may discard figure, religion never can; if it does, it is rapidly becoming philosophy, it will no longer move men. And a very comic figure it cuts during the transition. One shoe off and one shoe on, like my son John of the legend. It is as great an offence in these cases to take off the second shoe as it is not to take off the first. But in the end you must go one way or the other, you must either think or see.
Hist. I prefer to think. You will allow me, I hope, a certain low place in the rank of writers?
Poet. Have you read the pseudo-Dionysius on the Celestial Hierarchy? There are nine orders of angels; with the highest, the Seraphim, knowledge springs from love; with the second. order, the Cherubim, love springs from knowledge. If writers were arranged in like manner, I am afraid you would have to be content with being a cherub. But be easy, there are seven orders below you.
Hist. And who is above me?
Port. Accept my apologies, I am.
Hist. Because you do not speak without a parable?
Poet. Because everything I say has a meaning; I do not catalogue the non-existent, Nothing in the world is of import save as it is interpreted and new-created by passion and thought, and lofty thought and intense feeling will see more in the facts than the facts themselves. So Plato saw in a shadow on the wall an explanation of the appearances of life. So Shakespeare saw in the spring and the autumn the symbols of the beauty and the bounty of his friend. Astrology, they tell me, is dead, but in the song of Deborah the stars in their courses still fight against Sisera. Wherever profound truth is to be expressed you must have recourse to figure. You men of fact assail the truth too bluntly, she is not to be won so; when you can say all that you mean directly, be assured it is perfectly trivial.
Hist.
