shame on it ever since; and it will not be spared for the sake
of the two or three faithful who were found even among the bishops. Let
the Church take it on authority, even my authority (as a professional
legend maker) if it cannot see the truth by its own light: no dogma can
be a legend. A legend can pass an ethnical frontier as a legend, but not
as a truth; whilst the only frontier to the currency of a sound dogma as
such is the frontier of capacity for understanding it.

This does not mean that we should throw away legend and parable and
drama: they are the natural vehicles of dogma; but woe to the Churches
and rulers who substitute the legend for the dogma, the parable for the
history, the drama for the religion! Better by far declare the throne
of God empty than set a liar and a fool on it. What are called wars of
religion are always wars to destroy religion by affirming the historical
truth or material substantiality of some legend, and killing those who
refuse to accept it as historical or substantial. But who has ever
refused to accept a good legend with delight as a legend? The legends,
the parables, the dramas, are among the choicest treasures of mankind.
No one is ever tired of stories of miracles. In vain did Mahomet
repudiate the miracles ascribed to him: in vain did Christ furiously
scold those who asked him to give them an exhibition as a conjurer: in
vain did the saints declare that God chose them not for their powers but
for their weaknesses; that the humble might be exalted, and the proud
rebuked. People will have their miracles, their stories, their heroes
and heroines and saints and martyrs and divinities to exercise their
gifts of affection, admiration, wonder, and worship, and their Judases
and devils to enable them to be angry and yet feel that they do well to
be angry. Every one of these legends is the common heritage of the human
race; and there is only one inexorable condition attached to their
healthy enjoyment, which is that no one shall believe them literally.
The reading of stories and delighting in them made Don Quixote a
gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman who slew
lambs instead of feeding them. In England today good books of Eastern
religious legends are read eagerly; and Protestants and Atheists read
Roman Catholic legends of the Saints with pleasure. But such fare is
shirked by Indians and Roman Catholics. Freethinkers read the Bible:
indeed they seem to be its on