Cantos 6-12

"Shaking his head, "I was alone:
One, who defended her before them all."
"Ah, pray you (so may your seed find peace again)

Unravel a knot that makes my reason fail,"
I said. "If I hear you rightly, you seem to foresee
What time will bring, and yet you seem to deal

DIfferently with the present." He answered me:
"Like someone with faulty vision, we can behold
Remote things well, for so much light does He

Who rules supreme still grant us; but we foiled
When things draw near us, and our intelligence is useless when they are present. So of your world

In its present state, we have no evidence or Knowledge, except if others bring us word:
Thus you can understand that with no sense

Left to us, all our knowledge will be dead
From that moment when the future's door is shut."

Canto X

It's interesting that the inhabitants of hell seem fixed upon their past lives. It suggest that the ultimate torment of those living in Hell is regret – regret that they lived their lives according to their own rules and not God's. This man that Dante speaks to – whomever he may be – is obsessed with his past; he's paid the final price for his crimes and now must live with his regrets for eternity. I believe at the end, where the man refers to the light that "He who rules supreme has granted us" he is referring to the light of logic. When things are evaluated from afar, with the coldness of logic, they are simple and make perfect sense. It is when things draw near that we abandon logic and go with our instincts, which are derived from the animal side of humanity, rather than the divine side. This reminds of a quote in Owen Meany pulled from (I believe) Thomas Hardy: "Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently."

Anyhow, I find it interesting that, in my view, the ultimate torment of Hell is not the fires, it's not cerberus or the demons or the endless rain or the rivers of mud, it's being stuck for eternity pondering what might have been, had I only lived my life differently. The pondering, of course, leads nowhere; you are trapped in hell forever, left only with memories of mortal life.

"Heaven's hatred is Injustice"

Canto XI

I was thinking about this and I realized that it seems to be an almost hypocritical point of view, because, in my view it is unjust to send people to hell. If we believe that mankind is inherently good (and I do), then why should they be punished for the mistakes they make? Why can't everyone go to Heaven? Oh right, because it's not enough for people to be good, God also wants them to believe in him. You could be the greatest, nicest person ever, but, without believing in God it's still straight to hell with you. This seems to be a kind of skewed state of affairs, in my opinion. The main motivation for believing in God is because we won't go to heaven otherwise. It's almost God's twisting our arm, or blackmailing us to make people believe in him. Potentially, if man is basically good and sin comes from the imperfections in man, then why shouldn't we all go to heaven? There's no good reason not to, except that God is on some ego-trip and wants people to believe in him before they are granted access to those golden gates. The counter to this argument is the point that certain sins are worse than others, and, despite being due to "imperfections," man should still be punished for them. I'm talking sins like the engendering of mass violence. But, in the face of an eternity in Hell, it matters less what your punishment is, because the ultimate punishment is the eternity itself. So, after a million years or so, the unbaptised philosophers in limbo and the poor bastards boiling in the river of blood are no different. So, this system of weighted punishments fails, because, no matter how bad a punishment is, you will adapt and get used to it. I mean, we're talking eternity here, which is more than a long time. It's infinite time. So is it really fair to sentence somebody to such a punishment merely because they weren't baptised, through no fault of their own. If Heaven hates injustice, why is it committing such a grave injustice?