ribe of caitiffs who have committed the "Great Refusal?"
Are we not these very wretches whose blind life is so base that they
envy every other Fate? Are we not those who are neither for God or
for his Enemies but are "for themselves"; those who may not even
take refuge in Hell, lest the one damned get glory of them! The very
terror of this clear-cutting sword-sweep, dividing us, bone from
bone, may, nay! probably will, send us back to our gentle "lovers of
humanity" who, "knowing everything pardon everything." But one
sometimes wonders whether a life all "irony," all "pity," all urbane
"interest," would not lose the savor of its taste! There is a danger,
not only to our moral sense, but to our immoral sense, in that genial
air of universal acceptance which has become the fashion.

What if, after all--even though this universe be so poor a farce--the
mad lovers and haters, the terrible prophets and artists, _were
right?_

Suppose the farce had a climax, a catastrophe! One loves to repeat
"all is possible;" but _that_ particular possibility has little attraction.
It would be indeed an anti-climax if the queer Comedy we have so
daintily been patronizing turned out to be a Divine Comedy--and
ourselves the point of the jest! Not that this is very likely to occur. It
is more in accordance with what we know of the terrestrial stage that
in this wager of faith with un-faith neither will ever discover who
really won!

But Dante's "Disdain" is not confined to the winners in the cosmic
dicing match. There are heroic hearts in hell who, for all their
despair, still yield not, nor abate a jot of their courage. Such a one
was that great Ghibelline Chief who was lost for "denying
immortality." "If my people fled from thy people--_that_ more
torments me than this flame." In one respect Dante is, beyond doubt,
the greatest poet of the world. I mean in his power of heightening
the glory and the terribleness of the human race. Across the three-fold
kingdom of his "Terza Rima" passes, in tragic array, the whole
procession of human history--and each figure there, each solitary
person, whether of the Blessed or the Purged, or the Condemned,
wears, like a garment of fire, the dreadful dignity of having been a
man! The moving sword-point that flashes, first upon one and then
upon another, amid our dim transactions, is nothing but the angry
arm of human imagination, moulding life to grander issues;
_creating,_ if not discovering, sublimer l