substance of
things as being of spirit, and, therefore, of man as
being essentially a spirit clothed temporarily with
a material body; the consequent recognition of the
unity of art, of philosophy, and of science as exist-
ing in the unity of spirit or the unity of life in its
source in a Supreme Being whose essence is Love
and Wisdorn, and whose operation is beneficent Use.
Further, it recognizes the political equality of aIl
men before the law and the relati0I'! of-the nations
of the earth as that of a vast fraternity. 1ts
aspiration to heaven is that to a life in the spiritual
world in which the Divine ideal is reached in a
perfect human society-a regenerated tnazimus
Itomo; it conceives of heaven and hell as those
abiding future conditions \vhich are the inevitable
working out of the life freely adopted by man on
earth in a world which takes its objective
character wholly from the subject within. It sees
the moral reformatory forces of society as lying,
therefore, rnainly within and before all else, in that
knowledge of the truth which alone makes free.
Finally, it beholds the world, nature, the earthly
life, not as existing of itself or for itself as an end,
but as the shadows projected from sorne vast and
eternal reality, within which is more and more re-
vealed to the prophetie spirit of poet, artist, and
seer, and which shaH stand wholly revealed to aIl
Tite New Renaissaft&e. 1 i7
illuminated sou1s when dcath shaH at last take the
veil away.
Such are sorne of the characteristics of the New
Renaissance. 1t will be seen that they are pre-
dominantly spiritual. Even under the most material-
istic and negativc tendencies exhibited in these
days of the cnd of this world, this motive has been
that of an intenser radicalism-a desire ta strike
deeper at the root of things, not far the purpose of
remaining there, but of starting anew.
ft is in this essentially spiritual clement that the
New Renaissance differs fram that of the fourtcenth
century. That was in its spirit essentially pagan.
Its ideals were objective ones; the realization of
the beautiful ta the senses, and the freedam of the
sensual life. The spirit of the New Renaissance is
Norse rather than Hellenic; it secs its ideals with-
in, and seeks their realization in the perfection of a
spiritual life as instrumental ta the whale redemp-
tian of man. And 50 while the former caught its
breath from the south, the latter spoke from the
north The prophet of the one was Dante, that of
the other was Swedenborg.
1t is Swedenborg aJone, who, amid the vast crowd
of witnesses ta the fad of an entering upon a new
age of the world's history, has been gifted with tbat
prophetie vision ta know the deeper and Diviner
meaning of this wonderful transition, and to see
that it involvcs not merely a change of religion in
the sense of a change of the attitude of humanlty
towards its God and His rcvelation, but a change
•
in the revelation of God Himself to men; that, in
other words, just as the former great epochs of the
world have been marked by a Coming of God ta
man and the execution of a great spiritual judg-
ment in this world, so at this time we are witnessing
nothing less sublime than the promised S~ond
Advent of the Lord and the consequent crisis or
Last Judgment, by which the whole intellectual and
moral world is being made new and the former
things are passing away. What we now are wit-
nessing is indeed only the result, in this mundane
sphere, of a general judgment already executed in
the world of spirits, whereby new influences from
heaven are descending into mankind, and greater
capacities are being imparted to men for their
human development into the true stature of a
man, ce which is that of an angel."
This Second Advent of the Lord is not an advent
in person, in any physical or material sense, but is
purely a spiritual advent in the revelation to men .
of the Divine Truth of the Word or written revelation
by opening to man's knowledge their heretofore
hidden, spiritual meaning, and at the same time by
opening the eyes of a Divinely chosen messenger ta
the vision of the reality of the spiritual world, of
heaven, the intermediate world, and hell, and so the
soIving of the mystery of death and the problem of
the goal of human life. The world's new birth amid
which we are living and which all Churches and
schooIs and govemments are recognizing, is there-
fore, according to Swedenborg, the rea1ization of
Tiu New Renaissante. 119
the prophetie vision of the Revelation: "Behold a
new heaven and a new earth,"-but it is equally a
fulfilmcnt of that whieh the Churches and the
historians have not known or not ret:ognized,
namely, that Second Coming of the Lord without
which no ncw earth is promised and no Holy City
descends to earth from God out of heaven.
Startling as has becn Swedenborg's daim to
intromission into the spiritual world and an open
vision of its reality and its distinct nature and life,
far more stupendous is the assertion that the Word
is revcaled anew and the Lord's promised Set:ond
Advent accomplished in the opening of the spiritual
• sense of the Scriptures and the revelation of the
Law of Discrete Degrees showing in what manner
matter stands rclated to spirit, the oatural to the
spiritual world, and, accordingly, the natural or
literai sense of Scripture to its internai and spiritual
meaning. 1t is not theology, in its former narrow
sense, that is now made new; but here is gjvcn the
foundatîon for a new philosophy, a new science, a
new human society, a new world. This is therefore
an age-fonning revelation. lts power is that of a
Divine Zeil Geul, a breath which bloweth where it
Iisteth, and the world hears the sound thereof, but
cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.
50 is this new birth of the Spirit which the race is
now undergoing. The theology of Swedenborg,
ignored alike, officially, by thealogian, scientist, and
hierarch, is nevertheless the heaven that is changing
the face of ail Christendom and preparing the way
120 The New Renaissance.·
for a universal religion in whieh the Lord Jesus
Christ shaH dweII as in " His tabernacle with men;
and they shaH he His people, and Gad Himself shall
be with them their God."
No longer separated from them in awful remote-
ness, but present with them in an acknowledged
system of Divine Truth and of Divine and heavenly
law, men shaH realize the fact of the Divine pre-
sence on earth, of the spiritual within the natural,
of the kingdom of God as having passed from the
symbol of prophecy into praetical fulfilment
The ideal monarchy of Dante, with its Emperor
and its Pope, its State and its Church executing in
harmonious co-operation the will of the Divine
Ruler on earth, wiH have given place to the spiritual
realization of the Holy City deseending from Gad
out of heaven in a system of Divine doctrine re-
vealed to man's rational apprehension out of the
opened depths of the written Word, and constitut-
ing for aIl men the law of true human charity on
earth and the gate into the eternal citizenship of
the City of God above.
In this prophetie mission Swedenborg stands out,
his vision sweeping the horizon of the ages, and his
voice from the north telling us of the entering of
mankind upon the Fifth Age of the world. The
voice of the prophet is lost to men amid their
wonder at beholding the fulfilment of the things
foretold. Not indeed in a heaven already realized
on earth; but in the working out of the Divine
judgments, the discrimination and separation of
The New Renaissauce. 121
good from evil, of the real from the false, the

