me moved this company."

[1] Literally, "to envy;" hence, perhaps, "to admire," "to
praise," "to celebrate;" but the meaning is doubtful.



CANTO XIII. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks again, and explains the
relation of the wisdom of Solomon to that of Adam and of Christ,
and declares the vanity of human judgment.

Let him imagine,[1] who desires to understand well that which I
now saw (and let him retain the image like a firm rock, while I
am speaking), fifteen stars which in different regions vivify the
heaven with brightness so great that it overcomes all thickness
of the air; let him imagine that Wain[2] for which the bosom of
our heaven suffices both night and day, so that in the turning of
its pole it disappears not; let him imagine the mouth of that
horn[3] which begins at the point of the axle on which the primal
wheel goes round,--to have made of themselves two signs in the
heavens, like that which the daughter of Minos made, when she
felt the frost of death,[4] and one to have its rays within the
other, and both to revolve in such manner that one should go
first and the other after; and he will have as it were the shadow
of the true constellation, and of the double dance, which was
circling the point where I was; because it is as much beyond our
wont as the motion of the heaven which outspeeds all the rest is
swifter than the movement of the Chiana.[5] There was sung riot
Bacchus, not Paean, but three Persons in a divine nature, and it
and the human in one Person. The singing and the revolving
completed each its measure, and those holy lights gave attention
to us, making themselves happy from care to care.[6]

[1] To form an idea of the brightness of the two circles of
spirits, let the reader imagine fifteen of the brightest separate
stars, joined with the seven stars of the Great Bear, and with
the two brightest of the Lesser Bear, to form two constellations
like Ariadne's Crown, and to revolve one within the other, one
following the movement of the other.

[2] Charles's Wain, the Great Bear, which never sets.

[3] The Lesser Bear may be imagined as having the shape of a
horn, of which the small end is near the pole of the heavens
around which the Primum Mobile revolves.

[4] When Ariadne died of grief because of her desertion by
Theseus, her garland was changed into the constellation known as
Ariadne's Crown.

[5] The Chiana is one of the most sluggish of the streams of
Tuscany.

[6] Rejoicing in the change from dance and song to tranquillity
for the sake of giving satisfaction to Dante.


Then the light in which the marvellous life of the poor man of
God had been narrated to me broke the silence among those
concordant deities, and said, "Since one straw is threshed, since
its
seed is now garnered, sweet love invites me to beat out the
other. Thou believest that in the breast, wherefrom the rib was
drawn to form the beautiful cheek whose taste costs dear to all
the world, and in that which, pierced. by the lance, both after
and before made such satisfaction that it overcomes the balance
of all sin, whatever of light it is allowed to human nature to
have was all infused. by that Power which made one and the other;
and therefore thou wonderest at that which I said above, when I
told that the good which in the fifth light is inclosed had no
second. Now open thine eyes to that which I answer to thee, and
thou wilt see thy belief and my speech become in the truth as the
centre in a circle.

"That which dies not and that which can die are naught but the
splendor of that idea which in His love our Lord God brings to
birth;[1] for that living Light which so proceeds from its Lucent
Source that It is not disunited from It, nor from the Love which
with them is intrined, through Its own bounty collects Its
radiance, as it were mirrored, in nine subsistences, Itself
eternally remaining one. Thence It descends to the ultimate
potentialities, downward from act to act, becoming such that
finally It makes naught save brief contingencies: and these
contingencies I understand. to be the generated things which the
heavens in their motion produce with seed and without.[2] The wax
of these, and that which moulds it, are not of one mode, and
therefore under the ideal stamp it shines now more now less;[3]
whence it comes to pass that one same plant in respect to species
bears better or worse fruit, and that ye are born with diverse
dispositions. If the wax were exactly worked,[4] and the heavens
were supreme in their power, the whole light of the seal would be
apparent. But nature always gives it defective,[5] working like
the artist who has the practice of his art and a hand that
trembles. Nevertheless if the fervent Love disposes and imprints
the clear Light of the primal Power, complete perfection is
acquired here.[6] Thus of old the earth was made worthy of the
complete perfection of the living being;[7] thus was the Virgin
made impregnate;[8] so that I commend thy opinion that human
nature never was, nor will be, what it was in those two persons.



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