Climbing the mountain of Purgatory, Dante encounters a man named Marco. The pilgrim agrees with Marco that the world is “heavy with and overgrown by evil.” The pilgrim asks Marco to tell him why and how things went so wrong, so he (Dante) can know for himself, and go back and warn others. “Brother,” Marco replies, “the world is blind and indeed you come from it.” In other words, what more can you expect, the fallen nature of the world being what it is?

But that, Marco says, is not enough for a man:

‘Yes, the heavens give motion to your inclinations.

I don’t say all of them, but, even if I did,

You still possess a light to winnow good from evil,

 

‘and you have free will. Should it bear the strain

in its first struggles with the heavens,

then, rightly nurtured, it will conquer all.

 

‘To a greater power and a better nature you, free,

are subject, and these create the mind in you

that the heavens have not in their charge.

 

‘Therefore, if the world around you goes astray,

in you is the cause and in you let it be sought.”

— Purgatorio XVI 73-83 (trans. Hollander)

The hope in that!