detection of shams, the assertion of the real and the
true. In this way the world is yiclding its witness
to the advent of Him who ever cornes, at first, not
ta bring peace but a sword. It is " His judgments
that are in al! the earth," which are now rectifying
the judgments of mcn, establishing new ideals of
justice, of charity, of liberty, of bcauty, of govem-
ment, and of service. These ideals arc the heart of
the new religion out ofwhich will grow new art, new
letters, new States, and a new worth of human living.
That which is barn of the Aesh is Aesh, and that
which is born of the spirit is spirit. The Hellenic
revival which followed Dante was intellectual and
external, and prepared a body for the reccption of the
new impulses of the present It began the making
of a new earth, the filling of the valleys, the casting
up a highway for the coming of God. Witbout
the Bible translated, without the prin ting-press, the
art of navigation, the railroad, and the material
improvements of man's condition, the time for the
new birth could not have come; nay, without the
wars with wcapons which Icd to the Iiberation of
men from physical bondage, and the wars of science
which Icd ta thcir mental liberation. But ta the
new earth thus prepared, cornes now the new
heaven, in the descent out of the firmament of
revelation of those spiritual truths which contain
the long-hidden secrets of God's dealings with man,
of the nature of man's spirit, and of the final destiny
of human life.
122 The New Renaissance.
Herein is the sweet essence of the new life the
world is tasting; the origin of the realism that is
not material. It is this new revelation of the
Divine and spiritual within the natural, that gives
rise to a delight in form and its beauty, which is not
the idolatrous worship of an empty image, but the
recognition of the holy substance of Good in its
own person of Truth and its proceeding life of Use,
which is Charity. It was an inspiration of this
Renaissance which enabled Goethe to fix the cc fair
moment" of Faust's longing not in sensual delight,
not in ambitious conquests, but in the conception
of a deed of unselfish sacrifice for his fellow-man.
The world's new birth is in the restoration of the
Holy Trine of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful
to their rightful and no longer divided sway. For
the beautiful is the true and the good in their effect
which is charity-the Divine breath in man. Hence
it is that of those angels which were of a beauty
inconceivable and indescribable by man, Sweden-
borg relates that they were seen as" Charities in
form."
FAUST IN MUSIC.
1 ONCE asked Bayard Taylor, who, in his OpiniOn,

among the composers was best able to set "Faust"
to music? supposing meanwhile, without knowing
why, that he would answer," Wagner;" and 1 relt
a kind of just rebuke when, without a moment's
hesitation, he replied, "Beethoven,"
Wc are sc accustomed in these days to think of
Wagner as the mighty and all-sufficient interpreter
of human cmation and passion, as to forget that the
singular depth and strength of his portrayal is not
accompanied by that breadth and calm which is
necessary to a complete representation ofhumanity.
What Wagner portrays is rather the travail-pangs
attending the birth of society out of barbarism than
the repose of a fixed dominion of mind and art
over brute force and disorder. The triumph of the
spirit, with its law and its beauty, in a finn un-
deviating rule, setting bounds to the wildest
storms of passion, tuming evil inta good, and
awarding the victor's garland to every worthy
contestant-this reign of a beneficent law finds its
expression in Beethoven as in no one else.
The quick perception of this by the gifted
American poet and translator led me to reflect
12 4
whether, after ail, the real interpretation of Faust

