Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/382

 last; the second receives a weaver's shuttle; the third, a shepherd's pouch; the fourth shall be a peasant, and to him is given a ploughshare. Eve, astonished, asks—

But the Lord replies that each has been selected according to his natural fitness, and points out the dependence of each rank of society on the other.

§ 93. But, while the individualism of the feudal lords and the socialism of corporate life were thus meeting under the shadow of central government, there was one part of Europe in which, from an early date, the conflict of the individual with the group had made its appearance. The Lombard League, victorious in its conflict with the world-empire of Barbarossa, had allowed the city commonwealths of Italy to develop within their walls an individualising spirit which could ill brook the reins of the Christian world-religion. The conflict between this individualising life of the Italian republics and the spiritual brotherhood of Christianity inspires the chant-like song of Dante, on whose inexpressibly mournful face the deadliest struggle of which human nature is capable—the struggle of intensely individual with intensely corporate feeling—seems graven as in scars. But in the Divina Commedia individualism is victorious, and in the Italian cities wealth and faction displaced the social spirit