From thee an equal distance, and the last
Between the two, and further from thee move;
And turned towards them let a light be cast,
Behind thy back, upon those mirrors three,
So that from all reflected rays are passed.
Then, though the light which furthest stands from thee
May not with them in magnitude compete,
Yet will it shine in brightness equally."
It is easy to understand, then, that Professor Kuhns should have been
enthusiastic with regard to Dante's knowledge of science. He says:
"The whole structure of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise shows a
thorough knowledge of the Ptolemaic system; and we invariably find
astronomical facts, mingled with classical quotations, in the
description of stellar phenomena. But not only in specific passages
do we find evidence of Dante's love for science, but in brief
allusions to the various aspects of nature--metaphors, {350}
figures, descriptions--a word or two is added, giving the cause of
the phenomenon in question. Examples of this abound."
It is with regard to astronomy, of course, that Dante has given us the
most convincing evidence of his knowledge of science, his interest in
nature and natural phenomena, his questioning spirit in nature study,
and the wonderful anticipations of his generation with regard to
knowledge that has usually been supposed to have been hidden from
them. The stars appealed to his poetic spirit, and then besides, his
great poem occupied itself with all the visible universe, and
especially with the parts outside this world. Professor Kuhns has
said:
"One may confidently assert that no such perfect lines descriptive of
the stars have ever been written. Shakespeare and others can furnish
famous passages, but none, I think, equal to those of Dante. They have
all the quality of his art--truth, clearness, possessing the power of
touching deeply the imagination, yet terse and compact, containing not
a word too much. We see the stars at all hours of the night, in all
degrees of brilliancy, fading away at the approach of dawn, gradually
appearing as twilight comes on, shining with splendor on a moonless
night, keenly sparkling after the winds have cleared the atmosphere,
or eclipsed by the greater effulgence of the moon. The motion of the
constellations about the pole is referred to, those which are nearest
to it never setting beneath the horizon."
It is often thought that the proper idea of the explanation of the
Milky Way was quite modern. Dante, however, discusses in his Convito
the theories of it that had been suggested up to his time, and then
gives his own {351} views, which he confesses are founded on
Aristotle, but which are evidently the result also of his own
thinking. Pythagoras, he said, attributed it to the scorching heat of
the sun, as if somehow this left a trace of itself even after the sun
had sunk. Other Greek philosophers, as for example Anaxagoras and
Democritus, explained it as a reflection of the light of the sun which
still found its way even though that luminary had passed from sight.
Dante himself says that, following Aristotle, he cannot help but think
that the Milky Way is composed of a multitude of minute stars which
are gathered very closely together in this particular part of the
heavens, and which are so small that they cannot be distinguished from
one another, though their light causes that special white luminosity
which we call the Milky Way. This explanation is the true one, only
that the apparent smallness of the stars are due to their distance,
and not to their actual minuteness of size.
A brief list of the other astronomical phenomena mentioned by Dante
has been made by Professor Kuhns. This serves to show very clearly
that Dante's knowledge with regard to the heavens was quite as
extensive as that of the modern educated man, indeed, probably more
so, and that it was quite as exact. The little touch which shows that
he knew, for instance, that August is the month when shooting stars
are more frequent, is wonderfully illuminating. His powers of
observation are brought out by his having seen them during the day as
well as at night. In all this it must not be forgotten that Dante was
no mere pedant making a display of his knowledge; that he was not one
to parade his erudition for the sake of show; that indeed no one has
ever written so compressedly as he; that every word that he {352} used
counts in bringing out his meaning, and yet that we find all this
wealth of information with regard to astronomy in a book that was
meant to proclaim, and has, in the opinion of men for all time since,
expressed more sublimely the significance of man's relations to the
universe and his reflections on the infinite in lofty poetic thought,
than any other that was ever written. Professor Kuhns says:
"The other celestial phenomena mentioned by Dante may be dismissed
briefly. We have references to the eclipse and its cause, and the
Blessed in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars flame brightly, _a guisa di
comete_ (in the guise of a comet). Shooting-stars are referred to
several times, almost invariably as a conventional figure for
rapidity. August is the month when they are the most frequent, and
they are most seen to shoot with lightninglike swiftness across the
serene blue sky or pierce the clouds that gather around the setting
sun. One fine passage describes the spectator following them with
his eyes as they lose themselves in the distance."
