Prince William B.: The philosophical conceptions of William Blake 9783111400259, 9789027930712

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STUDIES IN ENGLISH Volume 100

LITERATURE

PRINCE WILLIAM Β. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS OF WILLIAM BLAKE

by

NORMAN NATHAN Florida Atlantic

University

1975 MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1975 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers ISBN 90 279 3071 6

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague

TO FRIEDA

PREFACE

The intelligent layman is often forced to choose between a scholarly work aimed at the specialist and the popularization angling for wide sales. Specialists appreciate an accurate book crammed with illuminating footnotes and innumerable asides into byways and debatable points. The popular reader, on the other hand, is often not primarily concerned with the factual, and books written for him may flirt with exaggerations, omissions, and the misleading connotations of facile phrasing. This book is directed at the reader who values accuracy but does not have the specialized background or the time to pursue all the ramifications of that accuracy. Consequently, footnotes are invisible, and documentation, except in terms of William Blake's own phrasing, is generally not provided. The arguments of scholars, important as they are to the specialist (who is only too keenly aware of the elusiveness of ultimate truth), are likewise not included. What does appear is largely the result of reading, over many years, a majority of the books and a fair number of articles written on Blake. These works have been assimilated and modified. While many of the interpretations to be presented are original, the debt to other scholars will be obvious to some readers and is hereby acknowledged to those whose background in Blakean literature is small. Essentially, the book is intended to make Blake's thought available to the perpetual student who has no special knowledge of the field.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

7

List of Abbreviations

10

Introduction

11

1. God

18

2. Man

34

3. The Contraries

51

4. Perception - Tharmas

60

5. The Emotions - Luvah

74

6. The Mental Power - Urizen

87

7. Imagination - Los-Urthona

109

8. Forgiveness of Sin

124

9. Generation

136

10. Eternity

144

Conclusion

153

Index

160

ABBREVIATIONS

A.B.E.: A.B.S.: A.L.A.: A.R.D.: A.S.D.L.: Aug.: A.W.A.: A.W.P.: D.C.: E.G.: Exp.: F.Z.: G.P.: Inn.: Jer.: Let.: L.G.: M.H.H.: Mil.: Misc.: N.N.R.: Nt.: P.S.C.: Pl.: Pub.: V.D.A.: V.L.J.:

Annotations to Bacon's Essays. Annotations to Berkeley's Siris. Annotations to Lavater's Aphorisms. Annotations to Reynolds' Discourses. Annotations to Swedenborg's Divine Love. "Auguries of Innocence". Annotations to Watson's Apology. Annotations to Wordsworth's Poems. Descriptive Catalogue. "The Everlasting Gospel". Songs of Experience. The Four Zoas. "Gates of Paradise". Songs of Innocence. Jerusalem. Letters. "Laocoön Group". The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Milton. Miscellaneous prose and poetry. 'There Is No Natural Religion". Night "Prospectus" of Blake's Chaucer, 1809. Plate. Public Address. "Visions of the Daughters of Albion". A Vision of the Last Judgment.

All references are placed in parentheses immediately following the quotation. A page number refers to the page in Geoffrey Keynes' one volume edition of Blake's writings, Blake: Complete Writings (Oxford University Press, 1966).

INTRODUCTION

. . . I, William Blake, A Mental Prince . . . {Pub.: p. 599)

What is Blake? As a lyric poet he is concerned with philosophy; as a philosopher he is concerned with the problems of daily living; as a realist who lives in the present, he is concerned with eternity. As an extreme radical he is against the use of force; as a reformer who is in favor of "to each according to his needs", he is against strong government, socialistic or otherwise; as an idealist who can hardly daydream without bringing in a moral problem, he is against codes of morality. Is it any wonder that, when these aspects are found in an individual who is at once a great poet and painter, Blake compels the admiration of men of diverse backgrounds and ideals? For many, there is sufficient similarity between themselves and Blake to convince them that they share the same ultimate aspirations. Yet, how can one person be all things to men of widely different views on life? The secret could be that Blake, speaking frequently in metaphor, can be interpreted or misinterpreted close to one's own desire. If Blake writes about seeing "the world in a grain of sand", the philosopher, the physicist, or the economist may each find Blake talking to him. But ideas that initially are manna to various incompatible palates should eventually irritate those palates, anxious to reassert individuality, unless there is some basic flavor too good to be lost. The point of attraction for us is simply that Blake sincerely loves people, and that this quality so

12

INTRODUCTION

permeates his work that, wishing to think well of ourselves, we find it difficult to reject unequivocally this man's ideas. Depending upon the degree of our willingness to admire concepts hostile to our own, we accept Blake for what he is and may reinterpret or ignore what is too disturbing to us. Throughout this book you will meet with Blake, the happy husband with no trace of scandal attached to his name, favoring free love; the deeply religious man, avidly proclaiming his belief in a personal God, blaming religion for many of man's problems; the patriot who loved England and made it the location of Eden, while castigating governments and politics. Nothing startling will be found in a brief sketch of this unusual man's life which is, in fact, not more eventful than one might expect from almost seventy years of living. William Blake was born in 1757 of poor but not impoverished parents. As a child he showed unmistakable signs of being an individual. In his early teens he was apprenticed to the profession of engraving. When he was twenty, his first book of poems was published under the title, Poetical Sketches. At the age of twenty-five he married Catherine Boucher, of whom it may be said that she was worthy of him. Blake spent his life busily engaged in the arts of painting and poetry. He earned his livelihood, perhaps it should be said that he eked out his existence, by small fees received from engraving and from the sale of his own paintings. Blake died in 1827 and is reported to have departed from his earthly body with a song on his lips. Of Blake's poems it may be said that they range in form from the conventional to the radical. In general, the poems he wrote in his early years are conventional in form, while his later poetry could possibly claim for Blake the position of one of the earliest users of free verse in English. However, whatever form he uses, whatever depth of thought he expresses, Blake never for a moment forgets that he is writing poetry. There is one distinction between Blake and most other great English poets. Poets hold it as their stock in trade to explore sympathetically, even favorably, any and all of the moods, emotions, and thoughts of men. Thus, when Milton writes the

INTRODUCTION

13

poem "II Penseroso" and also writes "L'Allegro", no one accuses him of inconsistency in praising both the joyful and the meditative life. Each man has moments both of joy and meditation. Tennyson rejoices with the active man in "Ulysses" and suns himself with the lethargic man in "The Lotus Eaters". Shakespeare seems to have used the most glowing language to describe practically everything from life to death, from sin to piety. Blake, however, does not do this. If the Poetical Sketches are excluded, written as they were in Blake's immaturity, it will be discovered that Blake invariably praises what is moral and dispraises what he considers to be immoral. And nothing is too unimportant for him to fit it under one of these two headings, for it is doubtful if Blake ever drew a thoughtless breath. All this does not mean that he is a moralizing poet, for this is the opposite of the truth. One can read page after page of Blake's poetry without noticing the underlying morality for the simple reason that he is, as stated above, first and foremost a great poet. But if the reader does perceive the philosophy within the poetry, he will discover that Blake never speaks well of the lethargic, he never has a good word for death, and he never praises both the negative and affirmative sides of a question unless he can marry them as mutually helpful contraries. Even such a poem as "The Clod and the Pebble" (Exp.: p. 211), apparently presenting both sides of a situation, leaves no dispute as to what Blake is fighting for. While one of his poetic characters may state a view disagreeable to the poet, there is still never any doubt that Blake has his own ideas on the subject. The path of his philosophy may resemble an obstacle race, but it is not a maze with many exits. Nevertheless, Blake's use of language is often sufficiently unique to create an appearance of inconsistency. One example of his linguistic peculiarities will suffice. The word "God", for instance, is always understood as meaning some all-powerful being. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake reverses the usual order of things by praising the devil and Jesus while he speaks unfavorably of "god". In his later prophetic writings Blake praises God and castigates Satan.

14

INTRODUCTION

It is a simple matter tor the reader who is content to judge a man by the clothes he wears to say that Blake is inconsistent. However, a little investigation and thought show that Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, actually condemned John Milton's revengeful god of Paradise Lost and praised the energetic devil of Milton's poem. Blake is never impressed by nomenclature. To call the devil a god does not make him one, and it is Blake's claim that Milton did just that. Thus, Blake will love the real God under any name and will not hesitate to point his wrath at evil in the highest disguises. This kind of language problem will occur many times in his poetry. However, the difficulty is not great to a sympathetic reader, for Blake always leaves ample evidence to show when he is using a word in an unusual manner. Although Blake divided his time between visual and poetic art, he still produced a goodly amount of poetry in his seventy busy years. It is of little use to maintain or to deny that many additional writings by Blake have been lost or destroyed by puritanical inheritors of his manuscripts. The fact is that what remains of his poetry, and definite proof that he did write more than that which remains is not forthcoming, extends over the entire period of his adult life and contains enough to enable the inquirer to discover a workable system of philosophy hidden within its pages. Since this book is attempting to present Blake's philosophical concepts in their most highly developed form, the chronological maturing of these ideas will not be traced. Of course, Blake changed his viewpoints from time to time, though this changing seems more in the nature of refining, expanding, and blending together rather than letting go of one plank to grab on to another. Unquestionably there is value in studying the genesis and maturation of Blake's thoughts. So there is value in studying the emergence of Euclid's theorems. There is, however, a value perhaps greater in the theorems themselves - the what rather than the why and when. This book will concentrate, therefore, on what Blake thought in the same sense that a geometry book concentrates on what Euclid thought.

INTRODUCTION

15

The order in what follows will be in terms of organizing Blake's ultimate concepts and will begin with a consideration of God's nature. Such a starting point has the advantage of presenting at the very beginning just what Blake considers to be the essential nature of reality. To him God is everything, and to understand Blake's thought it is first necessary to know his ideas on the Deity. The next obvious thing to do, after explaining the nature of God, is to explain the nature of man. Then it is possible to show the connection between God and man. After that, a more detailed examination of the various aspects of man will be presented and conclusions will be drawn as to ethical conduct. Finally, the discussion will close with an examination of the reason for man's being on earth and what man will do when he returns to eternity. To integrate the above into definite concepts, this book begins by showing that Blake considers God to be the essence of all reality. Man is formed out of God's own body and spirit, and man's nature, like God's nature, is primarily imaginative. This divine imagination has four fundamental aspects: it can think, it can feel, it has form, and it has the imaginative ability to see the relationship among all things and create new relationships. God and man are two ends of the same thing. God is immanent in all men, and differs from man in that He is all men. But each man, like God, is eternal in his own individual characteristics. Thus, the fundamental and underlying reality which does not change is God and man, while what the various aspects of the imagination create is a transitory, but not illusionary, reality that may change endlessly. Blake discusses the nature of man's aspects and maintains that all perceptions, everything that can be perceived by any type of perceiving organ, can be said to have an existence commensurate with the quality of the perceiving organism. However, when anyone thinks that the perception has a reality independent of the perceiver, then a form of idol worship takes place, and man becomes the tool of some enslaving idea. Blake draws a similar picture in dealing with the rational aspect of man. By worshipping reason and the products of reason as ends rather

16

INTRODUCTION

than tools, man creates codes of morals which do not promote the individual's benefit, but sacrifice humanity on the altar of objectivity. The third aspect, the power to feel, falls into similar paths. Society, when the perceptions are worshipped, becomes a football bruised by the boots of the narrow moralist and the libertine. Only the fourth aspect, the imagination, is fit to rule, for the imagination is a creative ability that stems from God. Thus, Blake's ethics resolves itself into one rule: use your imagination. In the application of that rule there are two particularly desirable activities: creating works of art and forgiving the sins of others. Man was put on earth so that he might further develop the Divine imagination within him, and will, at the close of his life, return to the world of eternity from whence he came. This is true not only of good men, but of all men, for the evil are evil only because of faulty imagination, but they cannot be evil in their eternal, individual, imaginative identities. This, insofar as generalities can approach truth, is the basic philosophy of Wlliam Blake. An elaboration of these views, and proof that they are Blake's views, is the subject of the ten chapters to follow. As a caution, it is necessary to inform any reader not familiar with Blake's poetry that Blake never wrote anything that resembles a conventional philosophical treatise. The ideas that will herein be attributed to Blake are enclosed in his poetry and in a few prose comments which he makes. These ideas do not follow each other in Blake in any arrangement approaching the arrangement in this book. Let it be emphasized, Blake wrote poetry and not philosophy. However, underlying all his poetical and prose writings there was a basic philosophy in which Blake believed. And he does constantly make use of his philosophical concepts as the structural basis for his poems. Throughout the book stress will be placed not on the abstract presentation of Blake's philosophy but on the application of his ideas in daily life. Blake does not, as do many philosophers, leave his thoughts when he leaves his study. With some few people, living and philosophy are inextricably mixed. Add a full measure of love for people and you have the framework on

INTRODUCTION

17

which William Blake erects his system that is intended not to fill one's mind or found a school, but to allow the reader the same privilege that Blake insists upon for himself. He said that he would not be enslaved by another man's system. We, too, must create our own systems, and, like our stimulating friend in the following pages, be princes only of our own created principalities.

1.

GOD

William Blake was born on the 28th of November, 1757, and was baptized on the 11th of December from the Grinling Gibbon's font in the Wren Church, St. James's Westminster. He was married to Catherine Boucher in the newly rebuilt parish church of Battersea, on Sunday, 18 August 1782. At his own wish he was buried according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England in Bunhill Fields, on Friday, 17 August 1827. These are the only known occasions, in a life of nearly seventy years, on which Blake took part in the services of the established Church. As a boy, his apprenticeship to the engraver Basire had led him to make drawings from the monuments in Westminster Abbey, but during the services the vergers turned the key on him. There is, in fact, no evidence, other than the three bare facts already listed, that he ever went to church, and indeed, J. T. Smith, a contemporary and acquaintance of Blake, wrote in 1828: Ί admit he did not for the last forty years attend any place of Divine worship.' J.G.Davies,TAe Theology of William Blake (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), p. 8.

The extent of wisdom is the knowledge of God. Vain indeed, as even the atheist may agree, are all man's labors if such toil has no oasis, no source of being beyond the power of the body of man. Yet it is this body which occupies so much of man's time, while the individual who devotes his days and nights to the study of God, of reality, is given rather less attention than the average movie star. This may be partially justified as far as the ascetic,

GOD

19

withered philosopher is concerned. But William Blake, who beheld possibilities for more joy on this earth than many a preacher promises for the zenith of the seventh heaven, should not be neglected, least of all by those who would enjoy the goods of this world, for Blake sees no conflict between joy and righteousness. He prefers sexual enjoyment to chastity just as he prefers God to the devil. It is no accident that Blake is all-inclusive in his interests. His very conception of God's nature shows that he felt that nothing was beneath his consideration. He writes, "God is in the lowest effects as well as in the highest c a u s e s . . . every thing on earth is the word of God & in its essence is God." (A.L.A.: p. 87) God is in everything and everything is a part of God. Many people have said this, or something like it, on various Sunday mornings during the year and have then been content, after this brief grace, to dig into the unspiritual enjoyment of the good meal available to those able to get it. But Blake was a man of keen insight with an intense desire for knowledge. He could no more refrain from exploring the nature of divinity than Moses on Mount Sinai could have refrained from asking to see God's glory. If God is everything, it is necessary to know the godliness in each thing. No all-inclusive or beyond-description formula can satisfy the thinking man who is in search of knowledge. Definiteness and concreteness are as necessary in stating spiritual things as they are needed in paying a tax bill. That God is everything may be a fundamental truth, but what are the natures of the individual things that comprise the divine? This question has been answered in countless ways, the attribute school being one of the most popular. God is usually described, perhaps not so fabulously as an ancient Oriental potentate, by some twenty or forty qualities, each presumed to represent what is all-good. Attributes or qualities, however, are still far from concrete. To say that God is merciful, just, allpowerful, etc. would be nice indeed if only people of different religions, or even those of neighboring pews, could agree as to what is mercy, what is justice, and what is power.

