“For that which heeds it is one faculty, another that which holds the soul entire: bound as it were is this, and that is free”
. . . . .
Dante is puzzled by Virgil’s lack of a shadow. Virgil tells Dante that it’s foolish to try to fully grasp God’s doings with one’s rational mind; Dante must content himself with the fact that something is the case, not why it is the case. If humanity had perfect understanding, he goes on, then it would not have been necessary for the Son of God to become Incarnate. Virgil reminds Dante that Plato and Aristotle must spend eternity in Hell with an unsatisfied thirst for knowledge. Virgil follows Aristotle and the Scholastic theologians like Thomas Aquinas, claiming that human beings shouldn’t speculate about why things are but should instead be satisfied with examining things as they exist. If humanity had been content with this, they wouldn’t have fallen into sin (by doubtingly questioning God’s goodness) in the first place. Non-Christian philosophers long to know God, but, being in Hell, that knowledge remains eternally beyond them.