Aristotle says: “The good of the intellect is the highest beatitude”; and Dante in the Convito : “The True is the good of the intellect.” In other words, the knowledge of God is intellectual good.

“It is a most just punishment,” says St. Augustine, “that man should lose that freedom which man could not use, yet had power to keep, if he would, and that he who had knowledge to do what was right, and did not do it, should be deprived of the knowledge of what was right; and that he who would not do righteously, when he had the power, should lose the power to do it when he had the will.” ↩

The description given of the Mouth of Hell by Frate Alberico, Vision , 9, is in the grotesque spirit of the Medieval Mysteries:⁠—