In this scene of violence and disorder, with the Papacy gone astray, the empire debased and impotent, the religious orders corrupted, power meaning lawlessness, the well-disposed become weak and cowardly, religion neither guide nor check to society, but only the consolation of its victims--Dante was bold and hopeful enough to believe in the Divine appointment, and in the possibility, of law and government--of a state. In his philosophy, the institutions which provide for man's peace and liberty in this life are part of God's great order for raising men to perfection;--not indispensable, yet ordinary parts; having their important place, though but for the present time; and though imperfect, real instruments of His moral government. He could not believe it to be the intention of Providence, that on the introduction of higher hopes and the foundation of a higher society, civil society should collapse and be left to ruin, as henceforth useless or prejudicial in man's trial and training; that the significant intimations of nature, that law and its results, justice, peace, and stability, ought to be and might be realised among men, had lost their meaning and faded away before the announcement of a kingdom not of this world. And if the perfection of civil society had not been superseded by the Church, it had become clear, if events were to be read as signs, that she was not intended to supply its political offices and functions. She had taught, elevated, solaced, blessed, not only individual souls, but society; she had for a time even governed it: but though her other powers remained, she could govern it no longer. Failure had made it certain that, in his strong and quaint language, "_Virtus authorizandi regnum nostræ mortalitatis est contra naturam ecclesiæ; ergo non est de numero virtutum suarum_."[81] Another and distinct organisation was required for this, unless the temporal order was no longer worthy the attention of Christians. [Footnote 81: _De Monarch._ lib. iii. p. 188, Ed. Fraticelli.] This is the idea of the _De Monarchia_; and though it holds but a place in the great scheme of the _Commedia_, it is prominent there also--an idea seen but in a fantastic shape, encumbered and confused with most grotesque imagery, but the real idea of polity and law, which the experience of modern Europe has attained to.