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GOD

When a preacher speaks of God's goodness, it takes a well selected example to bring home the meaning of the abstraction "goodness". To tell the new generation that Babe Ruth was a superlative batsman is not so convincing as to point out that one year the great Ruth hit an average of one home run for each three games in which he played. It is the unfortunate habit of man to be down to earth about earthy things, but to be all up in the air about spiritual things. Blake, a true scientist in the realm of spirit, writes, For thus the Gospel Sir Isaac confutes: "God can only be known by his Attributes;" (E.G.: p. 752) The Gospels tell of concrete events. Blake's answer as to the nature of God, despite its logical conflict with existing theologies, is often at first glance what one might expect the average man to put forth. First of all, God is no universal mind, nor a life force, nor Nature with a capital. God is a person with the personality of all persons; He is not the fish-frying god of Green Pastures, but He does see with all men, hear with all men, and is stirred by the emotions that move all men. Lavater wrote, "He, who adores an impersonal God, has none; and, without guide or rudder, launches on an immense abyss that first absorbs his powers, and next himself." Blake says about this, "Most superlatively beautiful & most affectionately Holy & pure; would to God that all men would consider it." (A.L.A.: p. 82) In fact the nature of God is inextricably personal for the simple reason that God, being the essence of everything on earth, is also the staff out of which man is created. Blake depicts Jesus as saying: "I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me; Lo! we are One, forgiving all Evil, Not seeking recompense. Ye are my members . ..." (1er.: PI. 4, p. 622) There can be no doubt that Blake saw an essential unity in the nature of God and man. Elsewhere he writes, "But God is a

GOD

21

man, not because he is so perciev'd by man, but because he is the creator of man." (A.S.D.L.: p. 90) Man's knowledge of this personal God, then, can be an intimate knowledge. Since God is a man, man is part of God, and he who understands his own nature may thereby understand at least part of the nature of God. For example, what is Divine Love? It is the same emotion, albeit more intense, as that which arises in man when he loves someone. The divine passions are human passions and not rationalized attributes. That is why Blake in his Songs of Innocence conceives of the child as being so close to God, for the child, by experiencing his natural feelings devoid of all rationalization and priestly interpretation, shares the emotions of God and is one with God. Actually man's knowledge of God is limited by the man himself. "Man can have no idea of any thing greater than Man, as a cup cannot contain more than its capaciousness." (A.S.D.L.: p. 90) This sentence would imply that each man sees God according to his individual possibilities. Blake writes, God Appears & God is Light To those poor Souls who dwell in Night, But does a Human Form Display To those who Dwell in Realms of day. (Aug.: p. 434) All this does not mean that Blake considers that the problem of God's nature is unsolvable, that all one can say is that God is a personal God, and that there will be as many opinions about Him as there are individuals. While it is impossible for a person to know all about God, just as it is impossible to know everything, it is still true that each man can perceive certain definite characteristics of God. Not all men are equally skilled, but, while no one knows all that God can create, everyone may know that He does create. So, too, other characteristics of God may be seen, although the individual may not realize the full extent of these characteristics. Blake warns the reader not to look far afield in an effort to see God, for a knowledge of God must be obtained through a knowledge of man. He underlines, " . . . where is the Father of

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men to be seen but in the most perfect of his children?" "This is true worship", Blake annotates. (A.L.A.: p. 82) If you want to know God, try to understand the godly man, or, as Blake would state it, try to understand Jesus as he actually was and not as he is misinterpreted by the various religious sects. If a scientist wishes to discover the nature of the atom he may reason and theorize about it. But he knows that the only way to get at its nature is to see the atom, to split the atom. The man who wishes to know God may get an approximation from books or from thought. But no amount of mental calisthentics can take the place of first hand observation. And it is possible to get such observation by studying man. In fact, this is the only way to get such knowledge since, Blake says, "God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men." (M.H.H.: p. 155) This unusual sentence means, simply, that there is no entity, not even one physical or spiritual thing, that can be said to be God alone. God's own being is in His creations, and there is no faculty that can be said to be pure God except as that faculty exists in an existing being. This conception of God is more strange than it is difficult to understand. It can readily be agreed that all material substances must exist in some form. There is no silver, for instance, that can be said to exist and not have form. There is no "pure" silver that cannot be seen, weighed, or measured. All material substances must have the properties of their special natures as well as other related properties. This plurality of properties holds true on the spiritual plane as well. What kind of emotion is there that can exist without being perceived or felt? Who can think a thought and yet not know it? What kind of god is there that has power and yet need not have a perception of that power? Now, the entity that perceives and the entity that is being perceived are, strictly speaking, not one and the same entity. Furthermore, neither one can be said to exist without the other, for how can something be able to perceive and at the same time perceive nothing? Just as the silver must exist in some form, so God must exist in some creation. A question remains. Just why does Blake say that God exists

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only in existing beings or men? The reason is that God, always an active and creating entity, must have His existence in an active and creating entity, since passiveness cannot contain activity. God, then, exists in all men. The existence of the individual body may be said to depend upon the existence of the individual organs of that body. Without heart, lungs, a brain, etc., the body of man would be no more. To Blake, men are the organs of God, and God acts through His organs, or men. This would imply, among other things, that mankind is as eternal as is God. For if man ceased to exist, God would cease to exist, and this is an impossibility as will soon be shown. The casual reader may think by this time that Blake has really proved God out of existence. It may seem that Blake, by making each man an expression of God, has in effect done away with The God who claims to be each man's brother and friend. After all, to call the union of all men "god" is merely to play blind man's buff in the realm of abstraction. But Blake's God is far from abstract. Blake writes of this personal God, "It is the God in all that is our companion & friend, for our God himself says: 'you are my brother, my sister & my mother. . . . ' " (A.L.A.: p. 87) A divinity that talks to his existing beings can hardly be an abstraction. But, and the objection may well be raised, is not Blake sharing in the ordinary human frailty - inconsistency? On one hand Blake speaks of a living God, while on the other hand he appears to portray God as a fiction of language whereby the plural of man becomes the word "god". In order to show that there is a real and meaningful God, therefore, it is necessary to show that the Divine can be distinguished as something different from any individual man. Man knows that his spirit remains alive while his consciousness as a man is lost in sleep. This in itself suggests, but does not prove, the possibility that there is some force other than the individual that keeps his spirit from extinction while his body, the earthly receptacle of that spirit, lies dormant. Better proof of the distinctiveness of God, however, exists in a consideration of the emotions of man. If a man feels pain, he cannot transmit

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that physical sensation to someone else. If a man experiences the emotion of pity for someone, he can easily transmit that emotion to his neighbor. Love in one person awakens love in another. This fact, that emotions in one man can arouse similar feelings in another, does show that emotions have a unique character of their own, a character which, although existing only in men, is still something different from the individual man. Thus, it would seem that the emotions themselves of love, pity, and joy have a reality aside from the persons in whom they make themselves apparent. And these emotions are part of the body, soul, and spirit of God. For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God, our father d e a r , . . . . (Inn.: p. 117)

Blake does not say that God is only the emotions, but he does say that part of God is the emotions. True, Blake follows the above lines with And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is Man, his child and care.

Yet, this is not being inconsistent with Blake's thesis that God and man are not one and the same entity. While all men experience emotion, the power to do so exists regardless of any particular man. So it is with every ability that man has; and these abilities, although not the individual expression of them, are God. Blake does write, "Thou art a Man, God is no more." (E.G.: p. 750) But this is just as if he had said that John Jones is a man and you are no more. That would not make you and John Jones one and the same person, even though both of you may be activated by the same imaginative spirit. So far, then, the nature of God is defined as a personal being who exists only in men and who is also something different from the individual man. The characteristic of God that is paramount in Blake is the idea that God is imagination. If you were to put Mount Olympus, Shangri-La, a million dollars, and ten of the world's most beautiful actresses in one corner of the room and

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the realm of the imagination in another corner of that room, Blake would go straight towards the imagination and not even feel that the other side represented temptation. To Blake the imagination was the power and glory of God and man. There can be no doubt that Blake identifies God with the imagination. He writes, "Imagination is the Divine Body in Every Man." (A.B.S.: p. 773) Since God is the divine body in every man, it follows that Blake is here using imagination as a synonym for God. Note this man's skill in hitting the target. The religious of every age, not satisfied with the word "god" any more than the Hebrews were content with a single substitute for the ineffable name, "Jehovah", have addressed and referred to the Lord by all sorts of adornments. Creator, master of the universe, almighty, saviour, king of kings, and supreme being are only a few of the countless meanderings that have been used to speak of God. Blake, a master swordsman of language, makes one sure thrust: God is Imagination. Any man who considers the spiritual world as the underlying reality should easily realize that King David in his psalms did not compliment God so much as William Blake does in calling God imagination. Ponder at the word; the importance Blake attached to it will be amply shown throughout this book. Imagination suggests action, creation, invention, insight, visualization. These words are the stock in trade of every good artist. In the world of art, novice and master alike are praised to a major if not to a complete extent according to the goodness of their imaginations. "One Power alone makes a Poet": says Blake, "Imagination, The Divine Vision." (A.W.P.: p. 782) God is all imagination, God is the supreme poet, God is the infinite and eternal imaginator whose prowess and existence are expressed in the grandeur of his imaginations. Imagination to some people may seem to be an unsubstantial and fanciful thing, no more potent than the word "creation" which a dress designer often applies to a new arrangement of frills and cloth. A reading of Biographia Literaria will show how magnificent Blake's contemporary, Coleridge, thought the imagination to be. Blake himself drives home the substantial-

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ness, the essential reality of the imagination when he writes, A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the modem philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour, or a nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce. He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all. (D.C.: p. 576)

Imagination to Blake is not the vague goddess of the symbolistic poet any more than it is the weird mixture of brown suit, green felt hat, navy blue shirt and red plaid tie. Imagination is like the precise thrust of the skilled brain surgeon; it sees better than the eye and hears better than the ear and is not to be confused with the blurred images of those who think that imagination is what the eye sees through smoky glasses. The art of music may be used to give a striking proof of Blake's contention. An accurate ear may hear certain notes and identify them without much ado. But, place a few imaginatively conceived notes together and a result occurs that could not have been suspected from the individual character of those notes when sounded separately. Besides, the result is more distinct and precise than the individual tones seem to warrant. Watch an audience as the first seven or eight notes of a great and familiar composition are played, and the proof of this last sentence will be apparent. And this should be so since, according to Blake, it is God Himself who is arousing His own spirit, imagination, in the listeners. It is worth noting a few examples of Blake's use of the word imagination. He writes, "Every Thing has its own Harmony & Proportion, Two Inferior Qualities in it. For its Reality is Its Imaginative Form." (A.B.S.: p. 774) Since God is imagination, it is simple to understand why the imaginative form of a thing is its essential reality. Again, there appears, "Vision or Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably." (V.L.J.: p. 604) Thus, there is no truth other than the imagination. The products of science as well as the products of art are the result of imagination. Just as the poet

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endeavors to find truth in words, so the scientist endeavors to find truth in materials, materials whose essential nature is the product of God or of imagination. . . . . the Oak dies as well as the Lettuce, but Its Eternal Image & Individuality never dies, but renews by its seed . . . . (V.L.J.: p. 605)

The reason that the Eternal Image of the oak never dies is that this image is part of God Himself. The oak and the lettuce, visual perceptions of the eyes of man, have no greater permanence than the mortal eye. But the imaginative oak, stronger than the visual tree, lives forever with God. All action is thought of as having a beginning and an end. Since Blake identifies imagination with what eternally exists, it might seem as if Blake's conception of imagination has taken the very soul out of the word by removing it from the realm of action. This, however, is not so, for Blake regards imagination, God's nature, as being active in the extreme. Blake, making himself one of the actors in Jerusalem, says, . . . I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination.

(Jer.\ Pl. 5. p. 623)

Imagination, the Bosom of God, is capable of containing an eternal expansion within itself. If the imagination does expand forever, it is necessarily an active rather than a passive being. Now there seems to be some impasse here. If imagination is a representative of what eternally exists really and unchangeably, how can imagination still expand forever? If a head of cabbage grows larger, it cannot be said that the larger head existed even when the size of the cabbage was smaller. If something expands or grows, that part of the something which is the growth surely did not exist always. Such conflict, based as it is on the element of time, can be resolved. Blake, although writing before Einstein's relativity as well as theories by other modern physicists, questioned the

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validity of time as an independent entity, and regarded time merely as an earth property. Eternity to Blake was not limitless time, but was something that had nothing to do with time. Time changes, but "Eternity", says Blake, "Exists". (V.L.J.: p. 614) Imagination is a representation of that which exists because a thing, by the very act of being imagined, does exist eternally. The question is not whether one eternal thing existed before another eternal thing. The question is whether everything that exists in the expanded form of the imagination does also exist in a less expanded form of that imagination. Many biologists assert that a man living today existed in his essential character in the sperm or ovum of his remotest ancestor. Since the imagination is an active, expanding, all-powerful entity, or God, what exists in a larger form potentially existed in the imaginative power in a smaller form. Thus, imagination is what eternally exists and imagination does expand eternally in its perceptions within the bosom of God. It may seem to some that if imagination is all-powerful, it should not expand for the very reason that it is always expanded beyond the limits of utmost expansion. This may appear to be just a lot of words, but some ancients, and far too many moderns, frequently willing to discuss the non-existent, have a name for it - infinity. An infinite quantity is held to be a quantity greater than any possible number that could be assigned or thought of. Therefore, in line with this concept of infinity, an all-powerful imagination cannot expand because, since it is already beyond any conceivable expansion, it is already infinitely expanded. Remember that according to much present day understanding, infinity plus one is still infinity, so to say that imagination is expanding beyond its infinity would be, according to these thinkers, to say nothing at all. The difficulty with all of this is essentially a language problem. It can be agreed, whatever theory of the origin of language that one believes in, that language did originate with the association of certain sound-symbols (words) in connection with specific objects. Even highly advanced words such as "mind", "thought", and "ability" represent concrete things. On the

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other hand, there is a class of words whose real meaning is dissipated when these words are used as mere abstractions. "Infinity" is just such a word. No doubt in times past men thought of numbers in increasingly large quantities and desired a term that would express the concrete idea of a quantity of great magnitude. If by infinity is meant a number of great magnitude, then the word has definite meaning. But if by infinity is meant a number beyond all conceivable numbers, then the word has no meaning at all, for it attempts to define something that cannot be seen or attained, something that, by definition, cannot be proved to exist. One need not quibble with practical mathematics any more than one would quibble with a carpenter for using a hammer. But, in a philosophical discussion of God it is necessary to be as concrete and definite as possible and not resort to tricks of language. God, to Blake, is infinite. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake says through the mouth of Isaiah, "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing. . . . " (M.H.H.: p. 153) That is, God's nature can be seen in the infinity of all things. The nature of God is the nature of the rose, of the automobile, of yourself. This infinity of everything, however, must not be thought of as meaning that everything has powers beyond description and limit. Blake's conception of the infinite is that of something having expanding limits. There is always some difficulty in the concept of God as having no limit, for all knowledge or existence demands limitation. Blake's conception of God avoids this problem for he sees God as a power who has limits, but whose limits are eternally expanding. It need not be thought that Blake's God is rather weak as a divinity just because He has limits, even if these limits are called expanding. Actually, Blake's God is a much greater divinity than most men have dreamt of. To give an analogy on a small scale, a normal man can see and enjoy one moving picture at a time. The man who could enjoy two pictures at once could rightly be thought of as having an ability rare indeed. However,

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use the word "infinity" as some present day thinkers use it, and then conceive of a situation in which a man could see at one time an infinite number (a number greater than any assigned number) of pictures. This talented person deserves only pity. For he, having seen the infinite movie show, will never again enjoy another four star feature. Raise this situation to the divine level. Conceive of God as capable of enjoying not only an infinity of movies but an infinity of the infinity of things. In this case, to use Blakean phraseology, God would be enjoying the same dull round over and over again. The implication in all this is that God Himself is much better off with limits than without them. All this is not blasphemy. To say that God is infinite is to mean that He can continue eternally to imagine expanding, greater things. Thus, God's true greatness is seen by Blake to lie in the power of God, of imagination, to expand eternally in this imagination. Blake's conception of God is more sublime, not less so, just because he did not indulge in clothing the Divine with abstract, if high-sounding, nonsense. It is rather important, the reader will agree, to find out just how good, of how much benefit, God is to man. While the individual may have nothing to say about his being here, there, or anywhere, it is of interest to him to find out how he stands. Is the imagination essentially good? While the average theology preaches that God is good, ancient religions often considered God to be terrifying. In fact, contemporary religions, stressing that God is just, often give the devotee plenty to worry about. To Blake it was impossible for God to be anything but good to man, even to the most depraved individual. There is no divine justice; there is only divine compassion for the sinners. "Why, then", Blake asks in a letter to John Flaxman, "should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality. The Lord our father will do for us & with us according to his Divine will for our Good." (Let.·, p. 802) Note that Blake considers divine will to act for man's good. Moreover, there is a logical necessity in Blake's theology for God to do nothing but good. Since God exists only in men, evil

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to man would be self-harm on the part of God. And since God is all imagination, all creation, it is impossible for Him to desire self-harm which would be an act of destruction. Some may assert that although God is creation, He may still do evil to one man if that evil would benefit many men. Such a concept would place limitations on God (a God whose very nature prohibits the admission of defeat even for one individual) equivalent to those imposed upon Him by all who believe in predestination. If God is imagination, nay, if He is all-powerful, He will not destroy even the worst of men. Rather, it is His constant effort to make each man good and to rejoice at the return of each strayed sheep. Empire may be built over the bodies of the dead, but the kingdom of God is built with the souls of the living. Although God is good, it must not be assumed that the divine is a sort of Santa Claus and Merlin combined who goes about performing a needed miracle here and a bit of magic there. The simple truth is that God performs no miracles if by a miracle is meant the temporary lapse of what is natural and true. For instance, God cannot make a runner win a race by transporting him bodily to the tape with seraph wings, and no divinity can turn a wooden stick into a living snake. Such occurrences are, to be mild, disorderly and chaotic. Blake says that, "No Omnipotence can act against order." ( A.L.A. : p. 78) Omnipotence, God, means all the power that is. As for the word "order", there is no such thing in the abstract. Each thing has its own natural order. In arithmetic it is one, two, three; in living it is childhood, manhood, old age. Omnipotence has an order for each of its powers. Omnipotence cannot act against any of these orders for the obvious reason that omnipotence, being order, cannot act against itself any more than something can be and not be at the same time. It is interesting to note that, while a disordered man is held in low esteem, disorder in God is often held to be the proof of his greatness! Blake, a lover of the Bible, never believed in the supposed ability of God to perform miracles of the stick-snake type. He writes,

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Jesus could not do miracles where unbelief hindered, hence we must conclude that the man who holds miracles to be ceased puts it out of his own power to ever witness one. The manner of a miracle being performed is in modern times considered as an arbitrary command of the agent upon the patient, but this is an impossibility, not a mirade, neither did Jesus ever do suoh a miracle. (A.W.A.: p. 391)

Thus, Blake denies the possibility of any miracle that would represent an arbitrary act on the part of God. After all, much of what was formerly called by the formidable word miracle is now known by the technical word psychotherapy. The method of Jesus, to cure physical ills by faith, is in frequent use today. Practically all medical men agree that the state of mind of the patient will partly determine his ability to get well. The miracles that Blake believes in are imaginative acts, the miracle of putting words together and writing a poem, or the miracle of arranging some bars of music and composing a serenade. In fact, miracle to Blake means the conspicuous and praiseworthy use of the imagination. "Is it a greater miracle", he asks, "to feed five thousand men with five loaves than to overthrow all the armies of Europe with a small pamphlet?" (A.W.A.: p. 391) Thus, ordinary men, if Thomas Paine could be called such, can perform miracles since they can display great imagination. Blake's conception of God's nature, as shown so far, is that God is a personal being of whom man can have an intimate knowledge. This God exists only in men and is still something different from the individual man. The difference is partially expressed in saying that God is the emotions permeating man. But for a full statement of this difference it is necessary to consider God as Imagination. Imagination, most potent of words, is an active representation of what exists eternally. The imagination of God not only exists, but also expands its limits forever. The man who can see this infinite expansion in all things, this ceaseless growth of imagination's limits, can see God in all things. Blake's God of the imagination shows powers beyond the scope of the gods of most religions, for imagination casts off no one and is for the good of each and every man. There is nothing

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supernatural or superstitious about God's nature since God is above all confusion. Words themselves, no matter with what pains one selects them, are often all too feeble when they attempt to define or point out the nature of something. There is probably nothing, on the other hand, so convincing as a compilation of examples selected from actual events. Weighty volumes have been written about the causes, attitudes, philosophies, etc. that brought about the American Revolution, but the important thing is the fact that this revolution took place. So it must be with the nature of God. The full realization of Blake's conception of God's nature cannot come merely by reading a definition of this nature. The true picture must come when it is seen how God's nature affects this event, and this, and this. Such is the story of the next nine chapters.

2.

