does their worshiper and lover, _what
lies on the other side of the moon._

What Dante leaves to us as his ultimate gift is his pride and his
humility. The one answers the other. And both put us to shame. He,
alone of great artists, holds in his hand the true sword of the Spirit
for the dividing asunder of men and things. There is no necessity to
lay all the stress upon the division between the Lower and
the Higher Love, between Hell and Heaven. There are other
_distinctions_ in life than these. And between all distinctions,
between all those differences which separate the "fine" from the
"base," the noble from the ignoble, the beautiful from the hideous,
the generous from the mean; Dante draws the pitiless sword-stroke
of that "eternal separation" which is the most tragic thing in the
world. In the truest sense tragic! For so many things, and so many
people, that must be thus "cut off," are among those who harrow our
hearts with the deadliest attraction and are so wistful in their
weakness. Through the mists and mephitic smoke of our confused
age--our age that cries out to be beyond the good, when it is beneath
the beautiful--through the thick air of indolence masquerading as
toleration and indifference posing as sympathy, flashes the
scorching sword of the Florentine's Disdain, dividing the just from
the unjust, the true from the false, and the heroic from the
commonplace. What matter if his "division" is not our "division,"
his "formula" our "formula"? It is good for us to be confronted with
such Disdain. It brings us back once more to "Values"; and whether
our "Values" are values of taste or values of devotion what matter?
Life becomes once more arresting. The everlasting Drama recovers
its "Tone"; and the high Liturgy of the last Illusion rolls forward to
its own Music!

That Angel of God, who when their hearts were shaken with fear
before the flame-lit walls of Dis, came, so straight across the waters,
and quelled the insolence of Hell; with what Disdain he turns away
his face, even from those he has come to save!

These "messengers" of God, who have so superb a contempt for all
created things, does one not meet them, sometimes, even in this life,
as they pass us by upon their secret errands?

The beginning of the Inferno contains the cruellest judgment upon
our generation ever uttered. It is so exactly adapted to the spirit of
this age that, hearing it, one staggers as if from a stab. Are we not
this very t