Beginning with language of enthusiastic praise and grateful friendship, which recalls analogous passages in Canto xvii., the poet prepares to pay back the benefits he has received with the dedication of the _Paradiso_. So far (1-4), the epistolary form has been maintained, and this is the only portion of the letter found in the earlier MSS.; but now the writer assumes the office of a lecturer, and, with a quotation from the _Metaphysics_ of Aristotle, proceeds to give an introduction to the _Commedia_ and a commentary upon the first canto of the third cantica. He distinguishes the literal and allegorical meanings, defines the title of the whole (“The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine by birth, not by character”) and of the part, and explains the difference between comedy and tragedy from a somewhat different point of view from that of the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ (ii. 4). The subject of the _Paradiso_, in the literal sense, is the state of the blessed after death; in the allegorical sense, man according as by meriting he is subject to Justice rewarding. “The end of the whole and of the part is to remove those living in this life from the state of misery, and to lead them to the state of felicity” (_Epist._ x. 15). Dante emphasises the ethical aspect of the poem: “The whole as well as the part was conceived, not for speculation, but with a practical object” (x. 16). Then follows a minute scholastic and mystical interpretation of the opening lines of the first canto of the _Paradiso_ in the literal sense, closing in an eloquent and very beautiful summary of the ascent through the spheres of Paradise to find true beatitude in the vision of the Divine Essence. Throughout this part of the letter Dante, when touching upon the details of his vision, always speaks of himself in the third person, evidently following the example of St. Paul in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. He unmistakably implies that he has actually been the recipient of some personal spiritual experience, which he is unable adequately to relate. That passionate self-reproach, which sounds in so many passages of the _Divina Commedia_, makes itself heard here too. If the invidious do not believe in the power of the human intellect so to transcend the measure of humanity, let them read the examples cited from Scripture and the mystical treatises of Richard of St. Victor, Bernard, Augustine. But, if the unworthiness of the speaker makes them question such an elevation, let them see in Daniel how Nebuchodonosor by divine inspiration had a vision against sinners: “For He who ‘maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust,’ sometimes in mercy for their conversion, sometimes in wrath for their punishment, reveals His glory, in greater or less measure, as He wills, to those who live never so evily” (_Epist._ x. 28). This section of the letter, for the student of mystical experience, is of the highest significance.