he not already given in Beethoven's various writ-
ings, particularly in the symphonies. It would he
certainly an interesting and perhaps not unre-
munerative task for a mind of sufficiently broad
sympathies and power of analysis to search through
these great tone-tragedies for passages giving suit-
able expression to the several movements of the
drama. The ability to do this would of course
involve a very deep appreciation of the universality
of bath the poem and the music. It is not for a
moment to he supposed that the composer had the
incidents of the drama of Goethe, then, in fact, still
incomplete, hefore his mind when writing the
symphonies; but he had in his heart, and he con-
veyed in those marvellous tone creations, ail un-
heard by himself, except by the immortal spirit's
ear, the movements and the action of the great
drama of the ages, the life of man, the aspirations,
the struggles, the defeats, and the triumphs of the
human soul. 1 am aware, however, that this, even
if it were well done, would be in large measure a
thankless task, in view of a widely prevalent aver-
sion nowadays to what is called "programme
music." The conditions of success would be almost
wholly subjective ones, and in the same degree
uncertain and variable. And yet 1 am quite con-
fident that in the " Eroica," the " Pastoral," and the
" Choral" symphonies, there are easily to be found
ntotifs that would instantly strike an audience of
average musical intelligence as more exactly and
Faust t:n Music.
distinctly partraying the Faust-idea, or its par·
ticular phases, than is done in the overtures and
symphonies distinctly sa labelled by Wagner and
his disciple Liszt
If the Faust-idea in its broadest conception is
that of a drama of humanity, or the struggles orthe
human sou! against the limitations of the finite and
imperfect, and its final triumph in its self·reconcilia·
tion ta the eternallaw of the Ali-wise and the AII-
loving, and its attainment in this ta truc freedom
and ta truc satisfaction, then we may most reason·
ably cxpect to find ail truly human music embody-
ing in sorne measure this idea. Objection may he
made to our attcmpting to read the Faust-idea in
this fashion into music, just as the same objection
has been made ta the efforts of those scholars who
would read into Goethe's own version of the Faust-
legend a universai moral impart. But 1 do not
think the question primarily regards the particular
moral impart of either poem or music, but rather
the prior fact of their truthfulness as portrayals of
humanity. If they are truc ta human nature the
moral will he alrcady there, with or without our
U reading in," The question will ooly he that of
our ability ta discover it, and the wider onc's
knowlcdge, and the deeper one's sympathy with
one's human kind, the better able will one he ta
detect whe~in the art of tone has becn the truc
interpretcr of the art of words.
Dismissing this gencral discussion, it is my pur-
pose in this paper ta consider in detail the respec-
•
126 Faust zn Musu.
tive qualities of the more important musical settings
of the Faust-drama by our modern composers-
namely, those of Spohr, Gounod, Berlioz, Boïto, and
Schumann.
Remarkable as is the fact that this drama of the
ages, as the Faust-legend has been not unfitly called,
should have waited until the nineteenth Christian
century for its adequate literary embodiment; not
less so are the remarkable efforts in the same period
to give the legend a proper musical setting. The
intellectual and the emotional contents of the deeply
graved story find simultaneous utterance. It is in
this coïncidence of artistic endeavour that a very
interesting psychological phenomenon occurs, in,
namely, the exhibition here afforded of the power
of the musician to penetrate and seize the most
subtle phases of ethical and religious emotion, and to
give these due expression in his art. A comparison
of these several musical settings is therefore at the
same time a kind of psychological study of the
several composers. The effort will be not to
form any absolute judgment as to comparative
excellence, but to detect, as far as we may be able,
that peculiar moral and religious phase of the
drama which is emphasized in each of the musical
works under consideration.
1 have named Spohr at the head of the list
because his opera was the earliest to be produced,
and also requires the briefest notice here. It is
with sorne hesitation that 1 include him in the list
of interpreters of the "Faust-idea," for the reason
FallS! in Music.
that his Iibrettist's idea was as remote as possible
from that, at least, of Goethe, however earnestly it
may have re8ected some of the eruder medireval
versions of the legend. Faust, after going through
a number of exploits of very doubtful valour or
honour, is finally carried off triumphantly ta Hell,
amid the rejoicing shouts of the infernal hasts.
The story reads marc Iike the popular Don Juan of
other operas, and the music is alike sensational in
character, ha:rdly anywhere acquiring the dignity of
a moral import. The composition is by no means
without merit musically considered, several of the
soprano arias heing remarkable for their brilliancy,
and even to this day popular on the concert stage,
and here and there a deep strong pathos, com·
bined with sober purity of farm, reminds one even
of GlUck. But we do not think of this music as
belonging to the subjective school in which the real
opera alone finds its place-a school whose art is
barn of an idea c1early conceived in the mind and
afterwards shaping to itself a musical fonn as its
purcst and fullest manifestation. The music of
Spohr's .. Faust" might readily he sung ta the
librttti of many other operas of the time without
any apparent Jack of adaptation. It is pJeasant
Society-music, if we may use the term-a sort of
delicious and exhilarating accompaniment ta the
waving of perfumed fans, the drawing on of gloves,
bastily snatcbed glimpses of the brilliantly dressed
bouse, and a balf-suppressed murmur of gay con·
versation. If we could conccive of Faust as in the
128 Faust in Music.
modem sense a cc Society man," which somehow
we find it impossible to do, we might find this
somewhat flippant opera more deserving of study
than it at present seems to us.
With the other four compositions to which 1
invite attention, there is surely no lack of subjec-
tive and eamest content. It is doubtful if, except
. in the oratorios and sacred cantatas of the masters
of sacred music, there is manifest anywhere 50
eamest an intent in musical writing as we find in
these works-the "Faust" of Schumann and that
of Gounod, the "Damnation" of Berlioz, and the
cc Mefistofele" of Boïto. In none, with the excep-
tion of Schumann's "Scenes," is the text precisely
that of Goethe, but aU derive their theme from his
version of the legend, and follow his drama with
sufficient nearness to enable them to be judged as
by a common standard in their literary content
They differ so widely, however, in the special
theme or phase of the drama chosen by each com-
poser for musical setting, that they are rather to be
regarded as constituting together one complete
expression, than as 50 many various treatments of
a single subject. The deep intellectual insight
into the meaning of the -drama, and the vivid
realization of its successive great motives in the
language of tone by those writers, are a significant
indication of the real progress of the musical art.
In neither of these works is the dramatic theme
subordinated to the mere play of musical sounds.
It is everywhere true opera in the genuine sense,
FalUt i" Music. 12 9
and that 50 lofty a theme should have found even

