Dr. Stiggins:
the fact is that from beginning to end this "Divine Comedy" literally bristles with dogma and dogmatic definition. One is absolutely amazed at the glib manner in which the words of the Great Book are taken in their crude, material signification, as for example in the passage I have just quoted; and there is another passage, a whole canto indeed, in which the woman Beatrice is made to discourse of the Incarnation, the Immortality of the Soul, and the Resurrection of the Body, each of these dubious and questionable terms being understood in its literal sense; apparently in utter ignorance of the higher spiritual meaning that a liberal theology has shewn to be latent in such phrases as these. Definition is piled on definition, dogma on dogma; nay, Tests of all kinds are rampant, for in three Cantos Dante is examined by Peter, James, and John upon Faith, Hope, and Charity! And the whole poem is permeated by the spirit of the deplorable and ridiculous scholastic philosophy which enslaved Europe for so many centuries, which discussed such ques-
74
