_Demopheles_. But religion is not opposed to truth; it itself teaches
truth. And as the range of its activity is not a narrow lecture room,
but the world and humanity at large, religion must conform to the
requirements and comprehension of an audience so numerous and so mixed.
Religion must not let truth appear in its naked form; or, to use a
medical simile, it must not exhibit it pure, but must employ a mythical
vehicle, a medium, as it were. You can also compare truth in this
respect to certain chemical stuffs which in themselves are gaseous, but
which for medicinal uses, as also for preservation or transmission, must
be bound to a stable, solid base, because they would otherwise
volatilize. Chlorine gas, for example, is for all purposes applied only
in the form of chlorides. But if truth, pure, abstract and free from all
mythical alloy, is always to remain unattainable, even by philosophers,
it might be compared to fluorine, which cannot even be isolated, but
must always appear in combination with other elements. Or, to take a
less scientific simile, truth, which is inexpressible except by means of
myth and allegory, is like water, which can be carried about only in
vessels; a philosopher who insists on obtaining it pure is like a man
who breaks the jug in order to get the water by itself. This is,
perhaps, an exact analogy. At any rate, religion is truth allegorically
and mythically expressed, and so rendered attainable and digestible by
mankind in general. Mankind couldn't possibly take it pure and unmixed,
just as we can't breathe pure oxygen; we require an addition of four
times its bulk in nitrogen. In plain language, the profound meaning, the
high aim of life, can only be unfolded and presented to the masses
symbolically, because they are incapable of grasping it in its true
signification. Philosophy, on the other hand, should be like the
Eleusinian mysteries, for the few, the _élite_.

_Philalethes_. I understand. It comes, in short, to truth wearing the