sa many worthy interpreters is a fact that lends a
new dignity to the vocation of the musical com-
poser.
Of the five composers named, two have extended
their libretti into the Second Part of the drama, and
two have ended with the First The moral content
of the Faust-idca is of course incomplete without
the Second Part We may look for the reason of
this variety of choice in the peculiar moral sensi-
bility or receptivity in the mind of the respective
composer with regard to the phases which he has
chosen to embody in his work. Viewed in this
Iight our study ought ta illustrate the universality
of bath the poem and the music to which the Faust-
idea has been the common inspiration.
It is to this kind of ethico·musical analysis that
1 shall mainly confine my observations on the works
before us. A purely musical criticism would he
quite remote (rom my present purpose; and 1
humbly hope that to many readers, who would
shrink (rom a merely technical disquisition on a
musical subject, my proposed treatment of the one
before us may not he wholly unattractive.
The four phases of the drama which, 1 believe,
have found each its distinctive expression in the
severa! works hefore us are the following: The
Satanic or 1nfemal, the Pagan and Classic, the
Spiritual and the Religious.
The first, 1 hardly need say, is that which lends
its tund and fateful hue ta the music throughout of
1
13° Faust "." Music.
the cc Damnation de Faust," by Berlioz. Terrible
as it sounds to characterize the exquisite writing of
this gifted genius as infernal, 1 know of no other
term by which to distinguish the power and the
spell of his music. Not here alone, but in much
else that he has written, we seem to hear the chant
of the death angel, the chorus of the accursed, the
sad-how sad and penetrating! -lament of the
despairing and the lost. Beauty, a depth of hectic
colour, a kind of feverish glow and gleam, the repose
which is that of languor rather than of rest, the
awful, irresistible tread of Fate-pleasure tasted on
the brink of endless sorrow, the hope which is
against hope-these are what pulsate beneath the
weirdly beautiful tones of this saddest of musical
writers. The title of the work speaks for the
thorough honesty of the writer. It is not the
elevation but the degradation of the human souI-
the despair of humanity-before the awful doom of
" him that accuses" and denies, that is here depicted
in most feeling language. The triumph of Satan,
the jubilant howl of evil spirits, the stifling spell of
the infernal atmospheres, give a kind of undertone
to aIl the scenes described, even those in which a
certain mockery of peace, love, and happiness sheds
a thin, faint gleam of warmth and light. If there
is a delicious sorrow in the prelude and in Faust's
soliloquy under the influence of Nature, it is not
that which is born of sympathy with an infinite life,
but of an anticipation of the inevitable decay and
death that threatens aIl. 1t is the music of pessi-
Faust in M1Uit:. '3'
mism and of despair. That this triumph of
Mephistopheles should have proved 50 acceptable
to the public as is evineed by the wide popularity
of Berlioz's work, and also by the recent suecessful
run of Irving's version of the play at the Lyceum,
in which Satan's rôle is in every sense the leading
one, must not necessarily he construed as indicating
a correspondingly diabolical predilection in the
public sentiment that finds its satisfaction in these
portrayals. 1 attribute it rather to the intense
rea/iSlIt of both productions, a feature that appeals
more than any other ta the dominant mental
craving of this time, as weB as ta a negative cause
in, namely, the failure of the general playgoing
public ta penetrate deeply enough iota the moral
of the Faust-idea as wrought out by Goethe, to
know how really superficial and delusive this
triumph of .. the evil ooe" is. The discipline of
temptation, the awful combat between the angel
principle and the devil prindple in man, is only
seemingly c10sed by physical death or the captivity
of the body. An intense conAict is to follow-a
conAiet Iying deeper tban the plane of the bodys
passions i a conAjct among the prindples that go
to make up human society. The soul of the larger
man is ta he tried; the field of this temptation
widens beyond the limitations of the Saxon race
and the Christian religion; the struggling tenden·
des inherited from the past existence of the race
must come to their conscious realiution and de--
cision here in the breast of this typical prophet and
,.
;
13 2 FaMSt "n Music.
martyr. Those who see the drama closed with the
awful ftight ta HeU, depicted as no one but Berlioz
could do it, and carry away only the vision of its
lurid depths, are, however, hardly more deficient in
a true apprehension of the moral scope of the legend
than the majority of those good sober-minded
people who object on principle to the finding of any
good and wholesome moral in a play of this nature.
Both classes faIl far short of that conception which t
in the initial germ, as weIl as in the completed de-
velopment of the Faust-idea, is at once its redeem-
ing element and its lasting glory. For, \vhether in
the ancient story of Job, in which Froude has
detected the substance of the legend, or in Goethe's
drama, the dominant idea is undoubtedly that of an
all-ruling Divine Providence, which embraces even
the hells in its dominion, and whose laws include
even the permission of evil that thereby greater
good may come. That the dark side of the argu-
ment should have been the first to be recognized is
ooly naturaI, and that hence should be drawn a
theme for popular presentation, rather than from
the other more subtle and deeply hidden onet
whether by the musician or stage-manager, is not a
matter of surprise. If we judge a work of art hy
the thoroughness with which its end is attained, no
one will withhold the highest tribute of praise from
Berlioz's most successful work. It is not alone the
musical representation of passion, grief, and despair,
in their deepest thmes; it is the apotheosis of the
inhuman, the bestial, the vile. Witness the songs
Fa#st ü, Mrui&. '33
of the" Rat" and the" Flea" Was musie ever put
ta so base a use before? And yet it is realistie art,
in precisely the same sense that we apply this term
ta the camai and cadaverous canvasses that occupy
sc large a space in the French Salon. 1t hymns, as
the latter record, the triumph of matter, of the flesh,
and of death. Sweet and pathetie beyond ail ~ords
ta describe is this dying Psyche song; the wail of
the human soul, as the last gleam of the noble, the
tender, the beautiful in man and woman, fades from
our vision.
Unlike Berlioz, Boïto, while also choosing the
Satanie title for his work, writes in a more nor·
mally human spirit, and gives us a far healthier
and more genial rendering of the story. His
theme embraces the Second Part, and thus intro-
duces the idea of the Anal redemption of Faust j
but it is not this completion of the moral motive of
the drama that constitutes the distinguishing trait
of this composition, so much as that which is incl·
dental to it-namely, the introduction of the
Hellenic, or c1assic element, through the admission
of the Helena episode from the Second Part. This
supplies the key-note for our understanding the
peculiar charm which the work of Boïto posscsses
throughout. It Îs the loveliness of Helen, the
Greek passion for the beautiful as such j it is
human love, neither refined by the elimination of
passion nor yet seasoned with the guilty lust of sin,
but rather purely natura1 and free. This element,
while !luffusing the whole work with a certain
134 Faust '" Music.
voluptuous and sensual glamour, is yet not fraught
with the seed of corruption and death. If it is
sin, it is yet not the sin done in the light, but in
the sleep of Nature, in which the Christian con-
science is not yet awakened. It may he animal;
it is not bestial. This peculiar character of the
moral sentiment embodied in Boïto's music is what
leads me to caU it Pagan in contrast with the Saxon-
Christian element \vhich pervades the other three.
The music of the revel and the dance is that of the
dithyrambic chorus of the Greeks; a Dionysian
sweetness and mellowness runs through the half-
dreamy bars introducing the garden scene and the
light-hearted play of the lovers; the mocking gal-
lantries of Mefistofele with Marta are like the
innocent pranks of the Satyr of old-the declaration
of love, the pledge, the flight, ail teem \vith the
fervid passion of inexperienced youth; the un-
stayed current of unreftecting, unquestioning love.
Even where the composer has attempted to portray
the calmer, deeper emotions, as in Faust's soliloquy
on his retum from his walk in the fields, and in his
prayer addressed to Helen as the ideal type of the
heautiful, the vein of music struck is not one that
reaches deeper than the senses, beautiful as these
passages undouhtedly are. Three scenes in the
opera do, however, deserve special notice, on
account of the immense power of artistic interpre-
tation which they exhihit Natural and earthly as
the emotions may he which they portray, they are
nevertheless deep and strong, and such as awaken
FaMsJ in Music. 135
a response in the human heart at ail times. 1 refer
to the wail of grief, the frenzy of despair, that is
uttered in Margaret's song, "AI Mare;" to the
sweet but de1usive vision of the peace of unending
love, in the duet, " Lontano, 1ontano ;" and, finally,
to the description of the night in Greece, which, in
the whiteness of its moonlight, its c1ear-cut shadows,
the very stars reflected in the bosom of the lake,
the melancholy fragrance of summer roses in the
air, is 50 marvellously drawn, in the duet between
Helen and her attendant in the c1assic scene.
Rarcly do we find in music sa exquisite an intellect
as here. 1t is the beauty of form left unveiled,
except with the merest film of a material covering.
ft is like a Doric frieze, standing out white, pure,
and sharply defined against the purpling sky of an
Attie twilight Not more truly did Goethe bring
back the Hellenic spirit to German poetry than
bas this Italian composer translated in this single
scene the c1assic modes iota the musical form of our
lime. The performance of this duet by Mesdames
Trebelli and Nilsson 1 remember, as 1 would a
veritable vision of a night in Athens.
From the" Mefistofele," let us pass now to the
1< Scenes from Faust" of Schumann. This alone of
ail the compositions before us attempts to embody
in musical language the complete moral import of
the "Faust" of Goethe. The scenes of course
embrace the Second Part, and even include the
passage in which the solution of the deep problem
of human happiness is reachcd-in, namely, the
13 6 Faust ,,·n Munc.
discovery of the law of use, of mutual service of
man to man, as the highest ideal of society-the
Divine destiny of man.
That the plots of Satan should have to yield to
a prosaic proposition of political economy-that the
charms of learning, of sensual pleasure, of intel-
lectual beauty, of empire, should aIl lose their
potency in the face of a scheme to redeem sorne
\vaste land and provide for a comfortable home for
sorne poor tenants-this has been a difficult point
for the critics to reconcile to their ideas of resthetic
unity and harmony. It has required a profounder
appreciation of human delight and human destiny
than was possessed by the ordinary poetasters and
their critics of the Romantic school, to gain even a
glimpse of the sublime idea which the poet has
thus embodied. If it was a daring thing, such as
only a genuine master could have had the courage
and the strength to do, must we not admire the
musician who has dared even to attempt a worthy
musical expression of so loftyand yet so unpopular
a theme! This Schumann has done in passages of
singular power and depth. In his portrayal of
Faust as that human soul that struggles for the
complete reconciliation of himself to the primeval
heneficent order of a Divine purpose, and that con-
sequently yearns for the sympathy of even the
inanimate world of Nature as weB as for the com-
munion of an actual human brotherhood, there is a
lofty reach in Schumann's music which we are able
to describe by no other term than spiritual. In-
FaNst in Musû. 137
tensely human throughout, it is nevertheless
thrillcd all the while with emotions that come
. rather from the spiritual than from the sensual side
of our nature. The angelic choruses are indeed
strains, worthy ta be heard in Heavcn-mystery,
infinity, the sweet but awful secrets of the inter·
course of angels and men, the dreamy but joyous
ecstacies of the If blessed boys," the prayers and
adorations of martyrs and prophets---all these seem
to be breathcd into these numbers as if from some
bright daor ajar into the upper world. A calm and
noble dignity, the repose which foretells the sure ful-
filment of the Divine purposes of good, stamps the
work with a distinctly ethical character in keeping
with its lofty theme. Wc feel that to divert and
amuse are functions almost too trivial for such art
as this: ta elevate, to purify, and ennoble the
aspirations of men bccomes alike the mission of the
poet and the musician. 1 know how lame my
attempts must be to define in words what 1 have
ventured ta characterize as the spiritual character
of Schumann's interpretation of the drama 1 can
only throw myself upon a supposed sympathetic
intuition of my reader in any appea1 for bis
approval. The composer is only emptoying bere,
in a field adequate to hili genius, the same docp
human insight and power of expression which
have characterized his other works, and which have
constituted him a kind of musical prophet. A
voice speaks here whicb is deepcr than intellect; it
is rather the utterance of sorne celestial principle in
Faust in Music.
the human soul, of a faculty that sees, and that
enables congenial souls to see, what cannot he put
in words. As BoitoJs music was described as
sensuous without the element of sin, so Schumann
is human without being sensuous. In this subtle
influence of the affectional part of the mind,
that which arrives at perceptions and conveys them
to other minds without the formaI intervention of
intellect, and thus awakens lofty emotions, even
without the aid of words, truly the music of
Schumann's "Faust" illustrates in no feeble way
in what manner
" Das ewig weibliche
Zieht uns heran."
It remains for me to point out in what manner
Gounod's opera holds a complementary relation to
aIl the foregoing, and also combines in one work
their several distinctive qualities. 1t is as the
universal commingling of aIl these characteristics
that 1 have called Gounod's rendering of the drama
a pre-eminently religious one. For religion is the
name for that emotion in the human race which
makes possible the mutual approach of the lowest
with the highest elements in our nature, which per-
mits Satan to converse face to face with Deity, and
equally enables the compassionate love of the
Father of mankind to reach down to the uttermost
depths to recall His lost child to HimseU: But the
religious feeling which Gounod has here painted in
tones, with truly a master's touch, is that of the
Faust ù, Musit. '39
Catholic Church. It has not the profoundly ethical
and univcrsal character that finds expression in
Schumann, and that can comprehend a solution
of Faust's destiny Iike that which the Second
Part evolves; but for this very reasan it strikes
home more directly to the conscience of the masses,
who sce somehow in Margaret's awful punish.
ment and death a kind of vicarious atoncment for
the sin of her lover, and in the angelic strains of
the postlude hear the triumph of that Divine Love
which can by sorne means, more marvellous and
instantaneous than the slow process of moral
combat in the penitent soul, bring about the desired
heavenly transformation. The c10sing of the opera
with the First Part was, therefore, we may say, a
dramatic ne<:essity, when the underlying motive
was the portrayal of the ordinary Christian senti·
ment. ft is this e<:ho of a deeply interwoven
consciousness of sin, of holy love profaned, of the
terrors of the judgment Day, of the compas-
sionate mercy and the pardoning grace of Gad,
that has given Gounod's opera its vast ascendancy
over ail the others in papular favour. That it is
a profoundly religious work docs by no means
imply the absence of other characteristics, any more
than the religion of the Catholic Church excludes
the idea of what is sensuous, frolicsome, or even
diabolical. But the triumph of Divine compassion
is foretold alike in the condemnation of guilt, in
the awful throes of a remorscful conscience, in the
!Cflsitive recoiling of a pure nature from the PfC'
Faust in Music.
sence of the evil one, as in the last prayer of
Margaret, wherein the very music she sings seems
to break the prison bars and let her soul By free to
Heaven. Powerfully as Mephistopheles is depicted
here, it is as a power that is rebuked, and must
crouch and crawl away defeated, rather than as the
real winner and victor in the struggle with the AlI·
Father. 1t is life rather than death that in the end
triumphs ; and if the sin is deep, it is deeply atoned
for, and the end is redemption.
The absence of the Pagan or classic scenes of the
drama, as well as of the Walpurgis-Nacht episode,
leaves the subject to be treated to much circum-
scribed limits, and the local colouring given by both .
the poet and the composer is decidedly Saxon in
its prevailing tone. The deep undertone of sadness
which is heard in the scenes where strong feeling is
described, even from the first note 'of the marvel-
lously subjective overture, is not an' unfit expression
in tones of that most true analysis of the Saxon
religious character which the composer's country-
man, Taine, gives us in his History of Eng!isk
Literature. But, while the religious feeling is
Saxon, the power and presence of the Church as
described by Gounod is thoroughly Roman or
Latin. Thus the religious spirit breathes in the
choruses of angels and spirits in the earlier scenes :
it is shown in the mystic power of the Cross used
by the students in repelling Mephistopheles; in the
holy dread which Faust feels on entering Margaret's
chamber, where
FalU! ,:" Musil.
" clay by day each influence pure

