nother Melchisedech (a priest), and the man who soaring through the
welkin lost his son." (Daedalus, the typical mechanician.) But stellar
influence always controlled by man's free will is often ignored,
especially when we put into the sanctuary one who should be on the
battle field and when we gave a throne to him whose right place is in
the pulpit.

"And if the world below would fix its mind
On the foundation which is laid by nature,
Pursuing that, 't would have the people good.
But you into religion wrench aside
Him who was born to gird him with the sword,
And make a king of him who is for sermons;
Therefore your footsteps wander from the road."
(VIII, 142.)

The next four spheres being beyond the earth's shadow are for spirits
whose virtue was undimmed by human infirmity and whose place in eternal
life is consequently one of greater vision and bliss. In the first of
these higher spheres, the Sphere of the Sun, the fourth Heaven, Dante
sees the spirits of great theologians and others who loved wisdom--great
teachers of men. Around him and Beatrice, as their center, twelve of
them appear in one circle and twelve in another, while behind those
dazzling splendors of spirits are other vivid lights probably
representing authors whom the poet had not read or comprehended or
symbolizing the men of science, the lovers of wisdom, who in the future
by their discoveries would add to our knowledge of truth. As one of the
basic truths of Revelation is the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, here
in the Heaven of the Doctors the dogma is made prominent by special
frequency of reference and symbolism. The Creation, as an act of the
Three Divine Persons, is mentioned in lines of exquisite grace:

"Looking into His Son with all the Love
Which each of them eternally breathes forth
The primal and unutterable Power
Whate'er before the mind or eye revolves
With so much order made, there can be none
Who thus beholds, without enjoying it."
(X, 1.)

Not only by thought, but by dancing, is the same truth expressed: "those
burning suns round about us whirled themselves three times." (X, 76.)
Again in song they proclaim the mystery of the Holy Trinity:

"The One and Two and Three who ever liveth
And reigneth ever in Three and Two and One
Not circumscribed and all circumscribing
Three several times was chanted by each one
Among those spirits, with such melody
That for all merit i