respond, so the creature sometimes deviates from this course; for
it has power, though thus impelled, to incline in another
direction (even as the fire of a cloud may be seen to fall[6]),
if the first impetus, bent aside by false pleasure, turn it
earthwards. Thou shouldst not, if I deem aright, wonder more at
thy ascent, than at a stream if from a high mountain it descends
to the base. A marvel it would be in thee, if, deprived of
hindrance, thou hadst sat below, even as quiet in living fire on
earth would be."

[1] In this order of the universe.

[2] The created beings endowed with souls,--angels and men.

[3] The source of their being, God.

[4] This instinct directs to their proper end animate as well as
inanimate things, as the bow shoots the arrow to its mark.

[5] The Empyrean, within which the Primum Mobile, the first
moving heaven, revolves.

[6] Contrary to its true nature.


Thereon she turned again toward heaven her face.



CANTO II. Proem.--Ascent to the Moon.--The cause of Spots on the
Moon.--Influence of the Heavens.

O ye, who are in a little bark, desirous to listen, following
behind my craft which singing passes on, turn to see again Your
shores; put not out upon the deep; for haply losing me, ye would
remain astray. The water that I sail was never crossed. Minerva
inspires, and Apollo guides me, and nine Muses point out to me
the Bears.

Ye other few, who have lifted tip your necks be. times to the
bread of the Angels, oil which one here subsists, but never
becomes sated of it, ye may well put forth your vessel over the
salt deep, keeping my wake before you on the water which turns
smooth again. Those glorious ones who passed over to Colchos
wondered not as ye shall do, when they saw Jason become a
ploughman.

The concreate and perpetual thirst for the deiform realm was
bearing us on swift almost as ye see the heavens. Beatrice was
looking upward, and I upon her, and perhaps in such time as a
quarrel[1] rests, and flies, and from the notch is unlocked,[2] I
saw myself arrived where a wonderful thing drew my sight to
itself; and therefore she, from whom the working of my mind could
not be hid, turned toward me, glad as beautiful. "Uplift thy
grateful mind to God," she said to me, "who with the first
star[3] has conjoined us."

[1] The bolt for a cross-bow.

[2] The inverse order indicates the instantaneousness of the act.

[3] The moon.


It seemed to me that a cloud had covered us, lucid, dense, solid,
and polished, like a diamond which the sun had struck. Within
itself the eternal pearl had received us, even as water receives
a ray of light, remaining unbroken. If I was body (and here[1]
it is not conceivable how one dimension brooked another, which
needs must be if body enter body) the desire ought the more to
kindle us to see that Essence, in which is seen how our nature
and God were united. There will be seen that which we hold by
faith, not demonstrated, but it will be known of itself like the
first truth which man believes.[2]

[1] On earth, by mortal faculties.

[2] Not demonstrated by argument, but known by direct cognition,
like the intuitive perception of first principles, per se notu.


I replied, "My Lady, devoutly to the utmost that I can, do I
thank him who from the mortal world has removed me. But tell me
what are the dusky marks of this body, which there below on earth
make people fable about Cain?"[1]


[1] Fancying the dark spaces on the surface of the moon to
represent Cain carrying a thorn-bush for the fire of his
sacrifice.


She smiled somewhat, and then she said, "If the opinion of
mortals errs where the key of sense unlocks not, surely the
shafts of wonder ought not now to pierce thee, since thou seest
that the reason following the senses has short wings. But tell me
what thou thyself thinkest of it." And I, "That which here above
appears to us diverse, I believe is caused by rare and dense
bodies." And she, "Surely enough thou shalt see that thy belief
is submerged in error, if then listenest well to the argument


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