O( heaven and earth her heart mature,
And (ain would welcome (orth, and win
Ta light, the angel (rom within."
We feel its awful presence in the curse of Valentine j
in the delirious fcars. the calm, and the ecstasies of
Margaret in the Prison Scene; and, most of ail, in
the sublime dcath.struggle, in which the soul finds
release and victory for herself and her betoved.
The Church. on the other hand, not ooly as
mocked by Mephistopheles, but as introduced in
her solemn offices as a factor in the drama, is purely
of the Roman type. It speaks the verdicts of the
irrevocable judgment of Deity, it pronounces the
calm and immovable exactions of the law. Terrible
and implacable as the Fates of the andent tragedy
Oses bcfore the conscience·stricken Margaret the
impending sentence oCher guilt. Nowhere has this
feeling of the immutability of law, of the hopeless-
ncss of doom, been depicted in the body and in the
form of music, more vividly than in the organ-pre-
lude to the Cathedral Scene. Is it not almost
cruelty intoned. in i15 steady. calm, but irresistible
onward movement, undeviating, heedless, merciless?
The accusations of Satan from within find their
echo from without in the awful strains of the " Dies
irz," the Church's great objective representation of
the Divine judgment and of the just desert of sin.
The majesty, the power of the Church, speak in the
salemn tones of her own Gregorian chant The
imprecations, the despair of centuries of lest and
Faust in Music.
doomed lives, press down with their burden in these
massive and mighty chords. In these passages
from the Church's ritual the religious element of
the drama becomes localized and particularized, just
as the religious element itself is the particularizing
of the more universal ethical spirit We can with~
out difficulty locate the drama of the First Part in
any of the quaint münster-cities of Southern
Germany, but the limits of our earth are almost
too narrow to meet the demands of the wider ex-
periences of the Second Part.
1 have attempted neither an exhaustive descrip-
tion of these musical works, nor to forrn any
judgment as to their comparative merits, but have
adhered to my purpose of discovering the moral
1no/if which distinguished each, or of which each
seemed to be a more complete embodiment. 1
have spoken of Gounod's work as in a manner
embracing the motifs of the others, as weIl as sup-
plementing them with a distinct one of its own,
because this universality is what characterizes the
religious feeling itsel( It would be an interesting
psychological study to inquire how far the choice
of these several elements as subjects for their re-
spective treatment is the resu!t of sorne prevailing
disposition or aptitude of the severa! composers, as
shown in their other works. We can hardly doubt
that the musical writing of each is the response
which his own artistic sense gives back on his being
impressed with a certain moral import of the legend.
The responses vary according to the differences in
Faust in M-.rû. 143
the impressions receivcd, and these according to
the differences in the receptive organs. 5uch would
he a bold and intrusive kind of mental analysis, a
calling of these men ta a kind of moral judgment
pronounced by their own works i and 1 confess
that 1 should hesitate in daring ta apply my own
method in estimating them as 1 have in estimating
their writing; but in one case 1 feel that my
method is fully vindicated by the writer's sub-
sequent choice of themc- namely, in that of
Gounod. Not only has the real bent ofhis musical
genius, in spite of apparent efforts ta tum it in
other directions, provcd itself a distinctly religious
one by bis virtual abandonment of secular for sacred
subjects, his decided preference for oratorio over
opera, ballet, and aU other forros of orchestral
writing, but 1 doubt if in a11 that he has written
thcre has becn at bottom a religious feeling sa
strong and all-pervading in its influence as in the
opera of .. Faust" On this, rather than on the
later work sa designated by the author him.self, will
the public judgment of the futUre see written the
rightful title-Opws vim 1IUIZ.
l,
'.
:.
i
t
,'.
THE SECRET OF WAGNER.

