But there’s a problem here, and it’s one that has the potential to unpick the entire project. It’s this: how can it be that Redcross, having slain error, subsequently goes on to fall into error. Because that’s exactly what he does, and not just once, but many times. How can he be fooled into erroneously trusting the wicked Archimago? The falsely beautiful witch Duessa? How can the false knights (such as Sansloy, Sanfoy and Sansjoy) be riding around in a world in which error is dead, defeated, no more? Those three are manifestations of specific varieties of error; but the category itself has already been abolished! How can they persist?
But the fact that they are errors doesn't mean that they are Errour. Errour is foul; Duessa is beautiful. Errour, when she dies, vomits up books and papers. She is the mother of myriad intellectual monsters. She is manifestly loathsome, and hated by everyone; the only danger to her is that she lies hidden. But with the help of Truth's counsel we meet her prepared and be victorious. The insight, I think, is a profound one. A lesser writer of allegory would assume that when Errour is conquered the problems are solved; but in reality, once you have slain Errour you have only begun your path to Holinesse. Then you must face Hypocrisie and the Falseness that leads to Vainglory ultimately Spiritual Pride. The danger of Hypocrisie is not that it lies hidden without the help of Truth but that it creates illusions about the Truth itself; that of Falseness not that it might suddenly jump out at us but that it insinuates itself into our lives and leads us to ruin. They are not universally hated or manifestly ugly; quite the contrary. Errour we can conquer on our own, at least with Truth's counsel; but we have no strength that avails against the doom into which Falseness leads us. We can only be saved from it when that part of us that was nurtured by Glory comes sweeping in like God's grace to oppose vicious Pride with virtuous Magnificence.
So the fact that Errour is called 'Errour' does not mean she is error generally, but that she is error in its crudest and most blatant and straightforward form, the kind that is foul and loathsome. In reading any allegory we must be careful not to read more into the label or name given something than the actual properties attributed to it allow. The Knight of Holinesse, for instance, is not Holinesse per se, but something in quest of it; Holinesse can only be had when we slay the old Dragon, marry Truth, and spend our time in the service of Glory. In Milton's Paradise Lost, Sin is not sin in general but the sin Satan spawns. And so forth.
