Dante: Purgatory, xvi b: In View of the Wrathful

Our pilgrim has only asked a couple questions. Who are you and what's the right way up. 

And the penitent who burst out of the clouds on the rarest of occasion to be one of two here to ask Who are You,

and who only makes a brief allusion to that good at which men no longer aim their bows,

yet here, Dante cannot help himself - 'There's a problem haunting me" 

- and has to ask the penitent on the Terrace of the Wrathful on The Mountain of Purgatory,

"What is the Cause ... that I may teach the truth to other men".

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"A deep sigh, wrung by grief into "Alas!"                      line 64

came first, and then: "The world, brother, is blind,

and obviously the world is where you're from!"

You men on Earth attribute everything

to the spheres' influence alone, as if

with some predestined plan they moved all things.

If this were true, then our Free Will would be 

annihilated: it would not be just

to render bliss for good or pain for evil.

The spheres initiate your tendencies:

not all of them - but even if they did,

you have the light that shows you right from wrong,

and your Free Will, which, though it may grow faint

in its first struggles with the heavens, can still

surmount all obstacles if nurtured well.

You are free subjects of a greater power,

a nobler nature that creates your mind,

and over this the spheres have no control.

So, if the world today has gone astray,

the cause lies in yourselves and only there! "               line 83

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The Wrathful Shade replies at first, 'The world and you are blind: men act as though the spheres moved all.

They do start inclinations but not all. If they ruled all you in response would have no Free Will. 

So that must be and so do the spheres. But they will be there without you,

So find your selves and look to the light to show right and wrong.

It's not the spheres' fault it is man's own.

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"Now I shall carefully explain that cause.               line 84

From the fond hands of God, who loves her even

before He gives her being, there issues forth

just like a child, all smiles and tears at play,

the simple soul, pure in its ignorance,

which, having sprung from her Creator's joy,

will turn to anything it likes. At first

she is attracted to a trivial toy,

and though beguiled, she will run after it,

if guide or curb do not divert her love.

Men, therefore, needed the restraint of laws,

needed a ruler able to at least

discern the towers of the True city. True,

the laws there are, but who enforces them?

No one. The shepherd who is leading you

can chew the cud but lacks the cloven hoof.

And so, the flock, that see their shepherd's greed

for the same worldly good that they have craved,

are quite content to feed on what he feeds.

As you can see, bad leadership has caused

the present state of evil in the world,

not Nature that has grown corrupt in you."                line 105

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A child will delight in any toy by its own nature
without a curb or guide to show the way.
Since the shepherd's not a sheep
stores up his plenty so the sheep still eat.
So bad leadership - a shepherd that won't discern good and evil- and not Nature corrupts.
So summarized, the Wrathful but Penitent shade climbing the mountain of Purgatory
shares with Dante as source of human's plight: bad leadership...

Mark Musa translator, Penguin Classics Edition,  1981, 1985

with my notes in between