Ta the interesting problem of the secret of
Wagner's power there is an added importance,
from the fact of the influence \vhich this composer
has undoubtedly exerted on a vast number of
young and enthusiastic disciples the world over.
It is because·there is in Wagner's music a power of
endurance, something which stimulates to effort
and tends to self-perpetuation through the voluntary
discipleship of loving and ardent votaries, that we
.are compelled to admit that there is something real
in it, something based upon truth and nature, and
therefore capable of appealing to human sympathy,
and of taking a real hold on the affections of men
and women everywhere.
ln undertaking to describe what this something
is, and so to account for the strange phenomenon
in the history of art of a popularity with the masses
of that which tasks the highest critical powers of
musical scholars, 1 am confident 1 shaH not
t'. meet the views of any thorough Wagnerian ; since
1 am prepared neither to allow to the famous com-
i poser the exclusive credit for that which is best in
: i-
l bis theories, nor can 1 accept bis music as the
0:
,
J, bigbest outcome yet witnessed of the practical
1
~ application of his theories to the musical art.
The Sec~et of W'gne~. 145
What has becn, by his critics, called Wagner's
grave blunder-his assuming the double function
of poet and composer, which is al the same lime
held by his admirers to he a conspicuollS merit-is
in reality ooly the carrying out, in fuller dctail, of
a principle cxhibited in many illustrious works by
greater composers before him. Ali the great
masters of the musical art have been poets, or their
own librettists, in a large and true sense. Ali
music is "programme music," and the programme
cxists in the rnind of the composer whether he is
intellectually conscious of it or not, before or
simultaneously with, his writing. The varying
abilities of the luarers to read the meaning of the
writing, Îs atone what makes the artificial distinc-
lion between what is commonly recognized as
programme music and what is not. Ali can read
the unwritten libretto of the Pastoral Symphony,
and of the symphonie poems of Berlioz. ln bis
great trilogy, Wagner has only added the pr0-
gramme written out in full, 50 that what was in
his mind, forming the theme of his musical work,
may thercby he the more distinctly in the hearer's
mind while listening.
Nor can we concede the daim of originality in
what is called the musical ethics of Wagner, the
place he assigns to music as nearest of ail the
arts to the "original idea" and the '1 will to live."
PhiJosophy has alwa)'!l taught that there is sorne·
thing in life deeper than thought and Iying beyond
the scope of verbal utterance, and that to appeal
K
H.
146 The Secret of Wagner.

