d permanent place by the side
of the deities. Dante thus raised his individual feeling to a universal
dogma, and enriched the Catholic heaven by his personal love. What for
two hundred years had been a dream and a desire, had become a matter of
faith and truth. Now, and not until now, love and religion were one; the
love of a woman had been included in the system of eternal verities, and
had become identical with the love of immortality. "Love which moves the
sun and all the stars" was acknowledged as a fundamental feeling. The
anchoring of the subjective in the eternal was achieved in this
metaphysical setting: the deification of the beloved; and no greater
gift was ever vouchsafed to man than the creation of metaphysically true
beings and values. All that had been done before had merely prepared the
ground for this great deed: the enshrinement of the beloved in the heart
of the divine secrets.

The _Vita Nuova_, which is at once a glorified historical record and the
greatest testimony of metaphysical love, emphasises from the outset the
inspiring, purifying influence emanating from the beloved; Beatrice is
"the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtue." "When I saw her
coming towards me and could hope for her salutation, the world held no
enemy for me, yea, I was filled with the fire of brotherly love to such
an extent, that I was ready to forgive anybody who had ever offended me.
And whoever had begged me for a gift, I should have replied: Love! and
my face would have been full of humility." Even before his love had been
translated to the world beyond, he portrayed spiritual love as hardly
any other poet before or after him. The women of Florence ask Dante:
"Why doest thou love this lady, seeing that thou canst not even bear her
presence? Tell us, for the end of such love must be incomprehensible to
men." And he replies: "Ladies, the end and aim of my love is but the
salutation of that lady; therein I find that beatitude which is the goal
of my desire. And now that it has pleased her to deny me her salutation,
my whole happiness is contained in that which can never perish." And the
women: "Tell us, then, wherein lies such happiness?" "In the words that
praise my lady" (that is to say in the emotion which is an end in itself
and in its artistic expression). The lover never exchanged a word with
her; had he done so, attempting to establish a reciprocal relationship,
Beatrice, bereft of his idealising love, woul