“There are two elements in sin,” writes St. Thomas Aquinas: “the conversion to a perishable good, which is the material element in sin; and the aversion from the imperishable good, which is the formal and completing element of sin.” In Dante’s Purgatory the material element is purged away. In his Hell sin is considered mainly on the side of this formal element, its aversion from the Supreme Good; and its enormity is revealed in the hideousness of its effects. The ethical system of the _Inferno_, as set forth in Canto xi., combines Aristotle’s threefold division of “dispositions” opposed to mortality into Incontinence, Bestiality, Malice (_Ethics_ vii. 1), with Cicero’s distinction of the two ways by which injury is done as Violence and Fraud (_De Officiis_ i. 13). Dante equates the Aristotelian Bestiality and Malice with the Ciceronian Violence and Fraud respectively. Thus there is the upper Hell of sins proceeding from the irrational part of the soul, divided into five circles. The lower Hell of Bestiality and Malice is the terrible city of Dis, the true kingdom of Lucifer, in which, after the intermediate sixth circle, come three great circles, each divided into a number of sub-divisions, and each separated by a chasm from the one above; the seventh circle of Violence and Bestiality; followed by two circles of Malice--the eighth of simple fraud, and the ninth of treachery. There is some doubt as to how far Dante further equates this division with the seven capital sins recognized by the Church. Although actual deeds are considered in Hell, rather than the sinful propensities which lead to them, it seems plausible to recognise in Incontinence the five lesser capital sins: Luxury, Gluttony, Avarice, Sloth (though the treatment of this vice in the _Inferno_ is questionable), and Anger; and to regard the whole of the three circles of the city of Dis as proceeding from and being the visible effects of Envy and Pride, the sins proper to devils according to St. Thomas--seen in their supreme degree in him whose pride made him rebel against his Maker, and whose envy brought death into the world. As an alternative, it may be held that Dante began the _Inferno_ with the intention of basing its ethical system upon the seven capital sins, but abandoned it in favour of a more ample treatment, and that the earlier design has been preserved only in the passage through the upper circles.[31]