increase,
widened thought and deepened life. The increase of thought strengthened
the faculties of the mind. Man becomes more truly man in proportion to
what he knows, and one of the most striking and characteristic features
of this great century is the advance of man through increase of
knowledge out of childishness towards maturity. The insoluble problems
which had been discussed with astonishing acuteness by the schoolmen of
the preceding generation were giving place to a philosophy of more
immediate application to the conduct and discipline of life. The 'Summa
Theologica' of St. Thomas Aquinas not only treated with incomparable
logic the vexed questions of scholastic philosophy, but brought all the
resources of a noble and well-trained intelligence and of a fine moral
sense to the study and determination of the order and government of the
universe, and of the nature and destiny of man.

The scope of learning remained, indeed, at the end of the century,
narrow in its range. The little tract of truth which men had acquired
lay encompassed by ignorance, like a scant garden-plot surrounded by a
high wall. But here and there the wall was broken through, and paths
were leading out into wider fields to be won for culture, or into
deserts wider still, in which the wanderers should perish.

But as yet there was no comprehensive and philosophic grasp of the new
conditions in their total significance; no harmonizing of their various
elements into one consistent scheme of human life; no criticism of the
new life as a whole. For this task was required not only acquaintance
with the whole range of existing knowledge, by which the conceptions of
men in regard to themselves and the universe were determined, but also a
profound view of the meaning of life itself, and an imaginative insight
into the nature of man. A mere image of the drama of life as presented
to the eye would not suffice. The meaning of it would be lost in the
confusion and multiplicity of the scene. The only possible explanation
and reconcilement of its aspects lay in the universal application to
them of the moral law, and in the exhibition of man as a spiritual and
immortal being for whom this world was but the first stage of existence.
This was the task undertaken and accomplished by Dante.

II

Of the events in Dante's life few are precisely ascertained, but of its
general course enough is known, either from his own statements or from
external testimony, t