him who has loved thee so
much?" she sends Virgil to him as a guide and finally herself leads her
redeemed lover to God. Now she responds to his love; she has even wept
for him. This ultimately fulfilled, but always chastely hidden longing
for love in return, gives the woman-worship of Dante a peculiarly noble
charm. At the end of his journey through life he prays to her, who has
again disappeared from his sight, and his last confession is: "Into a
free man thou transform'st a slave."

Love's greatest miracle has been made manifest in him; it has
transfigured and purified him, and made of the slave of the world and
its desires, a personality--the fundamental motif of love.

There is a close connection between the metaphysical love of Dante and
Goethe's confession in the last scene of _Faust_, which reveals the
poet's deepest conviction, his final judgment of life. The confessions
of both poets are identical to the smallest detail. The _Divine Comedy_
represents the journey of humanity through the kingdoms of the world in
a manner unique and representative, applicable alike to all men, in the
sense of the Catholic Middle Ages. The fundamental idea of _Faust_ is
again the desire of man to find the right way through the world. Here
also the journey through life is intended to be typical; it is
undertaken five hundred years later; the scene is laid for the most part
on the surface of the earth, but the ultimate goal of the wayfarer is
Heaven. Hell, instead of being a subterraneous region, is embodied in a
presence, accompanying and tempting man; modern man has no faithful
guide; he must himself seek the way which to the man of the Middle Ages
was clearly indicated in the Bible. The love of his youth (which in the
case of Dante fills a book in itself) is merely an episode at the
beginning of the tragedy--the lover wanders through all the kingdoms of
the world, finally to return home to the beloved.

The last scene of _Faust_ is an unfolding of metaphysical love into its
inherent multiplicity; its summit is the metaphysical love of woman. All
human striving is determined and crowned by the saving grace of love.
Faust has no longer a specific name; he has dropped everything
subjective, and is briefly styled _a lover_; like Dante, he has become
representative of humanity. The hour of death revives the memory of the
love of his youth, apparently forgotten in the storm and stress of a
crowded life, yet never quite extinguished