MAN

The remarkable and heartening thing about Blake is that, in spite of all the buffets he got from life, he never fell away from his early emotion of awe at the wonder of man's existence. He never tried to escape into a Manless universe, as Wordsworth and Byron did. Man is his proper study every time and all the time. All his efforts are directed towards raising Man towards a perception of his infinite potentialities. His aim is to untwist the human spirit: and that is why his own longer poems go through such extraordinary convolutions. He is tracing the dark labyrinths of the human brain. He is analysing and assessing the twists and distortions men and women receive in their childhood and carry with them through life. And he is trying to show a way out of the labyrinth. Bernard Blackstone, English Blake (Cambridge: University Press, 1949), p. 441.

The fundamental distinction between man and God is that, while God is in all men, each man has an individuality of his own. God is everything, but William Shakespeare is not Robert Frost. Blake writes, "Man varies from Man more than Animal from Animal of different Species." (A.R.D.: p. 470) Smith differs from Jones more than a lion differs from a mouse. Blake's insistence upon the individual identity of each man is thoroughgoing, for he writes, I do not believe that Rafael taught Mich. Angelo, or that Mich. Angelo taught Rafael, any more than I believe that the Rose teaches the Lilly

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how to grow, or the Apple tree teaches the Pear tree how to bear Fruit. I do not believe the tales of Anecdote writers when they militate against Individual Character. ( A.R.D .: p. 453)

This stress on the individual identity of each man is a necessity to Blake. Otherwise it would be difficult for him to distinguish between man and God, between the individual identity and the cementing unity. A similar problem occurs in many everyday things. The game of baseball consists of pitched balls, hits, runs, errors, bases, players, etc. A run can easily be differentiated from baseball by the simple fact that it is only a part of baseball. It would be absurd to say that a run does not differ from baseball just because it is a part of and dependent for its existence upon baseball. The problem of distinguishing between God and man is largely a problem of particularization. Someone who sees a player make a base hit could say, "This is baseball." Just so, a man looking at Tom Brown could report that he had seen God. But such inept use of language is hardly the mark of a discerning person. Tom Brown, whatever else he may be, is Tom Brown. Thus, the question of whether one is speaking of God or of the individual man resolves itself into the fact of whether one is speaking of an individual part or of the underlying unity. The former is man, the latter is God. God is both unity and plurality, but each man is not in himself the essential unity of everything. Man, the individual, is united with all men through the spirit of God present in all men. To construct a simile on a homely scale, everything is like a comb. The individual teeth are connected to each other by means of the basic part of the comb, which basic part, out of its own body, gives form and being to the individual teeth. Since man does have this individual identity, it is possible for him to do things that God, as essence, cannot do. God, being imagination, must always act creatively. Man, although receiving his soul's blood out of the body of God, can behave in a way that is not creative, almost as a fish, through the living power that he absorbs from the water he swims in, can use that power

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to flip himself upon the death of dry land. Man cannot totally destroy himself, for man is basically composed of God's imagination. But man, in his individuality, may look away from God's direction and thereby weaken his own life powers. Additional aspects of this subject are discussed in the chapter on "Imagination". Man, like God, is imagination, for man is in God and of God. Blakes writes, "Man is All Imagination. God is Man & exists in us & we in him." (A.B.S.: p. 775) Just as God is the supreme creator or artist, so each man is an artist in his own individual identity. This does not mean that each man is expected to write poetry or paint pictures. Any man, acting to the extent of his true abilities, can be an artist. Shelley and the man who built the best mousetrap are both artists beyond the scope of the poetry of William Hayley. The fact that each man is imagination gives further evidence of Blake's conception of the grandeur of God. Each man, being imagination, is capable of infinite creations, that is, of creations whose limits are constantly expanding. Since God comprises all men, and God is infinite in each man, a simple mathematical formula could be used to express the power of God. God's power is infinitely multiplied by the number of existing men. For some curious reason, infinity times a larger number is the same, to the mathematician, as infinity times one. However, even the most abstract logician has difficulty in maintaining that an infinity of oranges plus an infinity of apples is no greater than a infinity of apples alone. So it is with God; God is able to expand eternally according to the expanding limits in each individual man, for each individual man is made up of his own individual variety of the infinite imagination. An essential of the imagination of man is its everlastingness. As said before, God will not suffer the death or destruction of even one man. But it must not be thought that Blake is using any spurious logic at this point. Blake does not mean that each man lives on in his children, nor does he mean that each man at death has his spirit absorbed into God's spirit and personally disappears. What lives eternally is the individual identity. There

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is no dull Nirvana into which an individual goes at the death of the body. When a man leaves this earth he retains his individual capacity for happiness. Blake wrote to George Cumberland shortly before his own death, Flaxman is Gone & we must All soon follow, everyone to his Own Eternal House, Leaving the Delusive Goddess Nature & her Laws to get into Freedom from all Law of the Members into The Mind, in which every one is King & Priest in his own House. God send it so on Earth, as it is in Heaven. (Let.: p. 879)

Every one to his Own Eternal House shows that Blake undoubtedly believes in the eternal existence of the individual identity. Now just what is the nature of this eternal imagination that is in each man? Blake has left no shortage of material concerning the activities of the aspects of man's imagination. He has reproduced each of these aspects in symbolic characters who make war and love in his three longest dramatic poems, The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem. The imagination has four essential aspects. "Four Mighty Ones are in every Man", Blake says. (F.Z.: Nt. 1, p. 264) Blake calls these four mighty ones Zoas, a word from the Greek which can be loosely translated as "living creatures". Blake speaks of these Zoas variously as, "The Four Living Creatures", "Four Rivers of Paradise", "Four Faces of Humanity", and "Four Eternal Senses of Man". (Jer.: PL 98, p. 745; PI. 36, p. 663) Blake gives names to the four aspects of man, "And the Four Zoas are Urizen & Luvah & Tharmas & Urthona." (Jer.: PL 74, p. 714) These strange names are among well over one hundred other equally strange names with which Blake christens the many characters who appear in his poetry. The reader of Blake is allowing curiosity to get the better of good sense if he permits Blake's coining of odd names to detract from his understanding of the true personality of each character. The important thing is not the name of the character; the important thing is what that character does or represents. If Shakespeare can call a character Benedick, Blake can call one of his creations

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Urizen. Benedick has long since become a common noun to those familiar with the purpose of the creature. But no dissection of either the name Benedick or the name Urizen can be used to prove the essential natures of those personages. Had Jesus been named John Doe he would still represent the same greatness. On the other hand, George Washington Smythe may never have his fame extend even to the people next door. Blake could not very well have drawn his names from the usual mythologies, since his characters, as will be shown, represent qualities differing from those of the established mythologies. For instance, Blake has a character who represents love. But Blake's conception of love could not be called Venus any more than it could be called Romeo, for to have done so might have misled the reader into thinking that Blake's ideas of love were largely similar to those of antique Greece and Rome. There is the conjecture that he might have used everyday names like Jones and Brown, but it is immediately apparent that such names would have detracted from the universality of the characters. After all, Blake's characters are presumed to be in man, all men, occidental and oriental, young and old, ancient and modern. When the reader meets these strange names, he should regard them primarily as names and not as puzzles or anagrams. The problem of what these names represent is the same kind of problem one would find in seeing a new play or reading a new book. Whatever names the characters are given, their natures become apparent only as the play progresses by means of what the characters do and say. An analysis of the derivation of Blake's symbolic names should properly come only after their natures are known. Perhaps the simplest of Blake's personages is the Zoa Urizen. There is ample evidence to show that this eternal aspect of man and of the imagination represents the reasoning power. Los (who is a form of the Zoa Urthona) says in The Four Zoas, "Tho' in the Brain of Man we live & in his circling Nerves, Tho* this bright world of all our joy is in the Human Brain Where Urizen & all his Hosts hang their immortal l a m p s . . . "

(F.Z. : Nt. 1, p. 272)

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Since Urizen hangs his everlasting lamp (possibly the lamp of learning) in the brain, there is apparently an important connection between him and the brain. Moreover, Blake calls Urizen the Prince of Light. (F.Z.: Nt. 1, p. 273) Light is here being used in the sense of "enlightenment", and enlightenment is an operation of reason. Urizen himself says, "Listen, O Daughters, to my voice. Listen to the Words of Wisdom, So shall you govern over all; let Moral Duty tune your tongue. But be your hearts harder than the nether millstone." (F.Z.: Nt. 7a, p. 323) Urizen claims to speak words of wisdom and preaches Moral Duty. Moral Duty is a product of the reasoning power, as are Words of Wisdom. By means of the axiom that things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, it is possible to supplement the above suggestive proof as to Urizen's nature. Two of the many other characters in Blake's writings are the Spectre and Satan. Blake, with unusual directness in explaining the nature of one of his characters, says that "The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man." (Jer.: PI. 74, p. 714) If it can be shown that the Spectre is a form of Urizen, then there can be no doubt that Urizen does represent the reasoning power. Blake identifies the Spectre with Satan, for the poet Milton is made to say, "Satan! my Spectre!" (Mil.: PI. 38, p. 529) Since the Spectre is the reasoning power in man, and since Satan is shown to be a spectre, if Satan could be identified as Urizen it would logically follow that Urizen likewise represented the reasoning power. In Milton Blake writes, Then Los & Enithannan [sic] knew that Satan is Urizen, Drawn down by Ore & the Shadowy Female into Generation. (Mil.: PI. 10, p. 490) Although Satan is Urizen in generation, Urizen on earth, it is nevertheless true that Satan is Urizen even if in a different guise. Thus, since Urizen is Satan who is the Spectre who is the rea-

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soning power, it is mazefully clear that Urizen does represent the reasoning power in man. The second eternal aspect of the imagination to be considered is Luvah. Luvah is called the "King of Love" by Blake, but love, as the term is ordinarily used, is not a sufficient description of Luvah. Blake writes, Luvah, King of Love, thou art the King of rage & death. (F.Z.: Nt. 5, p. 306) Luvah says of himself, " . . . I suffer affliction Because I love, for I was love, but hatred awakes in m e . . . " (F.Z.: Nt. 2, p. 282) Thus, love is also capable of rage and hatred. That is, Luvah represents more than the emotion of love. Actually Luvah represents all the emotions. While Urizen's dwelling place is the brain, Luvah's place is the heart. Blake writes, "Luvah and Vaia [Luvah's female counterpart] wake & fly up from the Human Heart." (F.Z.: Nt. 1, p. 271) The heart is considered the seat of the emotions, and since Luvah is identified with the emotions of love, rage, and hatred, as well as with many other emotions throughout Blake's writings, it is apparent that Luvah does represent the emotional part of man. Urizen and Luvah, reason and emotion, are often held to be the two sides of man's nature. Blake, however, does not stop here, for he attributes four aspects to the eternal man. The Zoa Tharmas is called by Blake the "Parent pow'er". (F.Z.: Nt. 1, p. 264) Somewhat later on in The Four Zoas Tharmas is spoken of as the "father of worms & clay". (F.Z.: Nt. 4, p. 298) The parent power would be the power to bring forth or produce offspring, and in the case of Tharmas children of his are worms and clay. Worms are living things, and clay is simply physical material. Thus, Tharmas is identified with producing both living and inorganic things. Better still, Tharmas produces the body or form of all that is animate and inanimate, for the parent produces only the body of the child.

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Tharmas is at one point in The Four Zoas described by Blake in a manner reminiscent of God's creation of the earth according to Genesis 1 : 2 , " . . . the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters". Blake writes, But Tharmas rode on the dark Abyss: the voice of Tharmas roll'd Over the heaving deluge . . . . (F.Z. Nt. 4, p. 297) Couple this description with the fact that Blake calls Tharmas the "God of waters", (F.Z.: Nt. 4, p. 301) and the connection of Tharmas with that aspect of God that created the earth becomes stronger. In any event, the fact that Blake makes Tharmas the god of waters as distinct from the prince of light (Urizen) or the king of love (Luvah) gives evidence of the direction in which Tharmas's talents extend. Water is something material. Tharmas elsewhere says, "I am like an atom", (F.Z.·. Nt. 1, p. 265) and an atom is undoubtedly representative of an element of matter. Blake writes, Tharmas like a pillar of sand roll'd round by the whirlwind, An animated Pillar (F.Z.: Nt. 8, p. 353) The imagery of this last quotation is surely suggestive of the peopled earth revolving on its axis. There can be little doubt that Tharmas represents at least the body, animate and inanimate, of all things, particularly if the following is added to what has been quoted above. Tharmas says, The Body of Man is given to me. I seek in vain to destroy, For still it surges forth in fish & monsters of the deeps, And in these monstrous forms I Live in an Eternal woe, And thou, O Urizen, art fall'n, never to be deliver'd. Withhold thy light from me for ever, & I will wihhold From thee thy food . . . {F.Z:. Nt. 6, p. 313) The Body of Man that is given Tharmas represents not only man but all forms of animals, for it surges forth in fish and

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monsters. Also, Tharmas has dominion over food, which is the sustainer of the physical body. Tharmas, since he is both the Body of Man and its food, represents both the physical form of the perceiver and of the inanimate things, the perceptions, that the perceiver sees. However, the full meaning of Tharmas is even wider than the above indicates. Tharmas also represents the spiritual body of all things. Tharmas is the form of everything that has existence. After all, Tharmas has been called by Blake one of the eternal aspects of man. Since, as is fully evident, men do depart from this physical world, the immortal man must be able to exist in a world that is independent of the physical. In this other world Tharmas, being an eternal aspect, would still have to be one of the four senses of man. Now, if Tharmas represented only the material body of things, he could not exist in men who are independent of the physical world. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that Tharmas must represent not only the material but also the spiritual body, that is, Tharmas is the body and form of everything that exists. The words "body" and "form" are not necessarily connected with that which is physical. There are such well known things as "formal dinners", "poetic form", "the body of an argument". Thus, there is nothing particularly unusual in considering form also to be a part of things not physical. The form or body of anything is the essential manner or character of that thing, which could not exist without form any more than God could exist except in existing beings. The form of a circle is circular. The form of a line of poetry is the essential character of that line which distinguishes it from the mere dictionary meaning of the words that comprise the line of poetry. "To be or not to be" is the poetic form expressing a particular attitude or feeling. "To be or perhaps not", while similar in meaning if judged by the dictionary alone, has really lost the poetic form and the essential meaning of the former phrasing. It is illuminating to note what would happen if Tharmas could remove himself from an individual. Enion, Tharmas's female counterpart, asks Tharmas not to destroy her and remove her

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from existence. She says, "O Tharmas, I had lost thee, & when I hoped I had found t h e e . . . " (F.Z.: Nt. 3, p. 296) That is, if Enion loses Tharmas, her form, she will be " 'Substanceless, voiceless, weeping, vanish'd, nothing but tears!' " as she is described by Tharmas when he answers her plea not to destroy her. Tharmas tells Urizen that, by withholding his food from Urizen, he and Urizen shall . . . cease to be, & all our sorrows End, & the Eternal Man no more renew beneath our power. (F.Z.-.m. 6, p. 313) Thus, the eternal man cannot exist without food, without Tharmas. And this food is the form or body of existence. Man, therefore, has as three of his eternal aspects form (spiritual and physical), emotion, and reason. Reason and emotion are by themselves opposing tendencies as philosophers in general have recognized. Some have asserted that the good is obtained when reason prevails; others, like the epicureans, have preferred to pamper the emotions. There is still another way to resolve these opposing natures of man, and that is by sensing in man an additional aspect, which aspect is capable of getting the best use out of both the emotions and the intellect without sacrificing either. In Blake this nature is personified by the fourth Zoa, Los-Urthona. Urthona is the dynamic, directive power of man. Tharmas as form, Urizen as reason, and Luvah as the emotions are each by themselves incapable of understanding their relationship to each other just as the sense of sight cannot understand the nature of the sense of hearing. It is Urthona who provides the link among the other three aspects of man. This fourth aspect of man is given two names by Blake. It is called both Urthona and Los. While it is not always possible to draw hard and fast distinctions between Blake's use of Los and of Urthona, a general distinction may be drawn with the caution that the reader of Blake should not apply this distinction in every case. Blake writes, "Los was the fourth immortal starry one . . . Urthona was his name/In Eden." (F.Z.: Nt. 1, p. 264) Near the end of The Four Zoas Blake writes,

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Urthona is arisen in his strength, no longer now Divided from Enitharmon, no longer the Spectre Los. (F.Z.: Nt. 9, p. 379) Los appears, generally but not always, to be an inferior form of Urthona. Blake writes about Los, "He is the Spirit of Prophecy, the ever apparent Elias." (Mil.·. PI. 24, p. 510) That the spirit of prophecy is linked with imagination is apparent, for . . . the Writings of the Prophets illustrate these conceptions of the Visionary Fancy by their various sublime & Divine Images as seen in the Worlds of Vision. (V.L.J.: p. 605) The spirit that animates the prophets is the visionary fancy or imagination. It does not require much stretch to see that Los, the spirit of prophecy, represents the visionary fancy. Los himself says, " . . . my business is to Create." (Jer.: PI. 10, p. 629) The business of the imagination is to create, and since Los claims this job for himself, it becomes increasingly evident that Los represents the imagination. Blake is more definite on the matter, for he writes, "And the Divine Appearance was the likeness & similitude of Los." (Jer.: PI. 96, p. 743) Since God and imagination are synonymous terms to Blake it is clear that Blake is identifying Los with the imagination. This, then, is the crux of the four aspects of man's nature. Urizen's function is to think; Luvah's is to feel; Tharmas's is to give form; Los-Urthona's is to use imagination. Their very names, although at first glance they may seem strange, fit in adequately with the natures of these Zoas, and no extensive knowledge of Hebrew, the classics, and Oriental learning is required, nor is skill in anagrams needed to discover that the possible meaning of the names of many of these characters describe their true natures. What helps to root out the meanings of the names of the Zoas is a little knowledge of archaic English. Urthona can be divided into ur-thone-a. " U r " means "original" or "primitive". "Thone" is a contracted form meaning "the one". If "a" is regarded as a poetical suffix, the name

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45

Urthona comes to mean "the original one", and so Urthona was before his division into the four Zoas. The fallen Urthona is divided, and his name in division becomes Los. "Losian" means "to lose" or "to fall". Los thus becomes the fallen or the lost Urthona. Urizen divides into Ur-izen and means "original reason". Luvah is a possible archaic form for love. Tharmas divides into thar-mas. "Thar" is an archaic form of "their" and "mas" is the same as "mass". Tharmas represents the mass or form of the Zoas. Thus, the original one becomes, when divided, the fallen one, original reason, love, and form. There is no proof that Blake used this system of archaic English in naming the Zoas, but there is a fair likelihood that he did do this, especially when it is recalled that instead of "man" Blake often uses the symbol "Albion", and Albion is an ancient name for England. The reader may be puzzled by the fact that Blake, after defining man as all imagination, still makes imagination one of the subdivisions of man by including imagination as one of the aspects of man's nature. It might have been expected that, although each Zoa is an aspect of the imagination, no one Zoa would have been described as the imagination itself. Urthona, since he represents unity, could rightly be identified with man and be called imagination. But when Urthona divides himself he not only becomes reason, emotion, and form, but also imagination! The reason for this exists in Blake's thoroughgoing logic. Just as God, dividing into individual men, still exists in each individual man, so imagination, dividing into its aspects, must yet have imagination as one of those aspects. A seed that develops into stem, leaves, and flowers still retains, even if dissected, the essential nature of the seed in stem, leaves, and flowers (today this might be referred to as the genetic code). The imagination cannot disappear just because it is divided. In fact, the all-pervasiveness of the imagination is such that the most minute thing must contain imagination. Blake writes, . . . wherever a grass grows Or a leaf buds, Hie Eternal Man is seen, is heard, is f e l t . . . . (F.Z.: Nt. 8, p. 356)

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Not even a blade of grass can be devoid of the eternal man, imagination. And this is only logical for, since everything is a creation of the imagination, everything contains and is made up of it. Even the aspects of the imagination themselves have imagination. This is true because that which has no imagination has no existence. Blake is fully aware of this at all times, and even reason, something that ordinarily has no connection with imagination, is still seen by Blake as having imagination in its make-up. "Urizen saw & envied, & his imagination was filled." (F.Z.: Nt. 2, p. 287) Urizen's imagination differs from the pure imagination of Urthona in that while Urthona's ideally acts for the general good, for creation, Urizen's imagination acts only for the benefit of reason. The amazing vitality of Blake's symbolic characters may be due to the fact that these characters, although each one represents a particular idea or type, are guided by more than a single impulse. The vices and virtues of the English moralities, as well as the characters in Pilgrim's Progress, are not human beings and therefore hardly convincing even in their moral lessons. But Blake's type characters are human beings, and their struggles and conflicts can be recognized by the reader as struggles and conflicts he has had within himself. Anyone who fails to realize that each Zoa can, on occasion, resemble another Zoa will find Blake impossible to understand. Even as you and I, they can change roles. Though the Zoas seem to be treated by Blake as if they were individual identities similar to the several gods of pagan theology, the truth is that these Zoas have no individual identities at all. The Zoas are merely symbols for the aspects of man's nature. Jerusalem contains. And the Four Zoas, who are the Four Eternal Senses of Man, Became Four Elements separating from the Limbs of Albion. {1er.: PI. 36, p. 663) These Zoas are the four aspects of Albion (man), but they become four elements and seem to have individual identities when they separate from man.

