feet.” Thus asking he shot for me through the needle’s eye of my desire, so that only with the hope my thirst became less craving. [1] “According to that buoyant and immortal sentence with which Aristotle begins his Metaphysics, ‘All mankind naturally desire knowledge.’” Matthew Arnold, God and the Bible, cli. iv. This sentence of Aristotle is cited by Dante in the first chapter of the Convito. [2] The living water of truth. [3] To the salutation, “Peace be with you,” the due answer is, “And with thy spirit.” [4] Lachesis. The shade began: “There is nothing which without order the religion of the mountain can feel, or which can be outside its wont.[1] Free is this place from every alteration; of that which heaven receives from itself within itself there may be effect here, but of naught else;[2] because nor rain, nor hail, nor snow, nor dew, nor frost, falls higher up than the little stairway of the three short steps; clouds appear not, or thick or thin; nor lightning, nor the daughter of Thaumas[3] who yonder often changes her quarter; dry vapor[4] rises not farther up than the top of the three steps of which I spoke, where the vicar of Peter has his feet. It trembles perhaps lower down little or much; but up here it never trembles because of wind that is hidden, I know not how, in the earth. It trembles here when some soul feels itself pure, so that it rises or moves to ascend; and such a cry seconds it. Of the purity the will alone makes proof, which surprises the soul, wholly free to change its company, and helps it with the will. The soul wills at first indeed, but the inclination,—which, contrary to the will, Divine Justice sets to the torment, as erst to the sin,—allows it not.[5] And I who have lain in this pain five hundred years and more, only just now felt a free volition for a better seat. Wherefore thou didst feel the earthquake, and hear the pious spirits through the Mountain giving praise to that Lord, who—may He speed them upward soon!” [1] The religion, the sacred rule, of the Mountain admits nothing that is not ordained and customary. [2] Whatever happens here is occasioned only by the direct influences of the heavens. [3] Iris = the rainbow, seen now to the west, now to the east. [4] Dry vapor, according to Aristotle, was the source of wind and of earthquake. [5] Until the soul is wholly purified from its sinful disposition,it desires the punishment through; which its purification is accomplished, as it had originally desired the object of its sin. But when it becomes pure, then the will possesses it to mount to Heaven, and becomes effective.