But such transactions did not avail to get the better of the discord between reality and plan which everywhere revealed itself. Hence the necessity of the _allegorical interpretation,_ so dear to the Middle Ages. This consisted substantially in placing an imaginary figure between the plan and the historical reality, a mixture of both, like a bridge, but a bridge which could be crossed only in imagination. Thus personages and events of sacred and profane history were allegorized, and subtle numerical calculations made and continually reinforced with new imaginary contributions, in order to discover correspondences and parallelisms; and not only were the ages of life and the days of creation placed on a parallel line with historical epochs, but so also were the virtues and other conceptions. Such notions are still to be found in books of devotion and in the preaching of the less acute and less modernized of sacred orators. The 'reign of nature' was also included in allegorical interpretation; and since history and metaphysic had been set at variance with one another, so in like manner was natural science set at variance with both of them, and all appeared together in allegorical forms in the medieval encyclopædias, the _Pantheons_ and _Mirrors of the World._
Notwithstanding these inevitable strayings, the new idea of history as the spiritual drama of humanity, although it inclined toward myth, yet acted with such energy as to weaken the ancient heteronomous conception of history as directed toward the administration of abstract instruction, useful in actual practice. History itself was now the teaching, the knowledge of the life of the human race from its creation upon the earth, through its struggles, up to its final state, which was indicated in the near or remote horizon. History thus became the work of God, teaching by His direct word and presence, which is to be seen and heard in every part of it. Declarations are certainly not wanting, indeed they abound, that the reading of histories is useful as counselling, and particularly as inculcating, good behaviour and abstention from evil. Sometimes it is a question of traditional and conventional declarations, at others of particular designs: but medieval historiography was not conceived, because it could not be conceived, heteronomously.