to this and ta give this expression is the highest
vocation of art. The theory elaborately clothed
by Wagner in metaphysical terms is only what
every lover of music can confirm from his own
experience. AlI who know the true power of
music are aware of ·that supreme satisfaction and
sense of relief one feels in listening to a great
musical work, as if the soul within had found a
mode of realizing its infinite longings which no
other form of art could furnish. Such music
approaches indeed the cc infinite idea" so far as it
gives form to an infinite and ever-varying emotion,
or "will to live." Wagner has not so much erred
in his lofty conception of the musical art, or in his
ambitious striving to attain its realization, as have
those who would attribute the origin of this con:
ception to Wagner, or hold that he alone has
achieved this realization. In my own judgment,
Baçh, Handel, and Beethoven have more fully than
Wagner himself realized the Iofty scope and the
peculiarly Divine power of the art of musical com-
position.
But if 1 deny to Wagner the title of musician of
the future, it is because 1 accord to him so fully
that of musician of to-day; and herein 1 think is
to he found the ans\ver to the whole question of bis
extraordinary popularity and influence. The
music of Wagner has given voice to the spirit of
the present age as that of no other composer bas
done. It is not the spirit of perfected hUmanity,of
calm and elevated contemplation, of perfectly. àd:-
Tlu Secret of Wag'IUr. 147
~ usted and harmonious aetivities, of wholesome and
4enduring delight~f lire, in a ward, al its best; it
4s rather the spirit of unrest, of doubt, of mingled
c:Jespair and hope, of struggle and ambition, of
'Pride and presumption mingled with the weak
1•~ielding of the cowardly, the ignoble and base.
(lUf age is not the age of humanity at its best;
the affectional light that inspires it and seeks an
utterance in music does not difrer from that wbich
seeks its expression in other forms of art, in the
painting, the architecture, and the literature of OUf
clay. Without wishing to he pessirn.istic, it is
difficult to convÎnce ourselves in these clays that the
productions of our time in either of these directions
are really great in the sense that wc Ceel the works
of the masters of other clays to he. Wc have
ncither a Michael Angelo, a Leonardo, a Dante, nor
a Shakespeare ta point ta as the eminent embodl·
ment of the spirit of our time. Our time iue1f is
not an ideal but an essentially materialistic lime.
115 distinguishing virtue, if it have any, is its
realism. Its mission is that of striking at the roots
of things; and amid the blows, the cruel gashes
of the axe and the crash of the faUing monarchs
of the past, thcre is Iittle space for heeding the
gentler voices of the spirits that hover in the
upper air.
An age whosc architectural triumphs are ta he
chiefty seen in Railway Stations, Stock Exchanges,
and Eiffel Towers; whose art delights chiefty in
depicting the carnage of the battlefietd or the dis-
The Secret of Wagner.
secting-room, or the life of the siums or of the
demi-monde; whose plea of cc realism" is made to
coyer, like a mantle a multitude of sins in its
t
Iiterature more corrupting even than the grossness of

