serting such things as do not suffer us to stop at the
apparent, but lead us to explore the occult truth. But it is defective in
this, that it deceives those of a juvenile age. Plato therefore neglects
fable of this kind, and banishes Homer from his Republic; because youth
on hearing such fables, will not be able to distinguish what is
allegorical from what is not.

Philosophical fables, on the contrary, do not injure those that go no
further than the apparent meaning. Thus, for instance, they assert that
there are punishments and rivers under the earth: and if we adhere to the
literal meaning of these we shall not be injured. But they are deficient
in this, that as their apparent signification does not injure, we often
content ourselves with this, and do not explore the latent truth. We may
also say that philosophic fables look to the enemies of the soul. For if
we were entirely intellect alone, and had no connection with phantasy, we
should not require fables, in consequence of always associating with
intellectual natures. If again, we were entirely irrational, and lived
according to the phantasy, and had no other energy than this, it would be
requisite that the whole of our life should be fabulous. Since, however,
we possess intellect, opinion, and phantasy, demonstrations are given
with a view to intellect; and hence Plato says that if you are willing to
energize according to intellect, you will have demonstrations bound with
adamantine chains; if according to opinion, you will have the testimony
of renowned persons; and if according to the phantasy, you have fables by
which it is excited; so that from all these you will derive advantage.

Plato therefore rejects the more tragical mode of mythologizing of the
ancient poets, who thought proper to establish an arcane theology
respecting the gods, and on this account devised wanderings, castrations,
battles and lacerations of the gods, and many other such symbols of the
truth about divine natures which this theology conceals;--this mode he
rejects, and asserts that it is in every respect most foreign from
erudition. But he considers those mythological discourses about the gods
as more persuasive and more adapted to truth, which assert that a divine
nature is the cause of all good, but of no evil, and that it is void of
all mutation, comprehending in itself the fountain of truth, but never
becoming the cause of any deception to others. For such types of theology
Socrate