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There is ample proof that Blake considers none of his divided Zoas to have individual identity, and that what individual identity they appear to have is really the result of the division that takes place in man himself. In the poem Milton there is a remark that shows that Urizen is not an individual, for Milton is made to say, I in my Selfhood am that Satan: I am that Evil One! He is my Spectre! (Mil.: PI. 14, p. 496) This Satan, who is Urizen, is Milton's reasoning power. Thus, Urizen-Satan-Spectre is not an individual but is Milton himself. Rather, as aspect of Milton, for his spectre is that aspect of Milton that is overly concerned with himself. Not only Urizen, but Luvah also can be shown to have no individual identity. But first it is necessary to point out how Blake uses the word "state" in his writings. His usage is not unlike that in the expression "state of mind". Blake says through the mouth of the prophet Hillel, "Distinguish therefore States from Individuals in those States. States Change, but Individual Identities never change nor cease." (Mil: PI. 32, p. 521) Now, if it can be shown that Luvah is a state, it would be clear that Luvah is not an individual identity, for Blake says that states are to be distinguished from individual identities. The necessary proof appears when Blake speaks of "the state call'd Luvah". (F.Z.: Nt. 2, p. 287) Since Luvah may be called a state, he is not an individual identity. Actually all of the Zoas except Los-Urthona are states. Hillel says, "The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself. Affection or Love becomes a State when divided from Imagination. The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created." (Mil.: PI. 32, p. 522) Los-Urthona, the imagination, is God, man, and existence, and therefore cannot be a state. The aspect Luvah, love divided from

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imagination, is not an individual identity but is a state as is reason or Urizen. Memory likely refers to Tharmas, for memory is neither an operation of reason nor of affection. Rather, the memory represents the body of things that have happened and are past. Thus, the Zoas, except for Los-Urthona, are not individual identities but states when they divide from imagination and aspects when they are part of the imagination. The place of states in Blake's philosophy will be discussed later. Blake, by giving symbolic names to the aspects of man's imagination, is indulging in a process nearly as old as time. He describes the matter in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and ends his description with a warning against the abuse of this process. The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast. (M.H.H.: p. 153) Well over one hundred symbolic characters give proof to the fact that Blake did himself animate all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses. But the reader must never think that these mental deities have any reality, any individual identity, when abstracted from their objects. The Four Mighty Ones in every man reside in the human breast and are symbols for the four geniuses or aspects of the imagination. It is Blake's contention everywhere in his writings that when these aspects (or any other aspect) of man are worshipped as gods, the people are enslaved.

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Contrast in today's world those governments in which the individual is a pawn created only to further the worship of a political concept. If the people are not to be enslaved, the aspects of man's nature must not be worshipped as gods; rather, they must be made to act as servants of man for the betterment of the individual. Blake writes in The Descriptive Catalogue, Visions of these eternal principles or characters of human life appear to poets, in all ages; the Grecian gods were the ancient Cherubim of Phoenicia; but the Greeks, and since thein the Moderns, have neglected to subdue the gods of Priam. These gods are visions of the eternal attributes, or divine names, which, when erected into gods, become destructive to humanity. They ought to be the servants, and not the masters of man, or of society. They ought to be made to sacrifice to Man, and not man compelled to sacrifice to them; for when separated from man or humanity, who is Jesus the Saviour, the vine of eternity, they are thieves and rebels, they are destroyers. (D.C.: p. 571) The theme of Blake's Prophetic Books is the attempt of each of the divided Zoas to proclaim himself as the true god and to compel man, as well as the other Zoas, to worship him. The happy endings of the Prophetic Books occur when the Zoas once again reunite as the four eternal senses of man, as the servants of the imagination. There is no formula that Blake posits to determine the relationship of the Zoas to each other and to man. Man is not χ per cent reason, y per cent emotion, and ζ per cent form. The only way to determine conduct, therefore, is by means of the imagination. The aspects of man's nature must act in their capacity as servants of the imagination according to the precise extent demanded by the imagination in each particular instance. Blake speaks of this cooperation through the mouth of Urizen, "If Gods combine against Man, setting their dominion above The Human foirm Divine, Thrown down from their high station In the Eternal heavens of Human Imagination, buried beneath In dark Oblivion, with incessant pangs, ages on ages, In enmity & war first weaken'd, then in stern repentance They must renew their brightness, & their disorganiz'd functions

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Again reorganize, till they resume the image of the human, Co-operating in the bliss of Man, obeying his Will, Servants to the infinite & Eternal of the Human form." (F.Z.: Nt. 9, p. 366) The Gods Urizen speaks of are the Zoas. The Four Zoas is the story of the attempt of each of the Zoas to assume the godship ( " . . . & Tharmas / Is G o d . . . " ; " ' A m I not God?' said Urizen.") (F.Z.: Nt. 4, p. 301; Nt. 3, p. 294) and the chaos that results from all such attempts. When these Zoas no longer act as servants to the infinite and eternal, the Human Imagination, they are at enmity (division) and war until they reorganize. This reorganization, the resuming of the image of the human, results in the Zoas' once again becoming servants of the imagination. In the Eternal heavens of the Human Imagination the Zoas cooperate in the bliss of Man. Thus, the eternal truth of the Zoas, the four primary aspects of man, is their cooperating with the imagination for the benefit of man. Together they form an organic unity, and the pre-eminence of one destroys this essential unity. Blake's conception of man's nature, to sum up, pictures man as being part of God and at the same time an individual identity. This individual identity is united with all men through the essence of God. Man, in so far as he shuts out God's essence, can be evil. Basically, however, man is good, for he is all imagination. Since this is so, the individual, like God, lives eternally, for the imagination is eternal. Man's imagination has four essential aspects. These aspects and their names are: the reasoning power (Urizen), the emotional power (Luvah), the power to give form (Tharmas), and the imaginative power (Los-Urthona). These aspects of man, when they assume individuality, something they actually do not possess, enslave man; but when these aspects unite under the imagination and cooperate for the good of man they become the four eternal aspects of human nature.

3.

THE CONTRARIES

For Blake, who knew that the French Revolution had made a better society, knew also that it had not made a good society. He did not believe that societies can be good. They can be means to good: as means, they can be better or worse: they can be good for an end, and for a time: but, because they are means, they cannot be good in themselves. Blake did not shirk the contraries, from his society to a better society. He did not lack the fire raging against content, and raging to remake society, not to-morrow but to-day. But Blake did not shirk the heavier knowledge, that a society remade will remain a society to be remade. The society remade will take on the same rigour of death, unless in turn it submits to progress through its new contrary. The contraries of thesis and antithesis do not end. The progression to synthesis is not made by one revolution, in France or in the world. This is the full meaning of the dialectic of contraries, in Blake and in Marx: that no revolution is the last. This is a heavy thought, but it is a living thought, that societies live only as they are remade. It is the burning thought of Blake's energy, making and remaking, and urgent always with the will to good. I. Bronowski, A Man Without a Mask (London: Backer and Warburg, 1947), p. 134. De nihilo nihil fit should be modified to read that f r o m one thing nothing comes, for, if the basis of all existence were one single thing, then there would b e n o existence at all. Light has n o true meaning without the concept of darkness, just as "oneness" has n o meaning unless it can be distinguished f r o m "twoness".

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Blake has his own way of saying this. In that pithy work of genius which he called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he says, "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence." (M.H.H.·. p. 149) It takes two things to make a third thing; contraries are necessary if there is to be any progress, any life. "Contraries", as Blake defines it, does not suggest hostile entities. Actually, the word refers to the relationship of a kind of energy and the limit of that energy. For example, the foremost set of contraries is God and man. God is the imaginative energy and man is the limit of that energy. Herein lies another means of proof of the difference between God and man. God is the underlying unity and essence of all men, and man is the individual manifestation of that essence. But essence and individuality (or identity) do differ. Blake explains how. Essence is not Identity, but from Essence proceeds Identity & from one Essence may proceed many Identities, as from one Affection may proceed many thoughts. (A.S.D.L.: p. 91) Essence is the imagination and identity is an individual manifestation of the imagination. Blake cautions against the idea that essence and identity (or God and man) are one and same thing. He writes, If the Essence was the same as the Identity, there could be but one Identity, which is false. Heaven would upon this plan be but a Clock; but one & the same Essence is therefore Essence & not Identity. (A.S.D.L.: p. 91) That is, if essence were the same as identity, if God were the same as man, then everything would be one thing and therefore nothing. The metaphor of the clock signifies that under such a circumstance heaven could only repeat the same thing over and over again - there would be no creation. But the contrary of God and man is only the beginning of Blake's thoroughgoing system of contraries, for every limit of energy has its own set or sets of contraries and the limits of these

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sets can be further subdivided, and so on. Man is the limit of God. But man contains the contraries of energy and reason, love and hate, attraction and repulsion, etc. Reason contains the contraries of thinking and thought itself. The thought itself contains the contraries of good and evil. Not only God and man but all sets of contraries exhibit the same kind of relationship of essence and individual identity. The essence is an active, masculine, creative, imaginative power. The individual identity is a manifestation of that imagination, the feminine repose of that energy; it is the limit of the energy of the imagination. Blake calls the limiting contrary "emanation". Under ideal conditions the contraries operate for each other's benefit. They represent the source and repose (or renewal) of energy. However, in order for the contraries to function happily, the limiting contrary must continually look to the imaginative contrary for its existence. Blake, using the symbols of male and female for the contraries, says, " . . . Males immortal live renew'd by female deaths." (F.Z.: Nt. 1, p. 266) That is, the limiting contrary must sacrifice itself for the energizing contrary, the passive principle must give way to the active, if life is to endure. But this active principle is itself the bound of some greater energy and must sacrifice itself for that energy. This process continues until the essential, expanding imagination is reached to bring limiting contraries back into existence. It must not be thought that the limiting contrary is completely passive and static. Mutual exclusiveness of concepts or characters is a rare condition in Blake. This often confuses the reader, but the infinity which is truth is necessarily harder to understand than, for instance, a simplified monstrosity such as racial purity. Nevertheless, if the imagination is the source of everything and is in everything, it follows that the limiting contrary of that imagination must contain imagination. Just so, man's female counterpart, his emanation, may be a passive creature, but she also contains imagination. The proof is that Blake himself identifies emanations with inspiration. In other words, imagination creates an object and that object is capable of inspiring the imagination to further activity.

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Suppose, however, that the feminine, limiting contrary does not sacrifice itself for its energizing contrary. The limiting contrary, then, in effect assumes an independence aside from the imagination that gave it life and becomes what Blake calls a negation. A negation is that which tends to suppress or destroy the imagination. Blake defines negations descriptively, Negations are not Contraries: Contraries mutually Exist; But Negations Exist Not. Exceptions & Objections & Unbeliefs Exist not (1er:. PL 17, p. 639)

It may seem to the reader, and with much justice, that even Exceptions and Objections cannot be non-existence. The act of objection is surely a positive use of energy. Actually, Blake uses the word "negation" very much in the way a mother uses the phrase "you'll be killed" in admonishing her disobedient child to stay on the sidewalk. Negation signifies a tendency towards non-existence; imagination expands, negations diminish. Negations, then, are those things that tend to diminish the imagination. They are not properly non-existence, for the simple fact that there is no such thing as non-existence; the term is an abstraction of the sort that Blake so much detested. All definitions of non-existence must place it as the opposite of existence itself. But this position is untenable, just as it would be to say that the opposite of banana is non-banana. Words like existence and banana have no true opposites and can be defined only in terms of their parts and properties. A banana consists of a skin, a more or less definite shape, and a distinctive taste; it can be distinguished from an orange, a chair, etc. Existence consists of whatever one sees, hears, imagines; existence cannot be distinguished from anything; it is an all-inclusive term. To Blake there is no such thing as non-existence any more than there is such an entity as death. A thing gets smaller, it can diminish almost to the point of not being perceived, but it cannot cease to exist. While Blake's characters proclaim on so many occasions that they are in eternal death, it is important to note that these characters never really and definitely die.

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55

Thus, while Blake does call negations non-existence, he uses the word only as a figure of speech. Negations are to be distinguished from true contraries in that contraries mutually support each other in an expanding eternity, while negations diminish the expansive power of the contraries. Blake clearly says that nothing can ever cause such a abstraction as non-existence. He writes, There is a limit of Opakeness and a limit of Contraction In every Individual Man . . . . {Jer.: Pl. 42, p. 670) This limit of opakeness and contraction is as far towards any concept of non-existence as man can go. A n d all things that help man to approach this limit are negations. Thus far in this chapter the energizing contrary, the limiting contrary, and the negation have been described as separate entities. However, everything with the exception of the essential imagination itself can be either an energy, a limit, or a negation. For example, the imagination expresses itself to the limit of its emotions (Luvah). The emotions use energy until the bound of reason is reached. In addition, the emotions may refuse to be governed by imagination and become negations such as vengeance, malice, or sadism. The ideal occurs when each limit looks to its energizing, imaginative contrary for guidance and in turn imaginatively creates its own limits. On the other hand, trouble occurs when a limit becomes a negation by refusing to recognize the supremacy of the imagination. Consider some everyday examples of this relationship. A young child who enjoys ice cream will, if given the chance, eat the confection until he has reached the limit of his enjoyment. But he may well proceed beyond this limit, reasoning that such an opportunity may not soon come again; or he may simply reason that if something is good, a lot of it must be very good; or he may allow the flavorful taste in his mouth to ignore the disturbing feeling in his stomach. However, if the child uses his imagination (and not the negation of his satanic reasoning power or his chaotic lust) he will stop when he reaches satiety and, in so doing, avoid the problems of overindulgence. Unfortunately,

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his parents, through their own general lack of imagination, may have taught him not to use imagination but to get what he can while he can. On an adult scale, and note the psychological modernity, the wife who expects the attentions of her husband at all hours and minutes of the day may soon find that, having tried to force him beyond the limits of his feelings for her, she has only succeeded in smothering his imagination and destroying his love. If a man loves a cause until the limit of his hatred for what obstructs that cause, he may be making use of the imaginative contraries. But should this man allow his hatred to become his guiding principle, he will destroy his imagination as well as his cause. Thus, the man who believes in forgiveness of sin may hate those who refuse to forgive sin. But if this hate does not turn itself into forgiveness even for those who refuse to forgive, the merciful man may soon find that he has become a negation and joined the ranks of his enemy. Blake had as his example to prove this the French Revolution in which the lovers of freedom, by oppressing their former rulers, became tyrants themselves. For an analogy on a physical scale, consider the man who is trying to build up his muscular strength. He should use his energy to exercise and improve his muscles, but only to the extent of the ability of his muscles to endure this exercise. Any abuse of energy will weaken the man. However, if he imaginatively uses his energy to the capacity of his musculature and then rests, he will soon find that his muscles are able to expend increasingly greater energy. One further step must be taken to understand more adequately the relationship between the limit which is man and all other limits. Each man, in his individual identity, can use the energy of the divine imagination to create his own limiting contraries. But there is one essential difference between the bounding contrary of God's imagination and the bounding contrary of man, who, from the vantage point of God, is a bound himself. God's imagination comprises bounds that are themselves creative; man's imagination can perceive bounds which themselves have no creative ability. To put this still another way, God's bounds,

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57

since they are creative beings who are themselves composed of divine imagination, are eternally existing beings. In Great Eternity every particular Form gives forth or Emanates Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision And the Light is his Garment. (Jer.: PI. 54, p. 684) This light, the individual identity, cannot change his individual character, for the "Individual Identities never change nor cease." (Mil.: PI. 32, p. 521) On the other hand, man's creations, not having the spirit of the imagination in them, are static creations whose existence may be called into being on any occasion, but whose existence is not eternal in the sense of being ever present. However, the individual, being capable of creating bounding contraries, may acquire for himself an apparent character that hides his reality. This outward creation is no more a part of the real man than are the clothes he wears. Blake writes, Truly, My Satan, thou art but a Dunce, And dost not know the Garment from the Man. Every Harlot was a Virgin once, Nor can'st thou ever change Kate into Nan.