It is no wonder, then, that Prof. Kuhns should be quite enthusiastic
with regard to Dante's use of astronomical knowledge. He insists,
however, that while it was his poetic soul and love for the stars that
tempted him to allow his thoughts to wander so frequently into the
realm of the celestial bodies, his interest was always profoundly
scientific. His passage to this effect is worth while quoting _in
extenso_, because it brings out this fact very clearly. As Prof.
Kuhns' only idea in this was to show how marvelously the
representative poet of the Middle Ages turned to nature in his poetry,
and there was no thought of controverting the foolish notions of those
who so lightly declare that the students of the {353} Middle Age
universities knew nothing of science, the paragraph is a bit of very
striking evidence in this matter.
"Dante's love for the stars was largely scientific; he knew
thoroughly the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, which forms the
framework of the whole structure of the Paradiso. We find constant
and accurate allusions to the constellations, their various shapes
and positions in the heavens; while the hour of the day and the
season of the year are often referred to in terms of astronomical
science, frequently interwoven with mythology. But besides this
scientific interest, he was deeply touched by the beauty, the
mystery and the tranquilizing power of the celestial orbs. There is
hardly a phase of them that he has not touched upon; many of his
descriptions and allusions have a truth and vividness unsurpassed
even in this present day of nature worship. Here, as elsewhere in
the Divina Commedia, science and learning and poetry go hand in
hand. We have no mere dry catalogue of facts, but the wonderful
mechanism of the starry heavens is brought before our eyes, rolling
its spheres in celestial harmony, radiant with light and splendour,
while the innumerable company of angels and the 'spirits of just men
made perfect' raise the chorus of praise to the Alto Fattore."
We cannot but add the reflection that, as our own poets of the
nineteenth century indulged themselves in figures drawn from science
not only because of their own interest in the subject, but because
they realized the interest of the men of their time in matters
scientific and appreciated that figures drawn from them would add to
the significance of their own thoughts, so Dante would not have used
figures drawn from science only {354} that, closely in touch as he was
with the educated men of his time in many cities and countries, he
felt that he would thus not only be adding to the interest of his
work, but would be making his own meaning clearer by a wealth of
allusion from things scientific. This is indeed the side of this study
of Dante that deserves the most thorough consideration by educators in
our time, if they would understand what the real spirit of the
teaching of science in the medieval universities was, and what the
attitude of educated people of the time toward nature study, which has
been so egregiously misrepresented by those who know nothing at all
about it, must be considered to have been. All this we must judge,
however, from contemporary sources, and not from subsequent
supercilious misrepresentations.
It must not be thought, however, that Dante's interest in science was
exhausted by his excursions into astronomy. This has already been more
than hinted at in some of the passages quoted, which show his interest
in other phases of science. In the modern time, however, it is almost
the rule, that if a scholar who is not a scientist, and especially if
he happens to be, as Dante was, a literary man, indulges in some
scientific pursuits, he has at most but an interest in one branch of
science. Quite as often as not he rather prides himself on knowing
nothing at all about this department of knowledge. Specialism has
invaded even scientific education, and a man specializes in some
favorite department of science for his avocation, and is apt to know
very little about other departments. Dante was not thus constituted,
however. It will be comparatively easy to show that every form of
scientific thought interested him, and that his love of nature led him
into nature study, in the {355} best sense of that very modern term,
and caused him to make observations for himself, or so retain the
observations of others that he had heard or read, that he was able to
use them very forcibly and appropriately in the figurative language of
his great poem.
Alexander von Humboldt, the distinguished German naturalist and leader
of scientific thought in the early nineteenth century, whose
compliment to Albertus Magnus, quoted in the chapter on Science at the
Medieval Universities, is probably a surprise to most people, but
serves to show how wide was the reading of this great scientist, was
also an attentive student of Dante, and has a passage with regard to
the Florentine poet's knowledge of science quite as striking as that
with regard to the great scholastic's excursions into the same field.
In his Cosmos he has the following tribute to Dante as a student of
nature and as a loving observer of natural phenomena:
"When the story of the Arabic, Greek or Roman dominion--or, I might
almost say, when the ancient world had passed away, we find in the
great and inspired founder of a new era, Dante Alighieri, occasional
manifestations of the deepest sensibility to the charms of the
terrestrial life of nature, whenever he abstracts himself from the
passionate and subjective control of that despondent mysticism which
constituted the general circle of his ideas."
