The very language in which the _Divina Commedia_ is written is a testimony to the Poet’s grasp of the fundamental condition of all teaching—that it should be intelligible! There is a saying of Alcuin’s great disciple, Rabanus Maurus, which expresses simply and well this obvious, but oft-forgotten principle. “Teach,” he says, “in words that teach; not in words that do not teach.” With this principle, surely, in mind—for his purpose in creating the great Poem was a practical one—the strangely haughty and aloof spirit of Dante girds itself to a humble use of the “Vulgar Tongue.” When we remember that this magnificent structure of his is the first big effort in the Italian vernacular, and that one of his reasons for calling it a “Comedy” is that “its method of speech is lax and humble, for it is the vernacular speech in which mere women communicate,”[196] we cannot but see in this pioneer work of Italian literature evidence of that discerning sympathy with the needs and capacities of the learner which marks the born teacher. Another mark of the true educator is his practical aim. Dante is not content to “teach the classics _in vacuo_,” as our English Public Schools once were: he does not divorce learning from life. In the famous Tenth Epistle he defines the “Moral Sense” of the Poem as “The conversion of the Soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace”; and, again, he describes “the end of the whole” thus: “To remove those living in this life from the state of misery and to lead them to the state of felicity.”[197] He has his eye upon life in the highest sense: “Come l’ uom s’eterna.” To this end he displays to us the unique means provided by Heaven for his own salvation, and allows us in his company to visit the three kingdoms of the Eternal World. He performs for us the office fulfilled by Virgil towards himself— ... I will be thy guide, and will conduct thee hence through an eternal place. ... Io sarò tua guida E trarrotti di qui per loco eterno.[198] We must see with his eyes to what state of ineffable woe, not Divine Justice merely, but the sinner’s own choice will bring him. We must watch with him the Divine process of purgation, the eagerly-accepted suffering of those whose penitent love longs above all things to undo the ruin that sin has wrought—[199] ... Contented in the fire, for that they hope In God’s good time to reach the blessed folk ... Contenti Nel foco, perchè speran di venire, Quando che sia, a le beate genti.... and finally he will take us up with him into the Blessed Place itself, to behold “the things which God has prepared for them that unfeignedly love Him.” Here again is the true teacher, adopting the story-telling method of the Teacher of Nazareth:[200] the method of which the usefulness—nay, the indispensableness—was never more appreciated than to-day.