VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 379

of Dante and Spenser: and with these we may compare five of the most interesting series in the early art of Italy; namely, those of Orcagna, Giotto, and Simon Memmi, at Florence and Padua, and those of St. Mark’s and the Ducal Palace at Venice.¹ Of course, in the richest of these series, the vices are personified together with the virtues, as in the Ducal Palace; and by the form or name of opposed vice, we may often ascertain, with much greater accuracy than would otherwise be possible, the particular idea of the contrary virtue in the mind of the writer or painter. Thus, when opposed to Prudence, or Prudentia, on the one side, we find Folly, or Stultitia, on the other, it shows that the virtue understood by Prudence is not the mere guiding or cardinal virtue, but the Heavenly Wisdom,* opposed to that folly which hath said in its heart, “There is no God;” and of which it is said, “The thought of foolishness is sin;” and again, “Such as be foolish shall not stand in Thy sight.”² This folly is personified, in early painting and illumination, by a half-naked man, greedily eating an apple or other fruit, and brandishing a club; showing that sensuality and violence are the two principal characteristics of Foolishness, and lead into atheism. The figure, in early Psalters, always forms the letter D, which commences the fifty-third Psalm, “Dixit insipiens.”

§ 57. In reading Dante, this mode of reasoning from contraries is a great help, for his philosophy of the vices is the only one which admits of classification; his descriptions of virtue, while they include the ordinary formal divisions, are far too profound and extended to be brought under definition. Every line of the Paradise is full of the most exquisite and spiritual expressions of Christian truth; and that poem is only less read than the “Inferno,” because it

* Uniting the three ideas expressed by the Greek philosophers under the terms, qronhsiV, soqia, and episthmh; and part of the idea of swqrosunh.

¹ [See below, § 63 n.]

² [Psalms xiv. 1; Proverbs xxiv. 9; Psalms v. 5.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]