,
which our modern writers spend pages over, yet tell us scarcely more
about them. A little knowledge of Dante is evidently the best antidote
that our generation can have for that foolish persuasion that the
Middle Ages were ignorant of science and that the universities taught
nothing but nonsense about nature.

I am tempted to add just a few paragraphs with regard to another
aspect of Dante's scientific interests which assimilates him to the
modern educated man. Education itself would seem to be one of the
sciences the development of which was surely left to a late and more
conscious age. There are, however, as has been pointed out by Brother
Azarias, quite enough materials in Dante's works to show that a
serious student who was, however, only a literary man and not an
educator, had many thoughts with regard to the practical side of
education, and had come to many conclusions with regard to how it
should be carried on, that are anticipations of the most fruitful
thoughts of our modern educators and that have formed the subject of
many theses on education down to our own day. Education is, of course,
scarcely one of the physical sciences, yet since its subject-matter is
mainly the child and the developing human intellect, and in that sense
it is nature study in its highest form, this aspect of Dante's
thinking also deserves to be given due weight here. Brother Azarias
says:--

"It is the mission of the poet to reflect in his work the
predominant, all-pervading spirit and views of his age. Now, in his
day, the universities were the {362} controlling element in thought,
in art, in politics, moulding the thinkers and rulers of the age
both in church and state. But Dante was a life-long student. He
traveled from land to land and from school to school, and sat
impatiently, yet humbly, at the feet of masters, imbibing whatever
knowledge they could convey. He disputed in public. His bright eyes
and strong, sombre, reserved features attracted the attention of
fellow students as he wended his way, absorbed in his own thoughts,
through the rue de Fouarre and entered the hall in which Siger was
holding forth. Tradition has it that he was no less assiduous a
frequenter of School Street in Oxford. He has left us no distinct
treatise on education; but he who embodied all the science of his
day, who was supreme in teaching so many other lessons, could not be
silent in regard to pedagogy. From his wri