What matter, then, what myths grew up around those mighty thoughts of ancient seers?
Let others try to reconcile the Cyclic fragments, or vindicate the Catalogue of ships.
What has the philosopher lost, though the former were proved to be contradictory, and the latter interpolated?
The thoughts are there, and ours, Let us open our hearts lovingly to receive them, from whencesoever they may have come.

As in men, so in books, the soul is all with which our souls must deal; and the soul of the book is whatsoever beautiful, and true, and noble we can find in it.

It matters not to us whether the poet was altogether conscious of the meanings which we can find in him.
Consciously or unconsciously to him, the meanings must be there; for were they not there to be seen, how could we see them?
There are those among the uninitiate vulgar--and those, too, who carry under the philosophic cloak hearts still uninitiate--who revile such interpretations as merely the sophistic and arbitrary sports of fancy.
It lies with them to show what Homer meant, if our spiritual meanings be absurd; to tell the world why Homer is admirable, if that for which we hold him up to admiration does not exist in him.

Will they say that the honour which he has enjoyed for ages was inspired by that which seems to be his first and literal meaning?
And more, will they venture to impute that literal meaning to him?
can they suppose that the divine soul of Homer could degrade itself to write of actual and physical feastings, and nuptials, and dances, actual nightly thefts of horses, actual fidelity of dogs and swineherds, actual intermarriages between deities and men, or that it is this seeming vulgarity which has won for him from the wisest of every age the title of the father of poetry?
Degrading thought! fit only for the coarse and sense-bound tribe who can appreciate nothing but what is palpable to sense and sight! As soon believe the Christian scriptures, when they tell us of a deity who has hands and feet, eyes and ears, who condescends to command the patterns of furniture and culinary utensils, and is made perfect by being born--disgusting thought!--as the son of a village maiden, and defiling himself with the wants and sorrows of the lowest slaves!' 'It is false! blasphemous! The Scriptures cannot lie!' cried a voice from the farther end of the room.
It was Philammon's.

He had been listening to the whole lecture; and yet not so much listening as watching, in bewilderment, the beauty of the speaker, the grace of her action, the melody of her voice, and last, but not least, the maze of her rhetoric, as it glittered before his mind's eye like a cobweb diamonded with dew.