With regard to the famous description of the river of light in the
thirtieth canto of the Paradiso, Humboldt declared that the picture
must have been suggested to Dante by the phosphorescence seen so
beautifully and so luxuriantly in the Adriatic Sea at times. The
passage itself is so beautiful and is so well worth the reading a
{356} second time, even for those who have read it before, that I give
it a place here, followed by Humboldt's comment.
I saw a glory like a stream flow by,
In brightness rushing, and on either shore
Were banks that with spring's wondrous hues might vie.
And from that river living sparks did soar,
And sank on all sides on the floweret's bloom.
Like precious rubies set in golden ore.
Then, as if drunk with all the rich perfume,
Back to the wondrous torrent did they roll,
And as one sank another filled its room.
Dean Plumptre says that Humboldt's suggestion with regard to this
description has not been found elsewhere, and as it adds to the
completeness of the idea conveyed by the figure, he gives it a place
in his studies and estimates of Dante. Humboldt said:
"It would almost seem as if this picture had its origin in the
poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphorescent
condition of the ocean when luminous points appear to rise from the
breaking waves, and, spreading themselves over the surface of the
waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of sparkling
stars."
It is with regard to the little things in life, particularly those
that are so small that one would be tempted to think at first blush
that Dante paid no attention to them at all, that his powers of
observation as a student of nature, and his all-pervading love for
every even smallest manifestation of her power, is especially made
manifest. With regard to this subject, Prof. Kuhns, to whom I have
already turned so often, has an illuminating {357} passage, which sums
up a large amount of reading of the poet. He says:
"The smallest members of the animal kingdom do not escape the
observing eye of the poet, and such unpoetical insects as the flea,
the gnat, and the fly are brought into use. By means of these latter
he has accurately given the time of day and season of the year in
one line, where, showing us the farmer lying on the hillside of a
summer evening, looking down upon the valley alight with fire-flies,
he says the time was that
'When the fly yields to the gnat.'
Those pests of dogs, the flea and hornet, are referred to in a
passage already given, where the dog is seen snapping and scratching
in agony. The butterfly was symbolical, during the Middle Ages, of
the death and resurrection of the body. The various phases of its
development are referred to by Dante; the caterpillar state, the
latter referring to the cocoon of the silk-worm, furnishing a figure
for the souls in Paradise, swathed in light; in one passage,
backsliding Christians are compared to insects in a state of
arrested development."
Dante's passage in the tenth canto of the Purgatorio, in which he
compares man to the butterfly, who in this life passes through the
caterpillar stage, passing in death, as it were, into the larval stage
when in his coffin he is motionless and apparently dead, as the insect
in its cocoon, yet finally reaching the glory of the resurrection in
the winged butterfly stage, shows how well these medieval observers of
nature had studied carefully aspects of nature which we are apt to
think were holden entirely from their eyes. The passage would remind
one of the story of the Jesuit, three centuries later, who, in {358}
the early days of missionary work in this country, wondered how he
would obtain a fitting word to express to the Indians the abstract
idea of the resurrection of the body. The good Father finally recalled
his Dante, and having found a caterpillar that had entered into the
larval stage after having spun its cocoon and wrapped itself round
with its shroud to lie down in what is a striking similitude of death,
presented it to the Indians, and then having waited until the
butterfly came out, asked them what they called this process, and
applied the word for it to the resurrection. Dante says:--
"Perceive ye not we are of a wormlike kind,
Born to bring forth the angel butterfly,
That soars to Judgment, and no screen doth find?
Why doth your soul lift up itself on high?
Ye are as insects yet but half complete,
As worms in whom their growth fails utterly."
It is with regard to bees and ants, however, that Dante's observant
love of nature and of natury study is especially to be admired. It is
true, as has been often pointed out, that the older poets, of whom
Dante was an assiduous and mindful reader, made use of figures with
regard to bees, and Virgil, with all of whose works Dante was so
intimately acquainted that nothing must have escaped him, devoted one
of the four books of his Georgics to what is practically a treatise on
Apiculture. In this most of the problems of bee raising are discussed.
