Purgatorio: Canto XVIII

The lofty Teacher had put an end to his argument, and was looking intent in my face, if I seemed satisfied;

and I, whom a new thirst was yet tormenting, was silent outwardly, and within said; “Perchance the too great questioning which I make irks him.”

But that true Father, who perceived the shrinking desire which disclosed not itself, by speaking put courage in me to speak.

Wherefore I: “Master, my vision is so quickened in thy light, that I discern clearly all that thy discourse imports or describes;

therefore I pray thee, sweet Father dear, that thou define love to me, to which thou dost reduce every good work and its opposite.”

“Direct,” said he, “towards me the keen eyes of the understanding, and the error of the blind who make them guides shall be manifest to thee,

The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity.

Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto.

And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.

Then, even as fire moves upward by reason of its form, whose nature it is to ascend, there where it endures longest in its material;

so the enamoured mind falls to desire, which is a spiritual movement, and never rests until the object of its love makes it rejoice.

Now may be apparent to thee, how deeply the truth is hidden from the folk who aver that every act of love is in itself a laudable thing,

because, forsooth, its material may seem always to be good; but not every imprint is good, albeit the wax may be good.”

“Thy words and my attendant wit,” I answered him, “have made love plain to me, but that has made me more teeming with doubt;

for if love is offered to us from without, and the soul walks with no other foot, it is no merit of hers whether she go straight or crooked.”

And he to me: “So far as reason sees here, I can tell thee; from beyond that point, ever await Beatrice, for ’tis a matter of faith.

Every substantial form, which is distinct from matter and is in union with it, has a specific virtue contained within itself

which is not perceived save in operation, nor is manifested except by its effects, just as life in a plant by the green leaves.

Therefore man knows not whence the understanding of the first cognitions may come, nor the inclination to the prime objects of appetite,

which are in you, even as the instinct in bees to make honey; and this prime will admits no desert of praise or of blame.

Now in order that to this will every other may be related, innate with you is the virtue which giveth counsel, and ought to guard the threshold of assent.

This is the principle whence is derived the reason of desert in you, according as it garners and winnows good and evil loves.

Those who in their reasoning went to the foundation, perceived this innate freedom, therefore they left ethics to the world.

Wherefore suppose that every love which is kindled within you arise of necessity, the power to arrest it is within you.

By the noble virtue Beatrice understands Freewill, and therefore, look that thou have this in mind, if she betake her to speak with thee thereof.”

The moon, almost retarded to midnight, made the stars appear more thin to us, fashioned like a bucket all burning;

and her course against the heavens was on those paths which the sun inflames, when they in Rome see him between the Sardinians and the Corsicans at his setting.

And that noble shade through whom Pietola is more renowned than any Mantuan town, had put off the burden I had laid upon him;

wherefore I, who had garnered clear and plain reasons to my questionings, stood like one who is rambling drowsily.

But this drowsiness was taken from me on a sudden, by people who behind our backs had already come round to us.

And even as Ismenus and Asopus saw of old a fury and a rout along their banks by night, if but the Thebans had need of Bacchus,

suchwise along that circle, quickening their pace, were coming, by what I saw of them, those whom good will and just love bestride.

Soon were they upon us, because all that great throng was moving at a run; and two in front were shouting in tears:

“Mary ran with haste to the hill country,” and “Caesar to subdue Ilerda, stabbed Marseilles and then raced to Spain.”

“Haste! Haste! let no time be lost through little love,” cried the others afterwards, “that striving to do well may renew grace.”

“O people, in whom keen fervour now perchance doth make good negligence and delay used by you through lukewarmness in well-doing,

this one who lives, and surely I lie not to you, desires to ascend, if but the sun shine to us again; therefore tell us where the opening is near.”

These were my Leader’s words; and one of those spirits said: “Come behind us, and thou shalt find the cleft.

We are so filled with desire to speed us, that stay we cannot; therefore forgive, if thou hold our penance for rudeness.

I was Abbot of San Zeno at Verona, under the rule of the good Barbarossa, of whom Milan yet discourses with sorrow.

And one I know has already a foot in the grave, who soon shall mourn because of that monastery, and sad will be for having had power there;

because his son, deformed in his whole body and worse in mind, and who was born in shame, he has put there in place of its true shepherd.”

If more he said, or if he was silent, I know not, so far already had he raced beyond us; but this I heard and was pleased to retain.

And he who was my succour in every need, said: “Turn thee hither, see two of them that come biting at sloth.”

Last of them all they said: “The people for whom the sea opened, were dead ere Jordan saw its heirs”;

and: “That folk who endured not the toil to the end with Anchises’ son, gave them up to a life inglorious.”

Then, when those shades were so far parted from us, that they could be seen no more, a new thought was set within me,

wherefrom many and divers others sprang; and so from one to another I rambled, that I closed mine eyes for very wandering, and thought I transmuted into dream.