The soul is divided into three parts: the mind, the emotions, and the desires. These three sections seem to fit nicely with Dante’s divisions of hell: the incontinent, the violent, and the fraudulent. The incontinence level is full of people who act based on their desires, the violent level is full of people controlled by their emotions, and the fraudulent level is full of people who are controlled by their intellect.
The incontinence section of hell is full of the lustful, the gluttonous, the greedy, and the wrathful. Lust, gluttony, and greed are by very definition, desire. People characterized by them are people characterized and controlled by desire. Wrath does not fit into the category of runaway desire so easily. Wrath, however, is a desire to exact vengeance. To be controlled by wrath is then to be controlled by desire. The circle of hell devoted to the incontinent is full of people driven by their desires, who refused to allow their minds to control their desires.
The violent circle of hell is contains those who were violent against others, against themselves, and against God and the things of God. Violence is the outward expression of emotion, the result of a failure to control emotions, namely hatred. Some might ask what the difference is between those in the wrathful part of hell and those in the violent part of hell. Hatred is the emotion that violence most often stems from. It is differentiated from wrath in that wrath is a desire for revenge, while hatred is a step beyond that into hating there person for who they are. Wrath can be satisfied when the other person gets what is coming to them, but hatred never dies. No matter what happen to the other person, the hatred will only grow. Hatred can grow out of wrath, but is much worse.
The fraudulent circle of hell is a bit more difficult to characterize. At first glance, there seems to be nothing wrong with the order of the souls here. Mind is in control, with the emotions and desires submitted to it. That, however, is why these souls are in the deepest part of hell. There are three categories of people: God, others, and self. The proper order of persons is God, others, and lastly, self. Those who are in hell have put self first above God and above others. This is why hell is organized with the most disordered soul at the top, and the ordered soul at the bottom. Sin is the result of disordering the order of persons, and the more order a soul, the more efficient it is at sinning, and the worse the sins. The fraudulent, then, are ordered souls who have chosen to make themselves their god, the very thing that condemned Lucifer.
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