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if they merit had, 'T is not enough, because they had not baptism, Which is the portal of the Faith thou holdest; And if they were before Christianity, In the right manner they adored not God; And among such as these am I myself. For such defects, and not for other guilt, Lost are we, and are only so far punished, That without hope we live on in desire.'" (IV, 25.) (b) Our poet represents a soul as punished but for one sin, though it may be guilt-dyed by its having broken all the commandments. Even so, it is placed in one particular circle wherein a certain sin is punished and we are not told that it passes to other circles. In explanation of this we have only to remember that Dante, for our instruction, is showing us object lessons of evil, types of certain sins. Judas, for example, whose name is synonymous with traitor, is exhibited as suffering in the ninth circle, the circle of treason, the poet taking no notice of other sins, v.g., sacrilege, avarice, suicide, of which the fallen apostle may have been guilty. Furthermore, Dante as a master psychologist and moralist would teach us the lesson that the evil doer may come to damnation through one sin if that acquires such an ascendency over his will as to become a capital sin or predominant passion of his life. Then the besetting passion is the father of an innumerable progeny of evil. This is seen (Purg., XX, 103) in the case of Pygmalion, whose predominant passion, avarice, made him a traitor, a thief and a parricide. (c) Let us not be surprised that Dante is so lenient in the punishment of carnal sinners. He assigns a lighter punishment to the unchaste than to the unjust. Back of his plan is a sound theological doctrine. Guilt is to be estimated not simply from the gravity of the matter prohibited to conscience and the knowledge that one has of the evil, but more especially from the malice displayed by the will in its voluntary choosing and embracing the evil. Now impurity, it is held, is often a sin of impulse. It springs from concupiscence, a common human inclination, wrong only when there is inordinateness. Then though a man freely consents to the temptation and thereby commits a grievous sin, his will generally is not overcast with perversion or affected with malice. That being so, Dante in assigning punishment for sins against the virtue of purity is moved by the thought that such sins deserve a milder punishment in Hell, becaus
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