rice,
'that thou oughtest to have thine eyes clear and sharp. And
therefore ere thou further enterest it, look back downward,
and see how great a world I have already set beneath thy feet,
in order that thy heart, so far as it is able, may present
itself joyous to the triumphant crowd which comes glad through
this round ether.' With my sight I returned through each and
all the seven spheres, and saw this globe such that I smiled
at its mean semblance; and that counsel I approve as the best
which holds it of least account; and he who thinks of other
things maybe called truly worthy."

Dante's scale of values is that which appears from the starry heaven.
His austere piety, his invincible courage, and his uncompromising hatred
of wrong, are neither accidents of temperament nor blind reactions, but
compose the proper character of one who has both seen the world from
God, and returned to see God from the world. He was, as Lowell has said,
"a man of genius who could hold heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and
would not let himself die till he had done his task"; and his power was
not obstinacy, but a vision of the ways of God. He knew a truth that
justified him in his sacrifices, and made a great glory of his defeat
and exile. Even so his poetry or appreciation of life is the expression
of an inward contemplation of the world in its unity or essence. It is
but an elaboration of the piety which he attributes to the lesser saints
of paradise, when he has them say:

"Nay, it is essential to this blessed existence to hold
ourselves within the divine will, whereby our very wills are
made one. So that as we are from stage to stage throughout
this realm, to all the realm is pleasing, as to the King who
inwills us with His will. And His will is our peace; it is
that sea whereunto is moving all that which It creates and
which nature makes."[47:8]

[Sidenote: The Difference between Poetry and Philosophy.]

Sect. 14. There now remains the brief task of distinguishing the
philosopher-poet from the philosopher himself. The philosopher-poet is
one who, having made the philosophical point of view his own, expresses
himself in the form of poetry. The philosophical point of view is that
from which the universe is comprehended in its totality. The wisdom of
the philosopher is the knowledge of each through the knowledge of all.
Wherein, then, does the poe