La forma universal di questo nodo credo ch’io vidi, perchè più di largo dicendo questo, mi sento ch’io godo. The contemplation of the horrid or sordid or disgusting, by an artist, is the necessary and negative aspect of the impulse toward the pursuit of beauty. But not all succeed as did Dante in expressing the complete scale from negative to positive. The negative is the more importunate. The structure of emotions, for which the allegory is the necessary scaffold, is complete from the most sensuous to the most intellectual and the most spiritual. Dante gives a concrete presentation of the most elusive: Pareva a me che nube ne coprisse lucida, spessa, solida e polita, quasi adamante che lo sol ferisse. Per entro sè l’eterna margarita ne recepette, com’ acqua recepe raggio di luce, permanendo unita. or Nel suo aspetto tal dentro mi fei, qual si fe’ Glauco nel gustar dell’ erba, che il fe’ consorto in mar degli altri dei.[11] Footnote 11: See E. Pound, _The Spirit of Romance_, p. 145. Again, in the _Purgatorio_, for instance in Canto XVI and Canto XVIII, occur passages of pure exposition of philosophy, the philosophy of Aristotle strained through the schools. Lo natural e sempre senza errore, ma l’altro puote errar per malo obbietto, o per poco o per troppo di vigore.... We are not here studying the philosophy, we _see_ it, as part of the ordered world. The aim of the poet is to state a vision, and no vision of life can be complete which does not include the articulate formulation of life which human minds make. Onde convenne legge per fren porre.... It is one of the greatest merits of Dante’s poem that the vision is so nearly complete; it is evidence of this greatness that the significance of any single passage, of any of the passages that are selected as “poetry,” is incomplete unless we ourselves apprehend the whole. And Dante helps us to provide a criticism of M. Valéry’s “modern poet” who attempts “to produce in us a _state_.” A state, in itself, is nothing whatever.