(G.P.: p. 771)

That is, what one does, the life that one leads, is not necessarily a display of a person's true character, for one's true character lies in one's individual imaginative genius. Actually, there are two garments or two phases of reality in Blake's fundamental philosophy. The essential reality is the underlying, eternal, changeless reality that is included in the essence of God and the individuality of each man. But there is another kind of reality, a reality that is transient, superficial, and changing. This second kind of reality is a creation of the essential imagination, and since it is created, it can be destroyed. Blake says, "What can be Created Can be Destroyed." (L.G.: p. 776) These inert, temporary creations are not to be mistaken for the essential reality of an individual identity. The former is a creation while the latter is the ability to create; the first is transient while the second is eternal.

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THE CONTRARIES

From this, certain conclusions may be drawn as to the nature of evil. Blake says that "All Life is Holy:' (A.L.A.: p. 74) Thus, no living creation, no creation of God can be evil; that is, man is not evil. However, man can create delusions of the reasoning power, man can perceive these things which do not in themselves have the power to create. Some of these creations of man may, therefore, be evil. Things which are evil are those that weaken or destroy the imagination, and such evils are no more than garments which the individual identity will eventually discard. Thus, evil is not to be imputed to the individual; rather, evil is the cloak that hides the true man. The garments that man can put on or off are called by Blake "states". An evil man is really a man in an evil state. Blake mentions dozens of different states in his Prophetic Books, and while some are evil, there are many states that are not bad at all. In fact, as a later chapter will show, even the bad states are not without value. Note how Blake absolves the individual from evil when he says of those who "drink the condemned Soul & rejoice / In cruel holiness". Yet they are blameless, & Iniquity must be imputed only To the State they are enter'd into (Jer.: PI. 49, p. 680) This is in keeping with Blake's hostility toward the brutal concept of predestination. If evil cannot be imputed to man, then man cannot be held responsible for that evil. In view of this it may seem strange that Blake writes, "Man is born a Spectre or Satan & is altogether an Evil. . . . " (Jer.: PI. 52, p. 682) Thus it might seem that Blake in one place says that iniquity is not to be imputed to man and in another place says that man is an evil. However, what Blake says is that man, by being born, becomes an evil. In other words, man, entering the state of mortal life or vegetation, is in a bad state; but the eternal soul of the individual identity is not evil at all. The state into which a man enters is not a contrary, but contains contraries. The state of morality contains the contraries good and evil, the physical world contains the contraries time and space. Thus it may be seen that Blake's concept of the con-

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traries exists at all levels and in all phases of his philosophy. God, or the imagination, has contraries in His own being. The aspects of the imagination contain contraries. Each Zoa is the contrary of another Zoa. The individual identity has his own limiting contrary; thus he is the bound of God but the energy of his own creations. Even the creations of man may contain contraries such as the contraries of good and evil. These contraries are, on one side, active, masculine, imaginative energies; on the other side they are passive, feminine, inspirational, expanding. But all of these contraries, except the imagination itself, are both energies and bounds, and become negations when they refuse to look to imagination for their source of energy. In one sense it is possible to say that the limiting contrary is represented in the person of Tharmas. The extent to which this is true will be argued in the next chapter.

4.

PERCEPTION-THARMAS

It is, then, through art that we understand why perception is superior to abstraction, why perception is meaningless without an imaginative ordering of it, why the validity of such ordering depends on the normality of the perceiving mind, why that normality must be associated with genius rather than mediocrity, and why genius must be associated with the creative power of the artist. This last, which is what Blake means by "vision," is the goal of all freedom, energy and wisdom. Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1947), p. 25.

How do we know? This basic question must be answered before any philosopher can speak with confidence about the nature of truth, the nature of what we know. The fanatic says that something is so just because Methuselah Doakes, millenniums since dead and buried and unable to change his mind on this earth, by divine inspiration declared it so. But philosophy, like a chair, stands or collapses on its own legs. Blake, of course, never wrote an epistemology. In fact, he never even wrote, as far as any one has discovered, a treatise labeled "philosophy". He himself says that the philosopher should come under the guidance of the poet. And although philosophical ideas as well as a complete system of philosophy are incorporated into his writings, Blake still wrote as a true poet. Thus it is necessary to ferret out of Blake's writings the links that go to make up his philosophy, and an essential link is

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the question of how we know. Man knows only through his perceptions, spiritual and physical. What are the natures of these perceptions? What is the nature of Tharmas? Blake takes full cognizance of the fact that all perceptions depend upon the perceiving organism. He writes The Sun's Light when he unfolds it Depends on the Organ that beholds it.

(G.P.: p. 760)

What is more, Blake not only maintains that perception depends upon the perceiving organ, but he also says that one man's organs differ from another man's and that each man may perceive differently. Blake writes, "Every Eye Sees differently. As the Eye, Such the Object." (A.R.D.: p. 456) Also, Blake admits that it is possible for any person to see differently at various times. He says, If Perceptive Organs vary, Objects of Perception seem to vary: If the Perceptive Organs close, their Objeots seem to close also.

(Jer.: PI. 34, p. 661) Thus Blake says that the nature of existence depends upon the organs that perceive, and that these organs vary from man to man and from time to time. In addition, knowledge of what is being perceived does not depend upon interpretation or rationalization. Knowledge is not by deduction, but Immediate by Perception or Sense at once. Christ addresses himself to the Miai, not to his Reason. (A.BS.: p. 774)

This is not to say that one glance is sufficient. What Blake is claiming is that, although study and experiment and reason are useful to arrive at knowledge, there is no such thing as knowledge except that which can be perceived. It is more than humor that makes him write such lines as, When a Man has Married a Wife, he finds out whether Her knees & elbows are only glued together. (p. 418)

Interpretation of perception, deifying Urizen above Tharmas

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when both should be aspects of man's nature, enslaves the individual as the chapter on Urizen will show. Man may use his reason as a guide for his perceptive organs, but a man cannot see that a stick is a snake just because he thinks the stick should be a snake. There is a logical necessity, aside from some self-evidence in the matter, that makes Blake maintain that knowledge is not by deduction, but is immediate by perception. Blake says, "Where is the Existence Out of Mind or Thought? Where is it but in the Mind of a Fool?" (FX./.: p. 617) That is, all existence, all perceptions have their being in the source of all reality: God, imagination, Man. There is no eternal existence except as that existence is in the mind of man. Therefore, when a man perceives something, the very perception has caused that something to come into existence, and any interpretation serves to give an external validity to the object which that object cannot possess. Interpretation and rationalization approach the sacrilegious for, instead of trying to find out what exists, they try to find out what should exist and substitute delusion for reality. There is an empirical excellence to all this. Blake, in his answer to the question of how do we know, makes only one assumption: man knows what he perceives. Thus, knowledge comes through the organs of perception. The problem remains to discover just what are the organs of perception. This, however, is no problem at all for Blake. Man sees, hears, feels, thinks, dreams, love, imagines, etc. "What seems to Be, Is, To those to whom / It seems to Be. . .." (1er:. PI. 36, p. 663) Each and every perception, of whatever variety or value, he acknowledges as having existence and reality. Blake has neither the limits of the materialist nor the dogmatic superlatives of those who deny all reality to physical things. While he does place relative values on different varieties of perception, he is never so confused as to deny the witness of his senses. If on occasion he seems to speak out against testimony of this or that sense, it is only because some perception has been distorted out of its proper place; and the proper place of all perceptions is in the service of the imagination. However, every perception is a product of the

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imagination, and Blake, therefore, credits every perception with validity. He believes that there is no external truth which deluded perceptory organs might see imperfectly; truth is the creation of the imagination, and what that imagination perceives can be said to exist. Not only are all types of perceptions real and existential, but all types of perceptions can be distinguished one from the other. Blake does not confuse the rose that the eye sees with the rose that the mind visualizes. Though, as shown before, he may think that the rose of the mind is more beautiful than the rose of the eyes, both are real things and present no problem as to where one begins and the other ends. Actually, no one perception can either doubt or believe the evidence of another kind of perception. He says, "From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none could deduce a fourth or fifth." (N.N.R.: p. 97) That is, one perception will not yield a knowledge or awareness of another kind of perception. Thus, the evidence of the five physical senses cannot be used to disprove the evidence of the more spiritual senses, and vice versa. God cannot be disproved in a test tube any more than the validity of the physical universe can be disproved by Christian Science. It is from the evidence of all perceptive organs that man can obtain proof of the divine imagination, God. Blake says that knowledge is not by deduction. He also says that no one perception can be used to prove the reality of another. Then how does man know that the imagination is the source of everything? The answer is, by imaginative perception. This is not mere mind-deceiving language. Since no perception can conceive of any other perception, how do these perceptions keep themselves working in harmony? There must be some faculty that governs perceptions, or at least, keeps order among them. Let no one assume that there is even some essential relationship between the five physical senses. The man who associates burning heat with redness may one day find that white hot metal is incomparably hotter than red hot metal. The high soprano voice sometime emanates from the throat of a man. Association and experience alone seem to bring the physical senses

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into an imperfect harmony that can never hope to take care of all eventualities. But there is a faculty that relates all perceptions to each other. This relating faculty is the imagination, and innumerable examples of its operation can be shown in normal daily living. To explore one area - eating a delicious meal - your rational perceptions suggest that you eat less so as not to become ill. Your emotional perceptions encourage you to gorge yourself. Vision says that the petits fours are ambrosial. Memory suggests that they are colorful but overly sweet cubes that cloy. The wine has appearance and fragrance and taste - and is intoxicating. Your imagination can take these and a dozen other perceptions and put them into a perspective that will leave you emotionally happy and rationally well without bodily distress. You will not be sensible and starved or sensual and bloated but rationally sensual and imaginative. The imagination is not a rationalized concept based on the fact that there seems to be a relationship between various perceptions. Imagination is perceived. It was quoted earlier in this book that he who perceives the infinite in everything perceives God, the imagination, in everything. The person who perceives the eternal truth, the particular truth in a particular situation, has a perception whose organ is the undivided imagination. It is the same organ that, in less time "than the pulsation of an artery", can perceive the relationship among a dozen or so musical notes and compose a beautiful melody. Thus it would have been possible to begin this study of Blake's philosophy with a consideration of the perceptions. Then, by showing that Blake used only one assumption, the assumption that whatever is perceived has reality, it is possible to come to the conclusion that imagination is at the base of all perceptions. It is doubtful if Blake himself ever arrived at his conclusions by beginning with such a process. But it is amazing to note that within his thought it is possible to devise a philosophical system based on a minimum of assumption and on a great deal of empirical evidence, the evidence of the perceptions. A new problem now presents itself. Since perceptions depend

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upon perceiving organs which vary, how is it possible for men to agree on their perceptions? How can John and Bill live together since neither sees precisely what the other perceives? Practically, there is little to worry about in this respect concerning the perceptions of the five physical senses. While the red that John sees may be different from the red that Bill sees, it is still true that men have relatively little difficulty in communicating with each other concerning their physical perceptions. In fact, even as far as emotional and intellectual perceptions are concerned, there is ordinarily little cause for misunderstanding. If people perceive "x" differently, they can still usually agree upon what is "x" and what is not "x". If arguments arise over the meaning of a word, it is not impossible to straighten out the matter. Actually, difficulty does not arise so much from the fact that men perceive differently as from the fact that men insist upon interpreting their perceptions. Robin Hood may be a thief or a philanthropist, William Tell may be a martyr or a lawbreaker, the abortionist who is a criminal in some courts may receive the heartfelt gratitude of his patient. As long as men place moral values upon their perceptions, difficulty in communication between men must necessarily continue. These difficulties are the subject of a later chapter. It suffices here to show that by the use of one's imagination it is possible for all significant differences of perceptions to be resolved so that all men can understand each other. Imagination pan correlate varying perceptions of different individuals because, while each man is an individual with individual organs, each man is also a part of the divine imagination which is God. This God, who is immanent in each of His transcendent individual identities, is the power within each man that links him indissolubly to everyone else. It is because of this immanent God within all men that each one is able, under optimal conditions, to have an understanding of the perceptions of others. The reader, having gone this far, may now find himself in another tangle. If Blake says that existence is perception and that only those things which are perceived can be said to exist, does Blake also maintain that a chair, for instance, no longer

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exists when no eye is looking at it? More than one philosopher has taken the point of view that something cannot exist unless a sense organ is actively perceiving that thing. This, with certain modifications, is probably Blake's point of view, for, as quoted before, there is no existence out of mind or thought. One important modification is that Blake does not deny the reality of the chair when it is being perceived. Also, as shown elsewhere, Blake does not confuse perceptions that come through bodily organs with mental perceptions that are independent of the five sense organs. Thus only a deluded person would attempt to banish all physical pain by thinking of pain as a seeming reality of imperfect perception. One cannot wish away the earth however much one may bring the divine imagination to earth. Nevertheless, while Blake does not deny the validity of the physical perceptions, he obviously places these perceptions under the domain of the imagination. From this fact arise certain contradictions to some of the rather generally accepted physical laws. Perhaps the most important physical relationship that Blake denies is the law of cause and effect. This law is commonly expressed in the idea that every effect has a necessary and adequate cause that differs from the effect itself, and has in turn been the effect of a previous cause. Blake denies this and says, "Each thing is its own cause & its own effect." (A.L.A.: p. 88) Bluntly, Blake is saying that the black eye a man wears is caused neither by a door knob nor by a fist. The cause of the black eye is the effect of the black eye. An explanation of the possible validity of Blake's contention is in order. To consider a situation, a marble is rolled towards the corner of a box, reaches that corner, and stops. What previous cause produced the effect of stopping? None whatever, for the stopping occurred simultaneously with the impact between the marble and the corner. Thus, whatever truth there is in the law of cause and effect, it is still apparent that not every effect has a previous cause. Take an event in which the human element does not enter. A rain storm loosens the earth so that a rock starts to roll down the mountain until it crashes into a tree. The earth loosens simultaneously with the presence of the rain water and the rock

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began to move simultaneously with the loosening of the earth. All three events occurred simultaneously. If it be argued that the water seeped gradually into the earth until the earth began gradually to be loosened until the hold of the earth was such that the rock began to roll, the simultaneity of occurrence still holds. Just as the last iota of water loosened the last iota of earth, the rock fell. In fact, if the analyst goes down into minutiae, he may discover that every physical effect occurred simultaneously with its cause. And if this is so, the entire law of cause and effect becomes only a metaphor describing a seemingly related sequence of events, because that law assumes that some, if not all, effects must have anterior causes since every cause, according to the law of cause and effect, is itself an effect of some other cause. Actually, cause and effect seems to resolve itself into the simple statement that energy is transmitted. That is, eyesight suggests and instruments verify that when the stove is lit the pot gets hot, that when a gun is fired the projectile travels at a velocity, trajectory, and destructive force which can be estimated and measured with great accuracy. But, this does not prove that the effect of energy at any particular moment was caused by the previous condition of that energy. Modern physics suggests that all matter is basically motion. The apparently static piece of iron may be composed completely of rapidly moving bits of energy, call them electrons, protons, plus other names. All physical matter may be considered as mobile energy even though groups of this energy appear to be static. Thus, the firing of the gun resulted in the interplay of the various groups of energy involved in the gun, the projectile, the dynamite, the surrounding atmosphere, etc. Now, the pulling of the trigger, while it may have been a necessary condition, is obviously not the real cause of the firing of the gun. It is frequently maintained by people with a jack-in-the-box complex that such an action as pulling the trigger and setting off the charge released energy in the dynamite. But such metaphors, like the outmoded tales of genies, can hardly be credited unless it be thought (and some have so thought!) that the electrons in a bit of dynamite have little hooks to hold one another, and that a bit of applied pressure causes

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them to take their hooks out of each other and go whirling off in fury. Actually, it is possible that the pulling of the trigger merely brings together various groups of energy, and the resulting explosion may be the interplay of two or more groups of energy coming together. The cause of the explosion, if there is an anterior cause, must lie in the transmission of energy, or in the action and reaction of energy. While there may be necessary human events that put these energies into position to react, it is hardly apt to call these necessary events the cause, for in such a case one set of necessary conditions (such as pulling a trigger) could result in countless different events. But, the law of cause and effect is useless even to explain the action and reaction of groups of energy. When two forces collide and a resultant force follows, the resultant force was born at the moment of collision. There is nothing in the nature of the first two forces that caused the resultant force, for the result occurred only in the collision. Thus, even on the plane of energy it becomes apparent that cause and effect are simultaneous conditions. That is, as Blake says, each cause is its own effect. All this does not deny that the pulling of the trigger will, when the necessary positive and negative conditions are present, fire the bullet. However, just as night follows day but is not caused by day, just so will each event have seemingly related previous and succeeding events connected with it. But the cause of any event must be sought for elsewhere than in what has gone before. The situation could be compared to a game of checkers. Under certain conditions men are moved forward; under other conditions, when men are crowned as kings, they move in any diagonal direction on the checkerboard. Under another condition the law of the game says that one man must jump another man. But that necessary jumping cannot be said to have been caused by anything in the nature of the checkers themselves, or in the nature of the men who move the pieces. That jumping is necessitated by the laws of the game, and cause and effect does not enter into the situation.

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It is just so with energy. Energy follows certain laws, and since no one can argue with or change these laws (Blake says that no omnipotence can act against order), events in the physical world do follow each other in a way that the rational mind, able to understand the laws of the game, can comprehend. In fact, it is obviously possible to predict a succession of physical events with excellent if not perfect accuracy. But let no one assume that this succession can be considered a cause and effect relationship. In checkers the cause of the jumping is in the law of the game; in the physical universe the cause of events is in the laws of nature. And an event in its occurrence is exhibiting its natural laws; thus, cause and effect are one, each effect is its own cause. Actually, the man who bases his action on cause and effect may often find that the desired effect does not come to pass. The better way to obtain a result may be to think of this result as occurring only under certain conditions. The good soldier knows that merely pulling the trigger will not result in hitting the target; in fact, it may not even result in firing the bullet. The chemist who sets up his apparatus does not assume that the flame of the bunsen burner will cause the result of his experiment. Rather, he thinks of his experiment in terms of the necessary conditions under which the desired event will take place. When an unexpected result occurs, the chemist checks up not only on the bunsen burner, but on all related conditions which he thinks might possibly have some connection with the result. After all this, it may seem strange to say that Blake did acknowledge a law of cause and effect! But Blake's concept is not based on a physical universe, for Blake says that every natural effect has a spiritual cause. In Milton he writes, And every Natural Effect has a Spiritual Cause, and Not A Natural; for a Natural Cause only seems: it is a Delusion Of Ulro & a ratio of the perishing Vegetable Memory. (Mil.·. PL 26, p. 513)

Since imagination is the basis of everything, it is reasonable to say that every natural effect has a spiritual cause. Everything

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exists as it is perceived; the perception is the effect caused by the imagination, or one of the aspects of the imagination of the perceiver. Here again can be seen the simultaneity of cause and effect, for something exists when it is perceived. However, cause and effect on this basis are not one, for the cause is in the spiritual energy and the perception is in the effect or bound of that energy. Since Blake considers the effects of the physical world to be caused by the imagination, there is an implication that the physical perceptions of the five senses do not rank as highly in his esteem as the more spiritual or emotional perceptions, for, apparently, the physical laws of the universe, as determined by the imagination, do not permit much exercise of that imagination. Blake says, "Natural Objects always did & now do weaken, deaden, & obliterate Imagination in Me." (A.W.P.: p. 783) Blake seems to consider the physical perceptions of the imagination almost as a self-imposed prison on the part of the imagination. "Heavenly goddess!" he wrote at an early age, "I am wrapped in mortality, my flesh is a prison, my bones the bars of d e a t h . . . . " (P.S.: p. 37) In fact, the physical perceptions may cause delusion to be accepted as fact. While Blake admits the validity of all perceptions, it is possible for man to misunderstand what he is perceiving. Blake writes, We are led to Believe a Lie When we see not Thro' the Eye.

