so in all religions: the consideration of their morality
comes first, afterwards the truth of the documents in which they are
recorded, or of the events natural or supernatural which are told of
them. But in modern times, and 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 of the sun. At length the
antagonism between the popular and philosophical religion, never so
great among the Greeks as in our own age, disappeared, and was only felt
like the difference