Poco potea parer li del di fori; Ma, per quel poco, vedev’ io le stelle Di lor solere e più chiare e maggiori Sì ruminando e sì mirando in quelle, Mi prese il sonno; il sonno che sovente, Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle. This time the awakening is not sudden or violent.[224] After the altogether lovely dream of Lia—the sublimation of Dante’s desire, suggested, or coloured, by the natural anticipations of one on the threshold of the earthly Paradise—he wakes up quite naturally, his sleep “breaking from him” with the breaking dawn.[225] Le tenebre fuggian da tutti lati E il sonno mio con esse; ond’ io leva’ mi. Dante’s analysis of Dreams was naturally relative to the knowledge and tendency of his day. The presaging quality of Dreams— ... Il sonno che sovente Anzi che ’l fatto sia, sa le novelle; like the proverbial belief that the truest dreams are those that come before dawn— ... Presso al mattin del ver si sogna[226] is not for him the fruit of scientific psycho-analysis; but rather the unscientific or quasi-scientific deduction of untold generations of men on whom the dreams that “came true” left a far deeper impress than the large majority that proved fallacious. Dante was, however, a real psychologist of his own time and date, as many qualities of his thought and interest testify; and his discerning interest in the dream-consciousness supplies a definite link between the thinkers of the Trecento and our modern Masters. III It must not, however, be supposed that the somewhat specialised comparison of Dante’s purgatorial scheme with the Montessori Method sketched above[227] by any means exhausts the educational principles of the _Purgatorio_; still less that it covers the whole area of such principles enshrined in the _Divine Comedy_. The old-fashioned relation between Master and Pupil has still something to be said for it. The personal element cannot be eliminated, however great may be the need—especially in certain stages of self-restraint and self-effacement. This personal relation, in its permanently important aspects, is beautifully figured in the relation between Dante as learner and Virgil, Beatrice, and Statius as teachers.