(Aug.: p. 433)

That is, if we perceive things not as emanating from the imagination, we perceive delusions. The physical eye perceives physical objects, but if the perceiver does not realize that everything is a product of the imagination, he may think that the physical object has an objective validity independent of man. No one should assume that Blake, while he may speak of the body as the prison of the soul, thought that man cannot do great things, have highly imaginative perceptions, while in the body. But, in order for a man to partake of the glory of the imagination, he must see thro' the eye. He may realize the physical necessities

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of the body, but he can still use his imagination in the creation of works of art, by the forgiveness of sins, etc. However, Blake's thoroughness so pervades everything that he thought or wrote that he never confuses one perception with another perception. Blake may see angels sitting in trees, he may hear the word of God instructing him, but he sees the former and hears the latter with his imaginative senses and not with his eyes and ears. No spirit knocks on Blake's physical table; no dear departed leaves him messages on pulp paper. If, on occasion, a contemporary of Blake's quotes him as having said something inconsistent with the above, it may be assumed not that the contemporary was a liar, but that Blake had a delight in shocking those whose intellects annoyed him. Crabb Robinson, who knew Blake well, suggested as much. So far, then, it is apparent that Blake credits all perceptions with validity. He admits that each man may perceive differently, and that the same man may perceive differently at different times. However, since all men are immanent in each other, they do perceive sufficiently alike in many things to be able to live in harmony. Ideally, if men really used their imaginations, they could establish harmony in all things. All perceptions are not only real, but are distinguishable from each other. Since perceptions are the only reality, knowledge is immediate and not by deduction. The ultimate perception, the ultimate reality, is the imaginative perception which enables man to see the relationship between the various perceptions. Blake denies the physical law of cause and effect and considers the imagination to be the cause and the perception to be the effect of each and every thing. The bodily perceptions do hinder man, but by the use of imagination, particularly in the arts, man is able to surmount the obstacle of the body. And although the less physical perceptions are more potent than the physical ones, neither can interfere with the other, for everything that is perceived is real and has its own validity. Before a discussion of the perceptions can be closed, it is necessary to deal with one factor that may seem odd at first glance. Blake places the source of all reality in the imagination.

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He also credits with reality every perception of whatever variety, for every perception has its source in the imagination. If this is so, why is it necessary for a man to see through the medium of the eye? Why does man think through the medium of the brain? While science has not found any organ that can be called the imaginative organ, still the question arises as to the necessity for having other perceptions occur through the mediation of bodily organs. These organs themselves are perceptions of the imagination. Are they, the bounds of energy, the created objects, themselves capable of perception? That is, does the imagination create the eye and give that eye the power to create objects of sight? Or, does the imagination create all objects of sight, the eye as well as that which the eye is said to see? Blake's position, since he stresses that the imagination is the source of all perceptions, is that the imagination creates directly (or by means of its aspects) not only the physical senses but also what the senses perceive. That is, the color that the eye "sees" is a creation of the imagination. Why, then, is it necessary for one to see physical reality through the sense organs? One can visualize as well as see an object, but Blake, while crediting both vision and eyesight perceptions with reality, definitely distinguishes between them. How, then, does he avoid considering the eye as the creator of eye perceptions? To Blake the physical senses are not sources of perceptions; they are merely knotholes in the wall of generation through which the imagination is forced to look in order to perceive the physical world. Blake calls the five senses ". . . the chief inlets of Soul in this age". (M.H.H.: p. 149) These senses (as well as any more that the physiologist discovers) are blinders that place limitations on the imagination but cannot create even one perception by themselves. Blake says, .. . Man Brings All that he has or can have Into the World with him. Man is Born Like a Garden ready Planted & Sown. This World is too poor to produce one Seed. (A.R.D.: p. 471) That is, the world is itself a perception and cannot create. The senses might possibly be conceived of as part of the laws of na-

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ture as imagination has created them. The man in a dungeon who is able to see only through a slit in the imprisoning rock need not think that it is the slit that creates his sense impression. Blake often considers the senses as just such a massive prison with narrow holes through which the imagination can perceive. How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five? (M.H.H.: p. 150)

Quotations might be multiplied, but it should by now be clear that Blake considers the senses to be no more than the inlets of the soul in this age.

Some men, however, are not so limited as others by their physical perceptions. An artist sees more clearly in his mind than an ordinary person sees through his eyes. And each man, while he may not himself be able to paint pictures, may still see great sights if the artist's painting awakens the imagination within him. Blake's liberal attitude, which credits with reality everything that is perceived, maintains that all perceptions are creations of the imagination. When, however, an individual credits these perceptions with a reality in themselves, a reality independent of the imagination, he may be said to be living in delusion. When his imagination is chained to a belief in the external validity of the physical world, he is spiritually close to death. But Tharmas, as he appears in the physical world, is not only the bound of the unified imagination. He is also the bound of Urizen and of Luvah. The next three chapters will discuss the three other Zoas and show what happens when their form is given a validity independent of the imagination that creates that form. Then the evil effect of being spiritually close to death will be more apparent.

5.

THE EMOTIONS - L U V A H

No one has looked more swiftly and surely into the mystery of sex than Blake. Not the most modern of psychologists, not D. H. Lawrence himself, makes the same impression of unclouded understanding as Blake. The difference between Lawrence and Blake in this respect is singular and revealing. Both preached with impassioned sincerity a doctrine of sexual regeneration: of regeneration of sex, and regeneration through sex. But in Blake the doctrine flows out of a larger doctrine from the beginning: all that is implicit in the experience and the conviction of the living unity of the Body and the Soul. Therefore Blake was proof against the error, into which Lawrence not seldom fell, of asserting the Body and denying the soul. And when he does this Lawrence drives division deeper; in Blake the division is transcended from the beginning. For all their startling resemblances the doctrine of Blake belongs to a higher order. J. Middleton Murry, William Blake (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933), p. 125. T h e emotions, all of which are included under the domain of the King of Love, are given a place second only to Los-Urthona in Blake's philosophy. In fact, Luvah and Los are similar in many respects. Both are usually energizing principles compared with Urizen and Tharmas w h o are more nearly bounding contraries. W h e n the divine wisdom appears, it appears ordinarily in the form of Los, but Jesus, w h o brings God's glory to earth, comes t o earth clothed as Ore, which character Blake describes as the generate Luvah. "O L a m b / Of G o d clothed in Luvah's gar-

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ments!" says Luvah. (F.Z.: Nt. 2, p. 282) "Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love / Is God, our father dear." (Inn.: p. 117) Mercy, pity, and love are surely emotions, and yet Blake describes them as God who is the imagination. Thus, it is often a problem to distinguish between Los and Luvah. This difficulty, however, is by no means insurmountable, for all one needs to do in any particular instance is to remember that Blake is a realist and avoids pure characters. That part of mercy, pity, and love that is emotion belongs to Luvah; that part that bears imaginative insight belongs to Los-Urthona. Luvah, like everyone else, fits into Blake's concept of the contraries. Luvah as emotion is the energizing contrary of Urizen or reason. A man experiences emotions until he reaches the point beyond which his reason will not permit him to go. "Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy", says Blake {M.H.H.: p. 149), whose "energy" of The Marriage of Heaven and. Hell becomes the "Luvah" of his later Prophetic Books. Ideally there is no trouble between reason and emotion, for the imagination is the elixir that blends Luvah and Urizen together in the proper proportion according to the needs of a particular situation. However, emotion and reason are opposing tendencies, and when divorced from the imagination struggle against each other. The Four Zoas largely has as its argument the attempt of Luvah to rule Urizen and the attempt of Urizen to rule Luvah. While it is true that Los and Tharmas also take part in the battle for dictatorship, as do their feminine emanations, their struggles are more or less only the result of the original clash between Luvah and Urizen. The previous chapter suggested some of the difficulties that arise when Tharmas is king. Under such a system man's perception may appear to have a validity independent of the perceiver. Man creates an idol, and then calls that idol a god and worships the graven image. The story of Urizen's and Los' assumption of the crown will be in later chapters. Here is the outline of what happens when Luvah subjugates the other Zoas. First, however, it is necessary to view Luvah in his ideal state as a servant of the divine imagination. Luvah has his own sets of

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contraries, two of them being love and hate and attraction and repulsion. One need not wonder at the idea of considering the emotions of hatred and repulsion as necessary contraries to such highly desirable feelings as love and attraction, for the contraries of hate and repulsion are bounding contraries when paired with love and attraction. As such they are not antagonistic, destructive forces. Hate and repulsion are dependent for their existence on the energizing contraries of love and attraction. Should, however, hate and repulsion become ends in themselves, should they assume that they have an existence independent of love and attraction, then they become destructive negations and are no longer contraries. While the contraries are married, the surge and repose of emotions continue eternally. No one need think that an emotion is always at its crest. Blake admits that " . . . weak is the joy that is never wearied." (A.L.A.: p. 65) This is just Blake's way of saying that there is no joy that is never wearied. The Luvah in each man, under the guidance of imagination, acts for the enjoyment of man. The aim of the imagination is to cause man to have more and new emotions, and not to destroy his ability to have emotions. Blake makes use of sex as a symbol of imaginative Luvah and also of Luvah devoid of imagination. Ideally, sexual intercourse represents the marriage of the contraries, it is the energy and repose of man, the union of the active male and the passive female. Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion might be called a poetic argument in favor of sexual pleasures and plenty of them. Male and female are the two contrary principles, and their marriage on this earth cannot be better accomplished than by sexual intercourse. On the other hand, Blake poses the negation of sex, chastity, "When the Druids demanded Chastity from Woman & all was lost." (1er.·. PI. 63, p. 697) It can be maintained with much textual evidence that Blake considers the idea of female chastity to be the major cause of evil on this earth. To continue the symbolism, when the female refused her "chapel all of gold" to the male, she, the bounding contrary, is assuming a validity independent of the energizing male. As such, she

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represents a worship of the perceptions, and she tries to bend imaginative energy to her will. Love, and with Blake the word runs the range from sex to brotherhood, is desirable in all of its forms. It is an emotion so expansive in nature that it shines forth almost like a halo around the one experiencing it. Love is a benevolent, self-sacrificing emotion, for, as Blake phrases the rhetorical question, " . . . can love seek for dominion?" (Jer.: Pl. 29, p. 654) Love does not depend upon the opulence of its subjects or objects; in fact, love may likely be found in the most abject poverty. "William Bond" advocates, Seek Love in the Pity of others' Woe, In the gentle relief of another's care, In the darkness of night & the winter's snow, In the naked & outcast, Seek Love there!

(p. 436)

This, of course, if just where Jesus sought love. Love is a non-destructive, ever-growing, happy commodity that does not have to be paid for or derive its being at the expense of something else. Blake writes, How can one joy absorb another? are not different joys Holy, eternal, infinite? and each joy is a Love. (V.D.A.: p. 192)

In fact, Blake goes so far as to identify love with life itself. Swedenborg wrote, "No one knoweth what is the Life of Man, unless he knoweth that it is Love." Blake appends the annotation, "This was known to me & thousands." (A.S.D.L.: p. 89) The emotions are not learned reactions. As previously pointed out, all knowledge is immediate, and the knowledge of emotions is in the feeling of the emotions themselves. Note how Blake describes the man experiencing the emotion of love, He who Loves feels love descend into him & if he has wisdom may perceive it is from the Poetic Genius, which is the Lord. (A.S.D.L.: p. 90)

This feeling of the Lord which descends into the man who loves is further evidence of the immanence of God in all men. Emotions are not mere whimsical flutterings to Blake; emotions are part of the substance out of which man is made. Blake says that

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God is love and that God is mercy. Thus, Blake makes the emotions not mere possibilities of God, rather the emotions are God Himself. Blake, particularly in the The Four Zoas, makes frequent use of events in the Bible by the simple device of changing some of the characters involved and rearranging the story to suit his needs. The temptation of Adam and Eve by the serpent, Jesus nailed to the cross, and the story of Mary and Joseph are a few of the more obvious episodes that Blake has adapted for his own purposes. Sometimes he lets the Biblical characters appear under their own names as in the case of Mary and Joseph. At other times he clothes the characters in his own symbols. Jesus is treated in both ways, for Jesus appears in Blake's Prophetic Books under his own name and also under the guise of Luvah. This raises a pertinent question. Los is often identified at least in appearance with God. Why, then, does Jesus, the Godly man, come to earth in the form of Luvah? An answer suggests itself in the fact that men on earth have largely lost their imagination. If Jesus descended to earth in the clothes of the imagination, he would not be recognized. After all, in The Four Zoas Los does strive to revive the eternal man, but he is unable to do so until Jesus appears. Jesus, in the guise of love, is able to appeal to man on a plane that still has strength in man's being. Man on earth may not be saturated with imagination, but man does have emotions; and Jesus, by placing the emotion of love at an alltime high, is able to restore once again the imagination of man. Note also that Jesus preaches brotherhood rather than imagination, because, by preaching brotherhood, he is able to make way for the idea of forgiveness of sins which, as a later chapter will show, is the supreme act of the imagination itself. Blake writes, For the Divine Lamb, Even Jesus who is the Divine Vision, Permitted all, lest Man should fall into Eternal Death; For when Luvah sunk down, himself put on the robes of blood Lest the state call'd Luvah should cease; & the Divine Vision Walked in robes of blood till he who slept should awake. (F.Z.: Nt. 2, p. 287)

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That is, when brotherly love no longer existed on earth Jesus descended to maintain the existence of brotherly love in his own person. The emotional aspect of man has to be kept alive because emotion is a principle of life, or energy, itself. Since Luvah refuses to be the servant of Los-Urthona, there is danger (although it is only a theoretical danger, just as the concept of nonexistence is theoretical) that man might fall into Eternal Death. But, if man will not come to God, God will come to man. " . . . God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is." (N.N.R.: p. 98) When man removed his emotions from the domain of imagination, it was not sufficient for Los, the divine appearance and in one sense God Himself, to struggle with Luvah, for the imagination to fight for supremacy with the emotions. What is actually done is something more subtle, for God, in the person of Jesus, enters into the emotions of man and, by revitalizing these emotions with imagination, permits man once again to realize the true value of the imagination. From the above it becomes apparent that Luvah, the emotions, is a means by which the imagination can operate and grow in man. Actually, it is part of Blake's theory that imagination operates in all of man's aspects, in man's reason and perceptions as well as in man's emotions. However, while a perception and a reasoning process ideally should result in an expansion of the imagination, it is also possible for them to result in a stultification of the imagination such as occurs when individuals react from their memories rather than from their imagination. For instance, men in this world usually react to their perceptual surroundings purely on the basis of memory. It requires hardly a trace of imagination to eat, sleep, drive an automobile, pay taxes, or gossip while pushing the baby carriage. Likewise in the realm of thought; teacher and minister decide moral problems; editorial writers arrange political views; and the child's mental environment all too often may dig the ditch his adult mind will wallow in. Consider the man who votes the Democratic or Republican ticket just because his ancestors before him voted that ticket. What could be further removed from the imaginative concepts of liberty and democracy? The great emphasis in text-

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books on modern education, at least in America, is on creative thought rather than on memory which was so all-powerful in the schools of Blake's day. While it is, therefore, simple for men to react to their mental and their physical perceptions on a basis almost purely memorized, it is, on the other hand, relatively difficult for men to have emotions without arousing some imagination in them. Common indeed is the case of the youth who, after being sexually aroused by the appearance of a young woman, finds that his sexual emotions have widened to include the imaginative act of consideration for his beloved's happiness. Men who have enjoyed the same pleasures or who have endured the same sorrows often find themselves drawn towards each other because of their experiences together. The feeling of sympathy for the underdog is due at least in part to the ability of the observer to perform the imaginative act of sharing the emotions of the loser. Thus it is that Blake says, "Thought alone can make monsters, but the affections cannot." (A.S.D.L.: p. 90) Thoughts may create all kinds of delusions. Someone in the desert may see a mirage, the frightened boy may think that the clammy hand of a spook is on his neck, the man may remark that, "Now that I think about it, I really knew the answer all the time." But the affections, the emotions, cannot create delusions. The emotion of love or the emotion of fear cannot be perceived as other than that which it really is. The young girl, finding that her love for a young man is not returned, may say that her true feeling is not love but infatuation. However, this delusion is obviously one of rationalization, or, as Blake might say, a thought monster. Since the emotions are capable of inspiring the imagination, and since the emotions are not subject to delusions except delusions arising from thought, there need be no cause for surprise that Blake considers that man may be returned to his eternal destiny by means of the emotions, by means of Jesus in Luvah's robes. Luvah, to sum up a bit, represents the emotions and is in many respects similar to Los. Blake sees the emotions as the energizing contrary of the bound which is reason. Also, the

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emotions combine contraries such as attraction and repulsion within themselves. These contraries are married in the ideal state and are servants of the imagination. Emotions are everexpanding qualities that do not have to be paid for; nevertheless, energy and repose do alternate, so that emotions grow weary, but, resting, renew again. Emotions are felt immediately as they occur. Blake shows that emotions are the means whereby God may descend to earth to raise man once again to the level of the imagination. While Blake's conception of the emotions may be seen as that of a joyful and beneficial aspect of man, there is also another side to this happy picture. Suppose the bound which is emotion tries to assume an existence independent of the imaginative energy which is its source. The results of such a catastrophe are thoroughly apparent in the Prophetic Books. Blake writes, But wihen Luvah assumed the World of Urizen Southward . . . . All fell towards the Centre, sinking downwards in dire ruin. (1er.·. PL 59, p. 691)

Whatever may be the exact signification of the map directions, the point is that dire ruin occurred when Luvah shut out imagination, which demands the marrying of the contraries, and encroached upon Urizen's domain. Blake uses the symbol of sexual sadism to show an immediate result of the assuming of Urizen's region by Luvah. The male and female, the Zoa and his feminine emanation, afflict each other with the greatest torments their fiendish minds can devise. Originally each Zoa was united with his emanation; but, at the division of Los (caused by Luvah's revolt), each Zoa divides from his emanation and in this separated state they afflict each other. A description of Los and Enitharmon in this condition will serve to give the general relationship between each Zoa and his divided emanation. Blake writes of Los and Enitharmon, "Alternate Love & Hate his breast: hers Scorn & Jealousy." {F.Z.: Nt. 1, p. 270) Remember that this love and hate is unimaginative love and hate. Thus, when the Zoa loves his divided emanation, she scorns his love; and when he hates (is repulsed),

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she grows jealous. In other words, each seeks for his own betterment without any thought as to the happiness of the other. The divided Zoa and his emanation play an emotional game of tag in which each one in turn torments the other. The steps by which the Zoa and his emanation arrive at this undesirable condition are simple to follow. When Luvah turns his back on the imagination, he no longer has the imaginative ability to realize that joy comes only when the Zoas are united as servants of man. Consequently, Luvah tries merely to satisfy his own aspect, the emotions, and he works under the assumption that the more the emotions emote the greater will be his pleasure. Luvah thinks that by delivering himself from the supposed restraints of the other Zoas he has increased his own possibilities for pleasure until these possibilities are without limits. What he cannot realize, since he shuts out imagination, is that the other Zoas were not restraints on man's joy but servants for man's pleasure, and that his new found "infinity" is less roomy than his former "limitations". This perverted view is found every day in men lacking in imagination. The adolescent who thinks he has so much freedom in the fact that he can stay out all night or that there is no chaperone hanging over him may scorn the apparent sedateness of those who engage in the so-called higher pursuits of art and science. But, unless that same adolescent couples his freedom with imagination, his actual pleasure will be tame compared with that of the poet creating a poem. The mistake of Luvah is not that he seeks the utmost in freedom for his emotions, for that in itself is highly to be desired. Luvah's mistake is that, like the traveller who wants to see everything and thereby sees nothing, the method he uses to obtain freedom for the emotions results in their imprisonment. All freedom must come through the imagination. The man with unlimited time to paint and with unlimited materials with which to work will produce nothing of value without imagination, and the mere striking out with multicolored daubs in all directions will no more result in a work of art than will Luvah's frenzied and unimaginative struggles result in emotional joy.

