sides. This weariness of contention
is the chief element of their torture; so marked by the beautiful lines
beginning "Or puoi, figliuol," &c.: (but the usurers, who made their
money inactively, _sit_ on the sand, equally without rest, however. "Di
qua, di la, soccorrien," &c.) For it is not avarice, but _contention_
for riches, leading to this double misuse of them, which, in Dante's
light, is the unredeemable sin. The place of its punishment is guarded
by Plutus, "the great enemy," and "la fiera crudele," a spirit quite
different from the Greek Plutus, who, though old and blind, is not
cruel, and is curable, so as to become far-sighted. ([Greek: ou typhlos
all' oxy blepon].--Plato's epithets in first book of the _Laws_.) Still
more does this Dantesque type differ from the resplendent Plutus of
Goethe in the second part of _Faust_, who is the personified power of
wealth for good or evil--not the passion for wealth; and again from the
Plutus of Spenser, who is the passion of mere aggregation. Dante's
Plutus is specially and definitely the Spirit of Contention and
Competition, or Evil Commerce; because, as I showed before, this kind of
commerce "makes all men strangers;" his speech is therefore
unintelligible, and no single soul of all those ruined by him _has
recognizable features_.

On the other hand, the redeemable sins of avarice and prodigality are,
in Dante's sight, those which are without deliberate or calculated
operation. The lust, or lavishness, of riches can be purged, so long as
there has been no servile consistency of dispute and competition for
them. The sin is spoken of as that of degradation by the love of earth;
it is purified by deeper humiliation--the souls crawl on their bellies;
their chant is, "my soul cleaveth unto the dust." But the spirits thus
condemned are all recognizable, and even the worst examples of the
thirst for gold, which they are compelled to tell the histories of
during the night, are of men swept by the passion of avarice into
violent crime, but not sold to its steady work.

89. The precept given to each of these spirits for its deliverance
is--Turn thine eyes to the lucre (lure) which the Eternal King rolls
with the mighty wheels. Otherwise, the wheels of the "Greater Fortune,"
of which the constellation is ascending when Dante's dream begins.
Compare George Herbert--

"Lift up thy head;
Take stars for money; stars, not to be told
By any art, yet to b