with playful fantasy, to perpetuate theological imagery and dogma. It was an art that revelled in the grotesque and often tore nature asunder in order to get forms that should symbolise ideas corresponding to no single natural truth. As God, then, was the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and as each of these divisions of the indivisible Trinity signified Power, Wisdom, and Love, so there arose in opposition a triune demon. A Christ of Salerno, the product, perhaps, of Byzantine influence, is represented with three faces.1 An Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the early eleventh century shows a Satanic image in which a second face is sprouting behind the left ear.2 The three-headed hoar-giant of the Edda, Hrim-Grimnir, who lives at the door of death,' and Triglaf the triune deity of the Slavs are closely akin to Dante's Lucifer.3 A three-headed Satan appears in a French miniature of the thirteenth century.* Boccaccio alludes to the Lucifer of San Gallo; Sansovino says that a devil with three mouths was painted in the church of San Gallo at Florence, and, finally, in the

THE CHRIST OF SALERNO

1 For reproduction, see Die Gartenlaube, No. 47, 1882.

2 Cf. ARTURO GRAF, Demonologia di Dante,' in his Miti, Leggende e Superstizioni del Medio Evo, p. 93.

8 Cf. CARUS, History of the Devil, p. 249.
4 DIDRON, Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 544.

church of Sant' Angelo at Formis, near Capua, a great painting, deemed a work of the eleventh century, represents Lucifer crunching Judas, while a twelfth century sculpture in the church of Saint Basil at Étampes represents Lucifer grinding three sinners.1

'When Bishop Otto of Bamberg converted the Pomeranians to Christianity he broke, in 1124, the three-headed Triglaf idol in the temple of Stettin and sent its head to Pope Honorius II. at Rome.' 2 If, as Dino Compagni asserts, Dante went on an embassy to Rome in 1301, he may have got an inspiration for his Lucifer from the triune deity of the Slavs.3 But it is more likely by far that the notion of a three-headed Lucifer had long before spread throughout Europe, and that Dante invented little when he devised this monster with a sinner in each mouth and with batlike wings; for the wings of bats were as habitually attached to devils as were the wings of birds to angels.

Nevertheless, Dante's entire conception of Lucifer remains the mightiest type of Evil in all time; for it grew in the Devil's prime in the mind of one of the three greatest poets the world has ever known. In the existence of Lucifer Dante believed as sincerely as he believed in the existence of God; but like all other men

1 Cf. GRAF, op. cit. p. 94.

2 Cf. CARUS, op. cit. p. 249.

A suggestion by Dr. Krause, cited by Carus. * See Dante Dictionary, s.v. 'Lucifero.'

he had to make shift to find in the horrors of our known world the shapes that were to embody his ideal of the creature from whom all woes come. As both Dante and his beloved St. Thomas Aquinas saw in the Trinity Power, Wisdom, and Love, so Dante made visible in the three faces of Lucifer the very essence of Impotence, Ignorance, and Hate. Such are the origin and expression of Dante's conception of the Evil One.

CHAPTER V

THE LOWER ANIMALS

ALTHOUGH there existed in Dante's time theories as to genera and species, none of the keenest thinkers, neither the Encyclopedists, Vincent of Beauvais, Albert of Bollstädt, and Thomas of Cantimpré,1 nor the metaphysical Thomas Aquinas,2 nor, finally, Dante Alighieri, made any scientific application of those terms. To Dante man belongs to one species3 and is an animal,* as he is to all Dante's contemporaries and to ourselves. Yet Dante gave to man a place to himself in the Universe because he conceived that man alone has a reasoning soul, immortality, and a duty to himself and to God.5

In nature there is an incredibly delicate gradation of

1 For an account of these three, see J. V. CARUS, Geschichte der Zoologie.

2 Com. on Physic. Arist., lib. VII, cap. 4, lec. viii, § 8; see also VII, cap. 3, lec. v, § 5, where he says, '. . . inter omnes qualitates, figuræ maxime consequuntur et demonstrant speciem rerum. Quod maxime in plantis et animalibus patet, in quibus nullo certiori iudicio diversitas specierum diiudicari potest, quam diversitate figurarum.'

See, e.g., De Mon. I, iii, 39-45, 78–82; De V. E. I, ii, 36–43 ; xvi, 7–25; II, i, 44–48; Conv. IV, xvi, 104-106; Conv. II, v, 25–28; Purg. XVIII, 49 ff.; Conv. IV, xxii, 47–56.

* Cf. BOCCACCIO (Lez. 8), ‘L' umana spezie, E l' umana generazione, spezie di questo genere che noi diciamo animali.' Inf. V, 88; Parad. XIX, 85; Canz. X, 101; Conv. II, ix, 78–87; III, vii, 1015 See chapter on 'Man,' p. 12.

102.

things. Millions of species have lived and gone, but still there exists a great chain whose links reach from a pebble up to man. But where between the pebble and man does the soul begin? Where is the beginning of life? 'The soul,' writes Dante, 'has three principal powers, to live, to feel, and to reason. ... The vegetative power by which we live is the foundation upon which we feel, that is, see, hear, taste, smell, and touch; and this vegetative power of itself is a soul, as we see in all the plants. The sensitive soul cannot exist without it, as there is nothing that feels that has not life. And this sensitive soul is the basis of the intellectual, that is, of reason; and therefore in living mortal beings the reasoning power is not found without the sentient, but the sensitive soul is found without the rational, as in beasts and birds and fishes, and all the lower animals.'1 Thus Dante denies reason to the lower animals. But if the lower animals have not reason, how do they live? What is their motive power? Instinct,2— the answer is plain. But what is the difference between instinct and reason? In modern science instinct is an inherited habit which varies ever so slightly from parent to offspring according to the exigencies of nature, and in every animal, including man. To Dante instinct is appetite, an inborn motive power, a tendency to act like an animated mechanism. It is the only main mental faculty of the lower animals. It is the bird's tendency to make a nest,

1 Conv. III, ii, 85-112, cf. 139–154. Translated by K. HILLARD; The Banquet, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, 1889. 2 De V. E. I, ii, 33-36, ‘Inferioribus quoque animalibus, cum solo naturae instinctu ducantur,' etc. Cf. ST. THOMAS, Summa, Pr. sec., qu. xiii, art. 2.