I failed to realize it last week but we are a little over halfway through the book in terms of Cantos and pages now. It is hard to break things up correctly without reading and knowing the story. Canto XIX in my book says both the fourth cornice and the ascension to the fifth. In hindsight, Canto XIX probably belongs more to the fifth than the fourth. Oh well, I am not going to talk about it much anyway.

This cornice is about a misunderstood sin, the sloth. When I was reading about this in hell, I dismissed the sloth as lazy. When we use the word today we often mean slow, lazy and often dirty or unkempt. That is probably not actually fair to the animal, it is probably more appropriate to say deliberate. But, this is not actually what Dante meant by the term.

Believe it or not, the sloth really means to see an opportunity to do good but not to act on it. So, the modern day equivalent makes me think of the John Quinones show What Would You Do? I know that this is a bit of a tough area for me. I very much tend toward the live and let live philosophy. Aside from that, I am not sure I know enough details to get involved without a direct ask. It turns out that this is defined as a sin.

Very little is actually described about cornice four. There are really no meaningful interactions. The souls here are constantly running. That is running toward those that need help. Not only are they anti-sloth by running but also atoning for their sin.

Much of the the first two Cantos discuss love, free will and sin between Dante and Virgil. This follows exactly the structure and grouping of hell. Just as a recap of what was said. Here is the following types of love. First there is natural and un-natural love. Natural is what you would think. Unnatural love has three categories within it. There is love of an object, then there is loving too little or loving too much.

The first three levels pride, envy and anger represent the first three levels as well as unnatural love of objects. Loving to little is the sloth (level 4). Loving too much is defined as greed, gluttony and lust. And there we have the definition of the layers of hell. and purgatory. Although they don’t seem to be in the same order between the two. Maybe that will reveal itself in the future.

End Your Programming Routine: Very educational. I have been ignorant to the sin of the sloth every since high school when I first read the Inferno. I am curious to how it is exactly judged because it leaves me wondering if there are some kind of test just like What Would You Do?. But then again, one of Jesus’s main messages was charity. Failing to do so might land you on Cornice four.