and others-Combination of Subjective Idealism and Materialism -Comte's Attempt to Substitute a Subjective Synthesis for the Objective Synthesis of Philosophy-Relation of Comte's Theory to Pure Individualism-Difficulties of an Objective Synthesis- Philosophy not Creative, but a Critical Reconstruction of Belief -Exemplified in the Critical Reconstruction of Greek Belief by Plato and Aristotle-Likeness and Difference of the Modern Problem of Philosophy-Christianity as Determining the Nature of the Problem-Relation of Philosophy to Science, Pp. 190–229. Sources of his Influence over his Contemporaries-Its Temporary Eclipse-Merits of his Historical Works-Swift's Suggestion of a Philosophy of Clothes-Idealistic Interpretation given to it by Carlyle-His Rejection of Philosophy, and his Belief in Imagina- tive Intuition—“Natural Supernaturalism”—Religious Symbols as the Objects of Practical Faith-The Gospel of Work-The Age of Faith and the Age of Reflection-The Scepticism and Materialism of the Eighteenth Century-Revival of a Spiritual View of Nature and History-Carlyle's Ideal View of History and his Attitude towards Poetry-Practical Application of his Doctrines DANTE IN HIS RELATION THE MIDDLE AGES. THE opinions of Dante, like those of every great writer who has treated of ethical, political, or religious subjects, have been made the battle-ground of bitter controversy. Apart from those who fall into the shallow trap of seeking the greatness of the poet in some secret doctrine which can be read by the aid of a verbal key, there are many who have sought for Protestantism, and some who have sought for Socialism, or even Nihilism, in his pages.1 Their interpretations, as was to be expected, have called out those of an opposite school, who have turned him into a champion of orthodoxy, and have treated his denunciation of the Papal policy as a separable accident of his poetry. 1E. Aroux: Dante Hérétique, Révolutionaire, et Socialiste. A Now in a sense it may be maintained, that both parties are "right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny." Those who see in Dante's words the germs of religious and political change are not altogether in error, though they sometimes look for the evidence of their view in the wrong place. For the writers who are most revolutionary in their ultimate effect are not those who violently break 'away from the institutions of the past and set up a new principle against them, but rather those who so thoroughly enter into the spirit of those institutions that they make them, so to speak, 'transparent. When the soul becomes visible, the body is ready to drop away. We often find systems of doctrine surviving the most violent attack from without, and apparently only deriving new vigour from the contest. But one thing there is which they cannot survive-viz., being thoroughly understood and appreciated; for the intelligence that has fully appreciated them has ipso facto grown out of them and beyond them. It has extracted the principle from its former embodiment, and so made it capable of entering into combination with other principles to produce new forms of life and thought. It is in this relation that Dante stands to mediæval Catholicism. In attempting to revivify its ideas, he "betrayed its secret.” As Plato in his Republic developed the ruling ideas of Greek politics to a point at which they necessarily break through the form of the Greek state and destroy it, so Dante, in giving a final and conclusive utterance to medieval ideas, at once revealed the vital source of their power, and showed where they come into contradiction with themselves and point beyond themselves for their completion. The attempts made to prove that Dante was a "Reformer before the Reformation," or a "Revolutionary before the Revolution" are, in the sense in which they were made, vain and futile: and, in spite of the rough way in which he denounces the state of things ecclesiastical and political, writers like Ozanam and Hettinger have no difficulty in showing Dante's complete orthodoxy, and his complete acceptance of the Catholic system of life and thought. Even from the first the Catholic Church recognised that the attacks of Dante were the wounds of a friend, and that it would be an absurdity to put in the Index a poem which was the most eloquent of all expressions of its own essential ideas. The revolutionary power |