its art, in what music can such an age find its own
awful struggle for life depicted in tone better than in
those manifold creations of real genius in which
Wagner has repeated again and again the same sad
and tragic tale? 1t is at once a tale and a confession.
The whole chaotic disorder of our time, our mental
perplexities, our social and moral confusion, rolls on
in its turbid, remorseless, resistless flood, through
these prophetie strains of Wagner's music. We
read in the libretto, indeed, of Brunhild and Sieg-
fried ; we hear voices whispering about the music of
the future. As a matter of fact, we are beholding,
under whatever medireval name or guise, only the
drama of to-day, the awful struggle of its own real-
ism with what is left of its ideal or spiritual life.
To have given this spirit of degraded but struggling
humanity a voice in that language, which of aIl
forms of utterance is the most immediate language
of the soul, is surely no mean service. It is some-
thing to have written even the music of Bedlam :
and at a time like this-when, in a very reai sense
because applying tç the things of mind, the world
has reached its judgment day and is witnessing the
cc consummation of the age," the struggle of the
shadows of the past with the dawning gleams of the
new day-to have given prophetie voice to this
state of our humanity; to its yearnings, its despair,
The Secret of Wagner. 149
to its. striving and its bope of ultimate victory; is

the highest office of the musical composer, and con-
stitutes the great and enduring merit of Richard
Wagner, and the secret of bis powerful hold upon
the popular mind.
THE ONE AND THE MANY.
THE moming sun lies mirrored in the sea,

Whose glassy waves, heaving in noiseless swell,
Break it in many shapes. In dancing glee
The many suns their glittering falsehoods tell
To skipper's children, who, wi~ idle gaze,
Stare down the gently rising schooners side.
cc Oh, count the little suns ! JI the younger says ;
cc See bow they come and shine, and quickly
bide."
u
cc Black suns for every shining one 1 seeJ
The eIder cries, cc and dragon-shaped and queer l ,.
At evening, in one vast tranquillity,
The seas a fair, reftected heaven appear,
While the great sun drops calmly ta bis restJ
The manifold, at last, as one confessed.
GOOD FRIDAY IN ST. MUNGO'S.
THAT day our blessed Lord was crucified

1 entered a cathedral vast and grey,
Whose builders with their faith have passed away.
No more by fervent worship occupied,
A deathful chill did there instead abide,
While idly gazing visitors did stray,
Forgetful aIl of sacred place and day ;
If but the sight were seen, weIl satisfied.
Only aloft the organ's plaintive tone
A player hid from vulgar gaze did wake,
And such sweet music through the arches pour
That the old shrine did tremble with a moan,
As if in that its very heart did break
ln Ionging for its ancient prayer once more.
~: .
i'
; :
".1.
il
1-
·. i·
>.. t,
l',: 1:
1: 1 "ALL THAT DOTH PASS AW A Y.'
":,,'
. . "Alles Verganliche ist nur ein Gleichniss."-Goethe•
~. ~ i:
",
:. i
J ALL that doth pass away is but the farm
, ! "
Reftected from the real that remains.
:':.,' "Tis 1 that bear within me peace and storm,
: ,
a
The world with aIl its losses and its gains.
, 1
Even the body's shape and all its sensè
Is but the mirror wherein 1 may scan
My inner self; but bear the mirror hence
Or break to atoms, still remains the man.
So death may change the outer circumstance
But to reveal the real world within,
And let me see, in one astonished glance,
The vision of my virtue or my sin ;
And going hence from out this shattered shell
1 carry with me my own heaven or hell.
ROBSRT L SUTHERLAND, PRIXTBa, BOIXBV.GR.
..J
, .
1
;
~
,
1 .
1.
1
t.- ....;
....:
..
' ~:. )
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Frank Sewall DANTE AND SWEDENBORG London 1893

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DANTE AND

o/ï/: 6!.ÀA.iù :.k6-#~.-:

II. DANTE AND SWEDENBORG, 24

III. "THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF DANTE "-A

IV. THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY IN ITS RELATION

V. THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE IN ITS RELATION

VI. THE NEW RENAISSANCE, • 104

VII. FAUST IN MUSIC, 123

VIII. THE SECRET OF WAGNER, • 144

IX. SoNNET-THE ONE AND THE MANY, • ISO

X. SONNET-GOOD FRIDAY IN ST. MUNGO'S, • 151

XI. SONNET-cc ALL THAT DOTH PASS AWAY,". 152

THE Author acknowledges his indebtedness to the

AH 1 not as one who builds a world while dreaming,

Homer, Plata, and the literai Bible combined ; the

to become rus guide through the fearful caverns of

ln what manner, then, we are led to inquire, does

It is true, Dante speaks of the Last Judgment as

"The interiors of man, which are of his rnind (nuItS)

According to the Christian belier. universally

The purgatory or intermediate world between

THE purgatory of Dante is a mountain of seven

wholly lifted above the earthly atmospheres, 50

One penitent is heard softly singing the famniar

A great company of newly-arrived spirits brought

A spirit reRecting on the utter corruption of the

With feet 1 stayed, and with mine eyes 1 passed

ACCORDING to Dante the hells like the heavens

THE heavens, like the hells, in Dànte, are divided

For good, so far as good, when comprehended

The voice reveals il of the truthful AUlhar,

Here Dante evidently refers to the opening of

The height bebold now and the amplitude

Tbat Circulation, \ll"bic:h being thus conc:eived

.. Ali the angels in the heavens never perceive the

FI.OUNCE, ITALV, 11189.

IN view of the materialistic tendency of thought

1 have quoted thus abundantly from Dr. Harris

The progrcss (rom the thinking (rom appearanccs,

ONE of the most profound as weB as universal

of the human nature in the individual and in the

intellectual quickening and discipline; but the

tine sc.hools. It was England and Geneva and

ground of the ranting atheist and blasphemer j nOf

CENTURIES in the world's history are as years in a

navigation of the world, the beginnings o( modem

hypocrisies; it proclaims its readiness to look upon

"The beginning of our century witnessed the dawn of

But it is to writers in every !ine ofliterature and to

good from evil, of the real from the false, the

1 ONCE asked Bayard Taylor, who, in his OpiniOn,

whether, after ail, the real interpretation of Faust

and that 50 lofty a theme should have found even

" clay by day each influence pure

THE SECRET OF WAGNER.

146 The Secret of Wagner.

Iiterature more corrupting even than the grossness of

to its. striving and its bope of ultimate victory; is

THE moming sun lies mirrored in the sea,

THAT day our blessed Lord was crucified