When Dante realised his own helplessness in the struggle against the panther of Florence, the lion of France, and the wolf of Rome, when he saw that to reorganise his country and remodel the social and political conditions of life would need the strong hand and the keen sword of some great hero raised by God, he also saw that for himself another way was opened, an escape from that wild forest into which his feet had strayed, an escape which it must be the task of his life to point out to others, without which the very work of the hero for whom he looked would be in vain. The deadly forest represented moral as well as political confusion; the sunlit mountain, moral as well as political order; and the beasts that cut off the ascent, moral as well as political foes to human progress. From this moral chaos there was deliverance for every faithful soul, despite the lion and the wolf; and though the noble hound came not to chase the foul beasts back to Hell, yet was Dante led from the forest gloom even to the light of Heaven. And how was he delivered? By Divine grace he saw Hell and Purgatory and Heaven--so was he delivered. He saw the souls of men stripped of every disguise, he saw their secret deeds of good or ill laid bare. He saw Popes and Emperors, ancient heroes and modern sages, the rich, the valiant, the noble, the fair of face, the sweet of voice; and no longer dazzled, no longer overawed, he saw them as they were, he saw their deeds, he saw the fruits of them. So was he delivered from the entanglements and perplexities, from the delusions and seductions of the world, so were his feet set upon the rock, so did he learn to sift the true from the false, to rise above all things base, and set his soul at peace, even when sorrow was gnawing his heart to death. He, while yet clothed in flesh and blood, went amongst the souls of the departed, 'heard the despairing shrieks of spirits long immersed in woe, who wept each one the second death; saw suffering souls contented in the flames, for each one looked to reach the realms of bliss, though long should be the time,' and lastly he saw the souls in Heaven, and gazed upon the very light of God.[22] All this he saw and heard under the guidance of human and Divine philosophy, symbolised, or rather concentrated and personified, in Virgil and Beatrice.