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Thus, Luvah, lacking imagination, struggles to augment his emotions. His first act is to try to obtain dominion over Ur\zen, for reason ceases to be an inspiring bound and curbs the emotions in an unimaginative mind. Urizen offers to share the kingship with Luvah, but Luvah, afraid that Urizen will secretly try to usurp all power, replies, . . . "Dictate to thy Equals; am not I The Prince of all the hosts of Men, nor equal know in Heaven?" (F.Z.: Nt. I, p. 278) Luvah tells Urizen that he intends to vanquish him. It is not strange that Luvah refuses to let Urizen be co-ruler with him, nor is it surprising that Luvah does not trust Urizen. Luvah wants no limiting reason to encumber him. He does not trust Urizen because he knows that Urizen must conquer or be conquered. That is, unless a man uses his imagination, either his emotions or his reasoning power will rule. Luvah and Urizen cannot exist in peaceful equality unless they are under the guidance of the imagination. A man's reasoning power will lead him in one direction and his emotions will lead him in a different path. Had Luvah agreed to a partnership with Urizen he would soon have found himself, as he well knew, under the thumb of Urizen's laws. Reason, by its very nature, must conquer emotion if the emotion permits reason to have its say. Even a superficial glance at the epicurean philosophy will bear evidence to the truth of the last statement. Epicureanism starts out with the assumption that man's life should be devoted to pleasure. The college freshman, hearing this, imagines that life with the epicureans was a series of exuberant orgies, and the student looks upon the study of philosophy with a new interest. However, when one probes a bit deeper into epicureanism, the question of pain comes up. Thus, epicureanism is no longer concerned only with the attainment of pleasure, it also advocates the avoidance of pain. As this doctrine marches on in the hands of the philosophers, the stress increases on the avoidance of pain until, in its most advanced stage, certain epicureans advocate suicide as desirable. They contend that there is no real

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pleasure, but that there is certainly plenty of pain. Thus the epicurean philosophy, that unusual kind of philosophy which advocates only pleasure, by permitting itself to worship the tools of reason, eventually comes under the dominance of reason to such an extent that it advocates emotional destruction. This point is true not only of epicureanism. "He who hesitates is lost" is an everyday expression of the same idea. When reason and emotion come into conflict, the individual must beat down his reason or have his emotion subdued by reason. Therefore, Luvah seeks no peace with Urizen but tries to subdue him. Nevertheless, and Luvah has not imagination enough to see this, reason still will eventually come out on top! This is partly because emotion divested of imagination becomes itself more and more like reason. Witness, for instance, the emotional state of so-called pagans with the rational state of so-called civilized and certainly more developed peoples. It is a fact of modern society that however emotionally wild youth may be, the vast majority of these wild ones subdue reason only for a time, for a slight advance in years seems to turn every most reckless generation into reasonable people who castigate the new youth. And this ascending supremacy of reason in the individual is not naturally a result of increasing age. It is a result of the adult's drawing away from the imaginative energy he embraced as a child. Note that some men never learn to sit still. Remarkable enough, it is the users of imagination, the poets, painters, musicians, who do not succumb to reason and, as the advanced age of many poets and artists will testify (popular misconceptions notwithstanding), these men generally are not destroyed by their emotions. To select the best romantic poets, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Byron, the average age of this group at death was fifty, and this group contains three examples of poets who died young. The Victorians, Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and Rossetti, averaged seventy years of imaginative and emotional existence. The problem, therefore, is to show why among unimaginative people reason eventually triumphs over emotion, why, to quote another poet, "the heart grows old". The reason for this may

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be somewhat hard to trace in Blake's writings, but once the evidence is collected Blake's point is easy to understand. Blake writes in Jerusalem, " . . . Albion's Spectre, who is Luvah." (1er.: PI. 60, p. 692) Now, it was proved before by direct quotation that the Spectre is the reasoning power of man. How then does Blake identify Luvah with the reasoning power? Is Blake confused, or is this a typographical error? Actually, however, it is possible to explain this phrase without assuming either of the above choices. What Blake means is that Luvah has approached the characteristics of Urizen. When Luvah separates himself from imagination he is divided from his feminine emanation and becomes a spectre, "Because / Man divided from his Emanation is a dark Spectre." (Jer.: PI. 53, p. 684) So, too, Tharmas and Los have spectres. It must not be assumed that as a spectre Luvah is identical with Urizen; what is really meant is that the reasoning power, when Luvah becomes a spectre, has gotten Luvah in his grasp. Thus, to conclude the description of what happens when Luvah assumes the world of Urizen, Luvah in his divided state torments his emanation Vaia because he has no imagination to perceive her sufferings. He soon finds that he in turn receives no consideration from her, and that his joy, instead of being greater now that he has unshackled himself from Los-Urthona, has decreased. Luvah can no longer realize that this sad condition is the result of his separation from imagination. Rather, he struggles all the harder only to find himself cast into the furnaces of Urizen. So it is that Blake thinks that unimaginative emotion, battle as it will, must eventually come under the dominion of reason. Luvah says, "Urizen, who was Faith & certainty, is chang'd to Doubt." (F.Z.: Nt. 2, p. 282) Doubt is the great underminer, and Luvah cannot prevail. Luvah, although he is conquered by Urizen, is not doomed forever. As shown before, Jesus takes over Luvah's duties, and Luvah himself bursts forth in the form of the demon Ore. For now fierce Ore in wrath & fury rises into the heavens, A King of wrath & fury, a dark enraged horror: And Urizen, repentant, forgets his wisdom in the abyss,

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In forms of priesthood, in the dark delusions of repentance Repining in his heart & spirit that Ore reign'd over ail, And that his wisdom serv'd but to augment the indefinite lust. (F.Z.: Nt. 8, p. 353) Thus, when reason strives with the emotions, reason will win out. But the emotions, being an indestructible energy, will burst forth in wrath and fury, a dark enraged horror. The reader must not think that because Luvah does emerge as Ore, Luvah has outwitted Urizen, for the form of Ore is of no pleasure to Luvah. What has happened is that Urizen finds that although he can rule over the unimaginative emotions, these emotions must burst forth in a form that does nobody any good, neither Luvah nor Urizen. This is the story of unimaginative Luvah. Instead of gaining power by casting off the imagniation, he soon finds that he becomes the slave or reason. And, since life cannot be extinguished, reason finds that the curbed emotions burst forth in wrath and fury, a thing of horror. People with an ax to grind may see in this situation elements of Freudian psychology. At any rate there is a definite flavor of modern psychological viewpoints, for repressed emotions are presumed to burst forth in ways often termed psycho-neurotic. Blake, however, is not concerned primarily with the few men selected by their neighbors as being the most abnormal and therefore subject to psychiatric investigation and even incarceration. Blake's interest is with abnormality not of the few but of the vast majority. The normal state of man is imaginative. See how the dogmatist, the superstitious, the zealot, the chaste, the moralist - in plain words: perhaps all of us - have left their normal state. Blake psychoanalyzes the ills not of the case study but of humanity.

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His rejection of experimental science as a means to knowledge goes immediately back to that quality which he substituted for reason as the human equation-energy, the genius of the individual, his identity. It is also the poetic impulse, and it retains its purity only when it is free to aim directly at and immediately achieve whatever it knows to be its need. When it has this freedom, it makes intuitive perceptions into the matter of life that are superior to scientific knowledge because they are complete; that is, particular, not abstract. "Every Man's Wisdom is peculiar to his own Individuality." And when Blake asked, "What is the Life of Man but Art and Science" he had in mind another kind of science: namely, wisdom. This he distinguished from experimental science by examining the word "conscience." To answer Locke and Godwin on the theory of innate ideas, he split the word into its two parts: "Con-science." This is wisdom, the knowledge that is the individual's own, peculiar to himself, the particular potentialities with which he is born, making him what he is, unique. Any abstraction from singularity is untruth. Mark Schorer, William Blake (New York: Henry Holt, 1946), p. 398.

If Blake makes Urizen the major scapegoat in the Prophetic Books, it is not because reason is distasteful to him. A man of Blake's mental ability was surely wise enough to see that the truth of many of his own assertions was based on his extraordinary skill in wielding the tools of the mind. Actually, Blake is no more angry with Urizen than he is with the other Zoas.

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Urizen, after all, was faith and certainty while he remained an aspect of the unified imagination. It is only when the aspects of man separate and assume dominion each in its own right that Blake strikes out against the Zoas. Urizen receives the brunt of the attack not because he is most guilty for the downfall of man but because reason is the means by which the downfall is perpetuated. Near the end of The Four Zoas Blake writes, Then Urizen, sitting at his repose on beds in the bright South, Cried, "Times are Ended!" he exulted; he arose in joy; he exulted; He pour'd his light, & all his sons & daughters pour'd their light To exhale the spirits of Luvah & Vaia thro' the atmosphere. (F.Z.: Nt. 9, p. 372)

This picture of Urizen, almost incongruous after one has read The Four Zoas to this point, shows Urizen at peace with Luvah and exhaling the spirit of the emotions. Urizen is now no longer a self-proclaimed god, but is happy to be one of the eternal aspects of the unified imagination. Contrast this blissful picture of the servant Urizen with the nightmare of Urizen separated from the imagination. Jerusalem, speaking of the Spectre who was proved to be a form of Urizen, contains the lines, The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, & when separated From Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio Of the Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws & Moralities To destroy the Imagination, the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms & Wars. (Jer.: PI. 74, p. 714)

Thus, Urizen in his divided state attempts to destroy the imagination in man by means of laws and moral codes. Urizen clothes himself with the highest authority so that his dire work should not be questioned. But the Spectre like a hoar frost & a Mildew, rose over Albion, Saying, "I am God, O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power!" (Jer.: PI. 54, p. 685)

Urizen, by claiming to be god, tries to forestall all attempts to

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question his moral codes, for who will dare to doubt God's wisdom even for a moment? Urizen, in assuming the godship, outlaws everything that is not part of the rational power. He makes use of the principle of contraries for his own purposes. Blake writes, From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell. {M.H.H.: p. 149)

That is, all energy is condemned as evil, while the passive reason, the limiting contrary ideally made for the renewal of man's energy, is alone called good. Thus, instead of having the contraries married, all under the guidance of the divine imagination, Urizen would have the contraries separated and considered not as two interacting benefits but as two hostile entities. While imagination is great enough to include both reason and energy, Urizen must place all his faith in reason alone. And for fear that energy may overthrow his dominion, Urizen must strive to exterminate everything that is not reason. He does this by calling reason alone the good and everything else evil. Urizen says, "The Spectre is the Man. The rest is only delusion & fancy." (F.Z.: Nt. 1, p. 273) It is an essential of Urizen's nature that he pursue such a plan. Should Urizen fail to curb energy and imagination, he must surely lose his self-imposed power, for he does not have the ability to rule over the imagination and the emotions. Urizen's only salvation is in his preaching of good and evil, for by so doing he is creating a delusive and abstract code of conduct which he hopes will be used as a yardstick to measure the activities of man. Urizen, devoid of imagination in his divided state, cannot see that this moral code not only stifles the energies of man, but also stifles man's reason. Urizen, in his lordly state of a self-proclaimed god, trembles in fear throughout his reign. He shrinks to the proportions of superstition and memory. It is no wonder that he exults when Los-Urthona once again becomes supreme and liberates him along with mankind in general. What, then, is the purpose of Urizen's dominance? In con-

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temporary language, the tools of reason are used by those who have wealth, power, or authority in order to protect their vested interests. The standard of protection must necessarily be a product of Urizen. The imagination demands the sharing of whatever one has; the emotions place little store in material things. Only by reason can the powerful control the weak. The truly great of this world live in the realm of the imagination. The artist, the true philosopher, the story of Jesus - all exemplify the good life. However, these men can appeal to their fellows only through the imagination. Beneath them in ability is another class of men. This second class is more clever than the ordinary man. They do not have enough ability to be really imaginative, but they do have enough ability to be able to take advantage of the ordinary individual. This group, whom Blake calls the elect, by means of false promises, threats, and abstract reasoning, obtains power over mankind. The reprobates of Blake's system, personified in the acme by Jesus, offer no false promises, no threats, and no delusive reasoning. Consequently the ordinary man, in whom the imagination is asleep, ignores the reprobates and becomes the willing slave of the elect. Blake writes, . . . under pretence to benevolence the Elect Subdu'd All From the Foundation of the World. The Elect is one Class: . . . they cannot Believe in Eternal Life Except by Miracle & a New Birth. The other two Classes, The Reprobate who never cease to Believe, and the Redeem'd Who live in doubts & fears perpetually tormented by the E l e c t . . . (Mil.·. PL 25, pp. 510-511)

Thus, like the redeemed, even the reprobate, Blake's name for the truly imaginative man, is forced to some extent to live under the dominance of the elect, who pretend to benevolence. It must not be thought that it is of advantage to the elect to preserve their dominance. Actually, they are the most unhappy of men. But, like Urizen quaking on his throne in fear of the day when Jesus will deliver Albion out of his grasp, the powerful elect of this world not only enslave others but are themselves the prisoners of their own monsters.

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In every cry of every Man, In every Infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

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(Exp.: p. 216)

These manacles, which include every trouble that the flesh is heir to, are self-imposed. The difference between the elect and the ordinary man is that the elect impose these chains for their own benefit, whereas the ordinary man imposes the chains because his imagination is not awake enough to know any better. Jesus, in gathering his disciples, did not seek in high places. Rather he traveled among the harlots and the publicans, for among these there could be found true innocence. Before any religious group or any political party gets it into its mind that Blake is advocating its particular brand of theory, one thing must be sharply pointed out. Blake never in any of his writings advocated any particular political philosophy and never praised any church without later regretting it. Blake has as his fundamental concept the complete and unequivocal forgiveness of sins; and if there is any group that is based on this principle, let them claim Blake as one of their own kindred. Despite the prevalence of social themes in Blake's works, he is no nearer communism than he is near monarchism. The various political and religious groups are seen by him to be warring groups of the elect who expel tyrants only to become tyrants themselves, while the artist and the common man both suffer. He pictures himself indeed as the voice crying in the wilderness; for despite the great social, political and religious upheavals of his time, he finds himself and his ideas ignored. Blake asks, With what sense does the parson claim the labour of the farmer? What are his nets & gins & traps; & how does he surround him With cold floods of abstraction, and with forests of solitude, To build him castles and high spires, where kings & priests may dwell; Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot, is bound In spells of law to one she loathes? (V.D.A.: p. 193)

The whole moral code of good and evil is an attempt on the part

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of a few to reap the labors of others. Blake mentions in the above quotation one powerful weapon of the moralists: cold floods of abstraction. Blake's quarrel with Urizen in his divided state arises not because Blake is suspicious of reason, but because the divided Urizen is really a delusion of reason. He becomes hard and fast logic based on faulty premises, or vague logic based on indisputable premises. The first is the field of abstraction and the second is the field of generalization. Both of these rational conveniences are the servants of the elect who seek to dominate man. Blake describes just how each of these tools of Satan enslaves the individual. Rahab is Blake's symbol for "the System of Moral Virtue". (1er.·. PI. 39, p. 666) Moral virtue, as shown before, is Urizen's scheme to destroy imagination. In Jerusalem Blake writes, Imputing Sin & Righteousness to Individuals, Rahab Sat... Brooding Abstract Philosophy to destroy Imagination, the DivineHumanity. (Jer.·. Pl. 70, p. 709)

Thus, abstract philosophy destroys the imagination. It is based, in this instance, upon the faulty assumption that sin and righteousness are to be imputed to or blamed upon the individual. Once this assumption is made it is logically sound to establish a system of punishment; a more or less objective scale of values must be formulated by which man's conduct can be gauged. Thus, man's conduct is abstracted from the environment of which it is a product, and the act itself becomes more important than the possibly mitigating circumstances surrounding that act. Lavater wrote, "The fool separates his object from all surrounding ones; all abstraction is temporary folly." Blake adds his amen to this by annotating, "Uneasy, because I once thought otherwise but now know it is truth." (A.L.A.: p. 86) For Blake, too, all abstraction is temporary folly. Yet, by an unholy mixture of assumption, logic, necessity, and abstraction, man is legally governed. To recapitulate, if it is assumed that man is responsible for sin, the logical demand is that punishment be used as a

