DANTE CELEBRATION IN SANDERS THEATRE

Dante's philosophy of symmetry and harmony, as revealed in the "Divine Comedy" and his other works, was the subject of the address made by Professor C. H. Grandgent '83 yesterday afternoon in Sanders Theatre, where the University commemorated the six hundredth anniversary of the death of the great Italian. President Lowell presided at the celebration and the Glee Club gave two of the selections which they sang at Dante's tomb at Ravenna last summer.

Dante, according to Professor Grandgent, believed love to be a type of perfect equilibrium and God the embodiment of justice and harmony, and detected symmetry also in the events of history and in the facts of geography. He believed in an absolutely round earth, the center of the universe, in which the heavenly bodies moved in patterns of absolute symmetry. He believed likewise in a moral system of unerring justice, proceeding from God himself.

"This is the firm foundation, the unshakable rock of Dante's faith", declared Professor Grandgent. "Hence came his courage and his power. Between our acts and our future joys and sorrows, he believed, there is unswerving correspondence; an exact balance is ordained between our sins and their punishment, between our merits and their rewards. As with the individual, so with society; if the world be wicked, it shall suffer; if it redeem itself, it shall be happy. As a basis of moral strength, neither science nor philosophy has yet invented a substitute for absolute faith in responsibility and justice".