Dante, moreover, was possessed by a craving for an absolutely perfect
and consistent world-system, and had, besides, the power to build it up
and people it with sublime intelligences. And in this system, the crown
and perfection of the mediaeval-Catholic conception of the universe, he
assigned to the love of his youth a high and 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.
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