Teachings of Dante, 1902

1902. The study of such an author as Dante is valuable in enabling one to organize his knowledge and to resist the insidious evil of reading disconnectedly many themes and writers. Dante is so rich in suggestive symbolism that the temptation is constant to read into his imagery meanings entirely foreign to his thought, and to obscure his most important teachings by mingling them in a mass of instructive but subordinate details. Both of these temptations Mr. Dinsmore has endeavored to resist, striving honestly to interpret Dante's conceptions, and seeking to secure clearness by disclosing only the framework of his thought.