in Protestant countries perhaps more than in Catholic, we have been too
much inclined to identify the historical with the moral; and some have
refused to believe in religion at all, unless a superhuman accuracy was
discernible in every part of the record. The facts of an ancient or
religious history are amongst the most important of all facts; but they are
frequently uncertain, and we only learn the true lesson which is to be
gathered from them when we place ourselves above them. These reflections
tend to show that the difference between Plato and ourselves, though not
unimportant, is not so great as might at first sight appear. For we should
agree with him in placing the moral before the historical truth of
religion; and, generally, in disregarding those errors or misstatements of
fact which necessarily occur in the early stages of all religions. We know
also that changes in the traditions of a country cannot be made in a day;
and are therefore tolerant of many things which science and criticism would
condemn.

We note in passing that the allegorical interpretation of mythology, said
to have been first introduced as early as the sixth century before Christ
by Theagenes of Rhegium, was well established in the age of Plato, and
here, as in the Phaedrus, though for a different reason, was rejected by
him. That anachronisms whether of religion or law, when men have reached
another stage of civilization, should be got rid of by fictions is in
accordance with universal experience. Great is the art of interpretation;
and by a natural process, which when once discovered was always going on,
what could not be altered was explained away. And so without any palpable
inconsistency there existed side by side two forms of religion, the
tradition inherited or invented by the poets and the customary worship of
the temple; on the other hand, there was the religion of the philosopher,
who was dwelling in the heaven of ideas, but did not therefore refuse to
offer a cock to Aesculapius, or to be seen saying his prayers at the rising