CHAPTER XXVII
SCRIPTURAL ALLEGORIES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES; HONORIUS OF AUTUN
Words, pictures, and other vehicles of expression are symbols of whatever they are intended to designate. A certain unavoidable symbolism also inheres in human mental processes; for the mind in knowing "turns itself to images," as Aquinas says following Aristotle; and every statement or formulation is a casting together of data in some presentable and representative form. An example is the Apostles' Creed, called also by this very name of Symbol, being a casting together, an elementary formula, of the essentials of the Christian Faith. In the same sense the "law of gravitation" or a moral precept is a deduction, induction, or gathering together into a representative symbol, of otherwise unassembled and uncorrelated experience. In the present and following chapters, however, the term symbol will be used in its common acceptation to indicate a thing, an act, or a word invested with an adventitious representative significance. All statements or expressions (through language or by means of pictures) which are intended to carry, besides their palpable meaning, another which is veiled and more spiritual, are symbolical or figurative, and more specifically are called allegories.[1]
- ↑ While an allegory is a statement having another consciously intended meaning, metaphor is the carrying over or deflection of a meaning from its primary application. According to good usage, which has kept these terms distinct, allegory implies a definite and usually a sustained intention, and suggests the spiritual ; while metaphor suggests figures of speech and linguistic changes often unconscious. Language develops through the metaphorical (not allegorical) extension or modification of the meanings of words. The original meaning sometimes is obscured (e.g. in profane or depend), and sometimes continues to
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