Lucretius, Lucan, and Ovid, all made use of this interesting insect
for figures in their poetry. Dante might have obtained most of the
references to the bee, then, from his reading. Prof. Kuhns is of the
opinion, however, that some at {359} least of Dante's references to
them are due to his observations, quite apart from his literary
reminiscences with regard to their habits and instincts. He says:--
"There are certain touches in the Divina Commedia which seem to
prove that Dante's use of them was not entirely conventional. In the
wonderful passage where he stands contemplating
'La forma general di Paradiso,'
he saw the Blessed in the shape of a great white rose on the banks
of the river of light; and the white-robed angels, with wings of
gold and faces of flame, as they fly unceasingly back and forth from
the seats of the saints to the effulgent river, are compared to
bees, following their inborn instinct to make honey, flying from
flower to flower, burying themselves in the chalice, and then rising
heavily to carry their burden to their hives. In another passage
their buzzing noise is compared to the noise of a distant
waterfall;"--a touch of nature that could only have come from
familiarity with the insects.
In is with regard to ants even more than bees that Dante's
proclivities for nature study are most evident. When in the
Purgatorio, in the twenty-sixth canto, Dante would describe the
meeting of souls in Paradise who kiss each other as they speed on
their way, he compares them to the ants who as they meet one another
touch antennae, thus communicating various messages, and then go on
their way. The passage is very striking because, as Dean Plumptre
remarks, the picture drawn reminds one almost of Sir John Lubbock's
ant studies, or the remarkable descriptions of ant life in Bishop
Ken's Hymnotheo. Dante's lines are as follows:--
{360}
"So oft, within their dusk brown host proceed
This ant and that, till muzzle muzzle meet;
Spying their way, or how affairs succeed."
Thus did Dante know the whole round of science in his time better than
any modern university man. People who take exception to his knowledge
fail to realize its environment. They may smile a little scornfully
now at his complacent acceptance of the Ptolemaic system without a
question, but it must not be forgotten that for three centuries after
his time educated men still continued to accept it, and that even the
distinguished Jesuit astronomer, Clavius, to whom we owe the Gregorian
reformation of the calendar and the restoration of the year to its
proper place as regards the heavens, not only accepted it, but worked
out his calendar reform problems by means of it. Clavius's great
contemporary, Tycho-Brahe, the distinguished Danish astronomer, found
no reason to reject it. Even Lord Bacon, who with perverted historical
sense is still proclaimed the father of modern experimental science,
also accepted the Ptolemaic system, and found that it thoroughly
explained all the phenomena of the heavens, while he rejected the
Copernican system, then nearly a century before the world, because he
thought it did not. The surprise, however, is not in Dante's knowledge
of astronomy, but in his familiarity with details of biology that
enables him to reason, though in poetic language, with straightforward
and logical directness with regard to basic thought in this science
that is usually considered so thoroughly modern.
Another surprising feature is the knowledge of the habits of birds and
of insects. Our modern students of {361} nature are supposed to be the
first who went deeply enough into these subjects to make them material
for literature. Here, however, is Dante describing, in a few
picturesque words, characteristic peculiarities of birds and insects,
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 writings a whole volume of
rules and principles bearing upon education might be gleaned. In 'Il
Convito' he expresses himself fully on the different ages of human
growth and development; speaks of obedience as an essential
requisite for the child; after his father he should obey his master
and his elders. He should also be gentle and modest, reverent and
eager to acquire knowledge; reserved, never forward; repentant of
his faults to the extent of overcoming them. As our soul in all its
operations makes use of a bodily organ, it behooves us to exercise
the body, that it grow in grace and aptness, and be well ordained
and disposed in order that the soul may control it to the best
advantage. Thus it is that a noble nature seeks to have a sound mind
in a sound body."
{363}
THE CHURCH AND THE MENTALLY AFFLICTED.
It is especially with regard to the attitude of the churchmen, the
people, and even the physicians of the Middle Ages toward insanity,
that most opprobrium has been heaped upon the Church and her teachings
in the so-called histories of the relations of science to theology or
faith. Much of what has been said that has been supposed to tell worst
against the Church, however, should not rest upon the shoulders of
ecclesiastics, and should not be set down to the evil effect of
theology. It is easy now to look back and blame men for the acceptance
of supernatural agencies as causes in nearly all cases of mental and
nervous diseases, but the reason for this is rather to be looked for
in the nature of man than in his belief in religion. Ethnology shows
us traces of it everywhere. Our American Indians, long before any
tincture of Christianity, and before any hint of theology of any kind
reached them, beyond that which develops spontaneously from the depths
of their natural faculties, believed in the effect of the evil spirits
in producing disease, and, of course, particularly the mental diseases
which made men do things so contrary to their own interests, and often
so harmful to the beings they loved best in the world.