n the Apocalypse. But as there is no
certain method of solving these problems, we never have a right to say
we have discovered all the hidden meanings or seized all the allusions
contained in a text; and even when we think we have found the sense, we
shall do well to draw no inferences from a necessarily conjectural
interpretation.

On the other hand, it is necessary to guard against the temptation to
look for allegorical meanings everywhere, as the neo-Platonists did in
Plato's works and the Swedenborgians in the Bible. This attack of
_hyper-hermeneutic_ is now over, but we are not yet safe from the
analogous tendency to look for allusions everywhere. Investigations of
this kind are always conjectural, and are better calculated to flatter
the vanity of the interpreter than to furnish results of which history
can make use.

V. When we have at length reached the real sense of the text, the
operation of positive analysis is concluded. Its result is to make us
acquainted with the author's conceptions, the images he had in his mind,
the general notions in terms of which he represented the world to
himself. This information belongs to a very important branch of
knowledge, out of which is constituted a whole group of historical
sciences:[142] the history of the illustrative arts and of literature,
the history of science, the history of philosophical and moral
doctrine, mythology and the history of dogmas (wrongly called religious
beliefs, because here we are studying official doctrines without
inquiring whether they are believed), the history of law, the history of
official institutions (so far as we do not inquire how they were applied
in practice), the assemblage of popular legends, traditions, opinions,
conceptions (inexactly called beliefs) which are comprised under the
name of folk-lore.

All these studies need only the external criticism which investigates
authorship and origin and interpretative criticism; they require one
degree less elaboration than the history of objective facts, and
accordingly they have been earlier established on a methodical basis.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEGATIVE INTERNAL CRITICISM OF THE GOOD FAITH AND ACCURACY OF
AUTHORS

I. Analysis and positive interpretative criticism only penetrate as far
as the inward workings of the mind of the author of a document, and only
help us to know his ideas. They give no direct information about
external facts. Even when the author was able to observ