stic Age
did not wantonly invent the theory of allegory.

And secondly, we must remember what states of mind tend especially to
produce this kind of belief. They are not contemptible states of mind.
It needs only a strong idealism with which the facts of experience
clash, and allegory follows almost of necessity. The facts cannot be
accepted as they are. They must needs be explained as meaning something
different.

Take an earnest Stoic or Platonist, a man of fervid mind, who is
possessed by the ideals of his philosophy and at the same time feels his
heart thrilled by the beauty of the old poetry. What is he to do? On one
side he can find Zoilus, or Plato himself, or the Cynic preachers,
condemning Homer and the poets without remorse, as teachers of
foolishness. He can treat poetry as the English puritans treated the
stage. But is that a satisfactory solution? Remember that these
generations were trained habitually to give great weight to the voice of
their inner consciousness, and the inner consciousness of a sensitive
man cries out that any such solution is false: that Homer is not a liar,
but noble and great, as our fathers have always taught us. On the other
side comes Heraclitus the allegorist. 'If Homer used no allegories he
committed all impieties.' On this theory the words can be allowed to
possess all their old beauty and magic, but an inner meaning is added
quite different from that which they bear on the surface. It may, very
likely, be a duller and less poetic meaning; but I am not sure that the
verses will not gain by the mere process of brooding study fully as much
as they lose by the ultimate badness of the interpretation. Anyhow, that
was the road followed. The men of whom I speak were not likely to give
up any experience that seemed to make the world more godlike or to feed
their spiritual and emotional cravings. They left that to the barefooted
cynics. They craved poetry and they craved philosophy; if the two spoke
like enemies, their words must needs be explained away by one who loved
both.

The same process was applied to the world itself. Something like it is
habitually applied by the religious idealists of all ages. A fundamental
doctrine of Stoicism and most of the idealist creeds was the perfection
and utter blessedness of the world, and the absolute fulfilment of the
purpose of God. Now obviously this belief was not based on experience.
The poor world, to do it justice amid all its misdoings,