308 NATURE MYTHS AND ALLEGORIES 



real people of Herodotus's history are more substantially 

 present to him than the fictitious people in Shakespeare's 

 plays ? So long as you can touch a man and hear him speak, 

 he differs indeed from the hero of an epic ; but the memory 

 of a man preserved in record differs little from the figment of 

 a man in living poetry. It may ev^en be contended that King 

 Arthur of the story-books has exerted more solid influence 

 than ever did King Arthur in the flesh, and that Hamlet is 

 more philosophically effective than Democritus or Heraclitus. 

 In fact, it is impossible to preserve that hard and fast line 

 which the understanding is apt to draw between the person- 

 ages of actual existence and the personages of poetry, allegory, 

 and fable. Only as ideals, as typifying a spiritual quality 

 which endures and works for ever in the world of men, have 

 either any true importance. This is why some German critics 

 "sought to prove that had Christ been but a myth, mankind 

 would not have been the poorer. 



There is another point of view from which one mighl 

 defend the allegories contained in antique polytheistic 

 religions. Their ideal veracity consists in this, that tl 

 spiritual qualities of humanity do not manifest themselvc 

 in individuals alone, but in races, classes, congeries of mei 

 The race, the class, the community include and determine indi- 

 viduals in no less true a sense than that in which individm 

 compose and constitute those larger aggregations. It is 

 therefore not only permissible but right and proper to regai 

 the broader species of spiritual qualities as abiding potencies 

 external to the individual, claiming his homage or abhorrenc 

 in other words, as the lords to which he is addicted, or tl 

 tyrants against which he struggles. Lust dwells in this man's 

 heart ; but lust, in a far more formidable shape, is abroad in 

 huge city. Are we logically justified in refusing actual exist 

 ence to the holiness which conserved Israel, or to the lechu 

 which ruined Corinth ? We need not be afraid lest we shouk 

 sap the roots of monotheism by attributing reality to 

 collective vices and virtues of our common humanity. 

 recognise the reality of vice and virtue in the individual 

 why not therefore on a larger scale in the species and 