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deterrent; then it becomes necessary to set up an objective scale of punishment for acts that are abstracted out of their surrounding circumstances. People and law courts often do realize the dangers and the unfairness of some laws and try to make amends on appropriate occasions. Various devices are employed to secure "justice". Men take into consideration the surrounding circumstances when they exercise what is called the unwritten law, but in its usual applications the unwritten law approaches no nearer the truth than does the law of the statute books. Surrounding circumstances are also considered in the case of proved insanity as well as in the case of youth. Some judges and moralists even go so far as to show leniency when, for instance, the loaf of bread was stolen because the man had to feed his starving family. Indeed, humane considerations have so far penetrated into the moral code that the highly intangible surrounding circumstance of mental cruelty is often sufficient grounds for divorce. But, however much these instances multiply, the fundamental evil of abstraction remains in the moral code. Sin and righteousness cannot be imputed to individuals, Rahab and Urizen notwithstanding. Abstract philosophy, by taking the acts of man out of their surroundings, becomes the tool of Urizen and of the elect. In fact, this practice has advanced to such an extent that it often is used in reverse. That the bad man should be punished and the good man should be rewarded becomes so ingrained that, conversely, a man's ability and reliability are often judged solely on the basis of his wealth and fame. Thus, the movie star becomes an expert on toothpaste, and the National Association of Manufacturers considers itself as the oracle on government. The other tool of Urizen is generalization. Generalizations, the heart of all law, were vexatious things to Blake. "To Generalize is to be an Idiot" (A.R.D.: p. 451) was his way of exploding his annoyance at a necessity, for generalization is a necessity even if a vexatious one. Perhaps his precise attitude on the subject is represented by his remark, "General Knowledge is Remote Knowledge; it is in Particulars that Wisdom consists & Happiness too." (V.L.J.: p. 611) Thus, while generalizations may

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be on occasion necessary, these generalizations must never be confused with truth. A generality must always stand on a wavering platform ever ready to admit new evidence and to lose itself in the light of new truth. And this applies to every statement in this book. The method by which generalities are incorporated into moral codes is explained in a passage from Jerusalem, Y o u accumulate Particulars & murder by analyzing, that you May take the aggregate, & you call the aggregate Moral Law, And y o u call that swell'd & bloated Form a Minute Particular (Jer.: PI. 91, p. 738)

Blake is describing a normal process. You take a group of specific events and analyze them in order to discover some underlying common denominator. On the basis of this common denominator a general rule is formulated, and this general rule becomes the standard basis of judgment against which all new particulars are measured. If it were not for the imagination which overthrows these rules, progress would stagnate. For instance, it would be possible after examining a group of men to say that man is a two-legged animal. Whereupon a man with one leg enters the scene. There are now two possibilities open to the observer. He can either follow the rule and say that this onelegged animal is not a man, or else he can supersede the rule and say that some men may not have two legs. Very few, if any, individuals are so foolish as to judge "manness" on the number of legs an individual has. But is it less stupid to exclude from the "man" category those who differ in color of skin or in place of birth? And moral codes are just a step further than this. The burglar steals the silverware, the small boy steals a watermelon, and the starved man steals a bit of food; the common denominator is stealing, stealing is a crime, and all of the three should be punished. Blake pushes this logic to its ultimate conclusion. Jesus, too, says Blake, was a thief, for did he not "steal the labor of others to support him"? In fact, did not Jesus "murder those who were murder'd because of him?" (M.H.H.: p. 158) The moral code would answer both these questions in the negative, for it

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assumes that each man is capable of deciding his activities for himself, and abstract logic, helping out generalization, will hold each man responsible only for himself. Of course, there are instances where intentions are considered as more important than the deed. But what woman taken in adultery is universally excused because she sincerely believed that she was making somebody happy? So goes the code of morals using the devices of abstract philosophy and generalization. If the code is temporarily shelved in any particular instance, it is only put aside when doing so will not affect the guardians of that code. And the code is always put aside when it happens that through some logical mischance a particular aspect of that code would hurt the interests of the elect. For instance, lying is condemned perhaps universally, and certainly by the English speaking world. Yet, the concept of "white lie", telling a lie when doing so would avoid unpleasantness, is often condoned, for example, when a parent inculcates deceit in his child's mind by promising him good things he will never get. International diplomacy seldom thrives on plain truth, except in those instances when truth is on the side of overwhelming armies. Vigilantes, mob lynchings, closed trials, and all strong-arm methods give ample evidence that the moral code is only moral in so far as it protects the status quo and the position of the elect. Thus, moral virtue, the product of the godship of reason, based as it is on abstract philosophy and generalization, is not even by its sponsors considered to be a hard and fast sacrament. In other words, the moral code is a pretence of morality that has as its aim the destruction of true morality. It is, A pretence of Art to destroy Art; a pretence of Liberty To destroy Liberty; a pretence of Religion to destroy Religion.

(Jer.: PI. 43, p. 672)

From this pretence of morality the ills of the earth originate. Among these ills, to mention just the more important, are slavery, war, crime, sacrifice, chastity or asceticism, and atheism. It is worth pointing out how Blake considers these evils to be the

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result of moral codes, for surely most readers will readily agree that the eradication of at least the first three of the abovementioned evils would constitute an advancement for man's good that might outrank any previous group of beneficial social upheavals. To begin with the question of slavery, Blake makes a statement in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that, on the surface, is inimical to an essential principle of contemporary law. Laws, to the current mind, can be wise and just only if they apply equally to all men insofar as any individual man comes within the scope of any lawful provision. It is not assumed, for instance, that all men must pay the same taxes, but it is agreed that all men of like income and like obligations should pay equal taxes, even though their needs may be different. Blake's statement would deny this, for he says that, "One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression." (M.H.H.: p. 158) One law for everyone results in the slavery of the individual. Blake probably would have agreed with the Marxist doctrine of each man's producing according to his ability and receiving according to his needs. At any rate, he certainly would have been opposed to having each man receive according to his ability. Slavery, as practiced in not too distant times, was based on law and probably on some concept of equal justice. Men were slaves not because of their own personalities or because of their lack of political connections. Rather, men were slaves because of their condition of birth, or the color of their skin, or their lack of a self-sufficient means of livelihood. The criteria of slaves and free men were probably applied on an equal basis, just as our present day inheritance laws and taxes are applied on an equal basis. The son of a slave became a slave, and the son of poor man inherits his father's poverty. If it is claimed that the present world, by permitting equal opportunity of movement and choice to all men, has abolished slavery, the claim is true only for slavery that concerns the location of the physical body. The sad fact is that men of limited ability and opportunity by and large feel over them an intangible force that is, in its own way, as coercive as the taskmaster's whip.

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Blake, being a man who can see more than one side of a problem, does not for a moment think that only the poor and underprivileged men is a prisoner of this modern type of slavery that compels actions through moral and legal codes. The poor man may be forced to spend his entire life at a job he does not like and is ill-fitted for. The supposed freedom that the man has to change his job cannot be very real to him if any attempt on his part to better himself will result in temporary starvation for him and his family. The man whose parents gave him little schooling may suffer for this fact through no fault of his own. But it is not only the poor and less able who are slaves to the moral system. If one law for the lion and ox is oppression, the oppression is for both the lion and the ox. In the Prophetic Books, when Blake's characters fall into a world that ceases to behold the divine imagination, the worlds so created are usually labyrinths. No one who dwells on the earth escapes completely from living within a labyrinth, and the more privileged suffer along with the less privileged. The moral code posits one law for all. If every individual is expected to pay for medical service, the rich man may on occasion receive little benefit because he has this ability to pay. The disease that begins in the slums may soon spread to Olympus. The book that went unwritten because of the premature death of the poor poet will never be read by anyone. The wealthy and the influential, because of their prominence in the public eye, are in certain respects more constrained than their less outstanding brothers. The statesman who divorces his wife, let alone those who have openly committed adultery, loses votes at the polls. The rich man, who is well able to afford a conventionally immoral luxury, is also more liable to be victimized by his partners in illegality. The prohibitionist who wanted to impose one liquor law for all people may have found his own son struck blind by wood alcohol. Thus, the general law made to check some men may strike back at the proponents of that law. There is some extra-legal understanding that one law should not apply equally to everyone; but this understanding, often misapplied, is of limited use.

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The public that condones what it considers the lax sexual morality of movie stars makes no allowances when the actor is hailed into court. The politician whose taxes are surprisingly low and whose relatives and friends glut the school system, the police force and the fire department, may be re-elected time and again, for the public often assents to the idea that the victor is entitled to the spoils. But that same politician, out of office, finds his taxes increased, his friends dismissed, and his person sometimes imprisoned. So that it is that in the long run special privileges, inconsistent as they are with the code of morals, react to the detriment of those who once availed themselves of such privileges. After all, what man thinks that the moral code need be applied as strictly to himself as it is to others? Those who implicitly obey the moral and legal codes, because they consider such codes as desirable rules of conduct for mankind, must still feel the needless slavery that is imposed upon themselves. The careful driver, who obeys the thirty mile limit and thinks it necessary to curb the reckless driver, may writhe as he plods along while his neighbor whizzes past him with an angry blast of the horn. Perhaps less noble, but more abundant, is the man who feels that moral codes are desirable, but who thinks that he himself is entitled to try, within certain limits, to go beyond the letter and spirit of the moral codes. This, then, is one major result of the godship of reason whereby abstract philosophy and generalities impose moral and legal codes upon man. One law for the lion and the ox, one law for all men, enslaves all men with restraints whose value can be thought of only in terms of how they protect an individual from his fellows. The moral and legal codes oppress not only the malefactor but the benefactor and the indifferent as well. Thus, the epicureans, proclaiming the values of pleasure and of the absence of pain, come to advise strict adherence to the most ascetic laws of the land since that was to them the only way to avoid pain. All this does not mean that the wealthy man may not be better off than the laborer who is too poor and too tired to enjoy much of life. But it does mean that just as the middle class American of today is able to have more luxuries than the jewel-owning

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sultan of a thousand years ago, so, too, the society discarding the restrictive moral and legal codes will provide each of its citizens with liberties far beyond the liberty of the wealthiest and most powerful of today. Of course, if any individual derives his pleasure from the fact that others have less than he has, this individual will be most happy to be a sultan and have bad plumbing. And such individuals Blake sees as running the gamut of the social structure, for all men may be in their spectres' power. The elect of Blake's system are not necessarily those who have wealth and power. The elect are those who want to have relative affluence obtained at the expense of other men, and, insidiously, even at their own expense. The slavery of the individual under a one-law-for-all code of morals is not the only affliction of that code. War, the horror of which increases with the centuries, is another result of Urizen's godship. Blake writes, . . . Rahab Babylon appear'd Eastward upon the Paved work across Europe & Asia, Glorious as the midday Sun in Satan's bosom glowing, A Female hidden in a Male, Religion hidden in War, Nam'd Moral Virtue, cruel two-fold Monster shining bright, A Dragon red & hidden Harlot which John in Patmos saw. (Mil.: PI. 40, p. 532)

War, then, is an outward manifestation of moral virtue. Elsewhere Blake says, The Moral Virtues are continual Accusers of Sin & promote Eternal Wars & Doininency over others. (A.B.S.: p. 774)

It is not difficult to trace the line of reasoning that holds moral virtue responsible for war. The fact is, moral virtue never has been one definite thing. Moral virtues change from house to house, from church to church, and from nation to nation. The very fact that the laws differ in different places is ample evidence that moral virtues are not the same to all men. While the causes of war are alleged to be various, the financial magnates receiving most attention for the past generation, the simple truth is that wars are fought by the people themselves and not by any

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small group. Blake says, as shown before, that natural events have not natural but spiritual causes. The cause of a war, therefore, lies in the spiritual weakness of the very nations that do the fighting. That is, if men composed their differences on the basis of brotherhood, there would be no wars. John Jones tells the story of how Bill Smith did him an injustice. The listener, noting John's fervor and his logic, concludes that Bill Smith is not a nice person. A little later Bill tells his side of the story. Now it is Jones who is seen to be in the wrong. Both men speak in self-justification, and without any real attempt to understand each other. Such differences, if they become severe enough, may be decided by law courts. Nations have their differences likewise. These differences are not considered to be but two views of a question; rather, each nation sees God and moral virtue on his side. Since there are no courts powerful enough to decide the matter, wars result. And even such a tribunal as The United Nations fails to keep peace because, even if its decision were impartial, these decisions would have no conviction to self-righteous nations. The argument presents itself that the U.N., in order to secure justice, would have to have its own powerful army. But nations, with keen wisdom, realize that such a centralization of power would only give rise to a new kind of tyranny purporting to be a world court of justice. Who cannot imagine the gleam in the self-righteous eyes of the president of a U.N. that had great armies to enforce its edicts? Thus, from the man who believes that might makes right to the man who crusades in the name of God, all makers of war use what they consider to be moral virtue as their self-justification. Let the reader try to conceive of a nation that could long endure without inventing some code of moral virtue to justify its aggressions. If wars do stop, they will do so not because of moral virtue, but because people and nations come to understand and love each other. Blake says, And the bitter groan of the Martyr's woe Is an Arrow from the Almightie's Bow. ("The Grey Monk", p. 430)

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A third result of the code of moral virtue, crime, need not be discussed at length. Moral virtue demands punishment for crime, and such punishment does not aim at showing the evil-doer the benefits of desirable conduct or point out that the good man is the happy man. Rather, moral virtue admits the attractiveness of the thief's loot. That is why Blake says, "All Penal Laws court Transgression. . . . " (A.W.A.: p. 393) It follows from this, as Blake further claims, that "Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion." (M.H.H.: p. 151) The more codes of conduct there are, the more there will be breaking of these codes. Blake connects money, the aim of thievery, with the moral code when he speaks of money as " . . . The Great Satan or Reason, the Root of Good & Evil In The Accusation of Sin." (L.G.: p. 776) It need not be surprising that Blake connects money with good and evil, a code supposed to be derived from both divine precept and impartial reason. It is less surprising than to realize that the legal code, the supposed protector of the moral code, the distributor of justice, is primarily concerned with the preservation of property rights of individuals. What law punishes one of the greatest of crimes, insincerity? A thousand witnesses cannot deprive a man of his real estate without the evidence of a written agreement. Yet, under the law, one forsworn witness can conceivably lie away the life of a defendant. The thief who purloins the property of others is as much the product of the code of moral values as the financier who grows rich by manipulating the labor of others. The former is called a criminal while the latter may be highly respected. But the criminal who sees that moral virtue, woven as it is around the property rights of the individual, is a scheme that men get rich by, that criminal often justifies his own acts on the same moral basis as the financier. The affliction of sacrifice is an ancient result of the code of good and evil, and still survives in the expectation of penance on the part of a sinner. This sacrifice was in the form of human sacrifice when the Druids " . . . began to turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal command, whereby human

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sacrifice would have depopulated the earth." (D.C.: p. 578) Human sacrifice was changed to animal sacrifice by the Hebrews, and this was later changed to self-sacrifice or penance. Penance, particularly in those religions where the clergy has great influence over the parishioners, remains the modern form of sacrifice for sin. All such sacrifices Blake condemns as the product of Satan, He wither'd up the Human Form By laws of sacrifice for sin . . . .

(Jer.: PI. 27, p. 651)

It is logically sound for Blake to despise sacrifice for sin. First of all, a consideration of Blake's conception of sin, which will be treated in a later chapter, shows that Blake makes sin almost synonymous with the mild word "mistake", and a mere mistake does not seem to require sacrifice. Secondly, and more important, sacrifice is not only needless, it is an evil itself. When the sinner realizes his sin and becomes a good man, what is the need for sacrifice? Sacrifice is an attempt to appease God, but all such attempts are themselves sinful. God's delight is in the delight of man, and the man who has perfect faith in God must consider sacrifice for sin as an affront to the divine benevolence. One might sacrifice one's life to save the life of someone else, but the idea of penitence, of sacrifice as a bribe, is alien to Blake. The evils that have resulted from such practices are many. The evils of the Middle Ages whereby a man could atone for murder by a weighty contribution of money to the church have apparently disappeared. But, the pews in a church, or synagogue, or mosque are still filled with men who are anything but godlike out of church. Thus, church-going easily becomes a pleasant mode of sacrifice for sin, or a bribe whereby a man hopes to be forgiven his crimes. Such rationalized holiness Blake condemns. Next on the list of evils is chastity or asceticism. Blake's insistence on the purity of sex and on the right of men and women to have sexual communion out of wedlock is well known. The ideal mate, according to The Visions of the Daughters of Albion, will enjoy her mate's sexual joy with others,

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But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread, And catch for thee girls of mild silver, or of furious gold. I'll lie beside thee on a bank & view their wanton play In lovely copulation, bliss on bliss, with Theotormon . . . . (V.D.A.: pp. 194-195)

Despite this, Blake's life contains no record of seductions, and no suggestion of his sexual "looseness" is to be found in the statements of those who knew him. Nevertheless, no one should think that Blake wrote one thing and believed in something else. Let the reader consider that Blake associated sexual communion with spiritual communion. Where was Blake to find women whose purity was such that they honestly regarded sexual intercourse as something "On which the Soul Expands its wing"? It is, therefore, understandable why Blake, highly sexed as he must have been, may have indulged in none of few extra-marital relationships. Certainly he wanted them and would have enjoyed them. More to the point here is Blake's connection of the evils of chastity with moral virtue. He writes, And many of the Eternal Ones laughed after their manner: "Have you known the Judgment that is arisen among the Zoas of Albion, where a Man dare hardly to embrace His own Wife for the terrors of Chastity that they call By the name of Morality? their Daughters govern all In hidden deceit! they are vegetable, only fit for burning. Art & Science cannot exist but by Naked Beauty display'd." (Jer.: Pl. 36, p. 663)

It is no accident that sexual relationships, regarded as wrong outside of wedlock, soon come to be regarded as wrong even between man and wife. Moral virtue, by outlawing sex apart from wedlock, has reduced sex to a property right, and only by considering sex as moral just for the reproduction of children can the stigma of property right be avoided. Thus, the consideration of sex as immoral eventually reduces sex to a function necessary to the bearing of children. Obviously, people do not for the most part abide by such a chaste rule; so sex remains largely a property right, and law courts have given monetary

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rewards on the basis of breach of promise and alienation of affections. Furthermore, courts may on occasion wink at murder when a man avenges the violation of his "honor" and kills his wife's lover. But chastity, distressing and harmful as it may be to some or most individuals, is under Blake's lash for a wider reason than sex itself. Blake states the real cancer lurking in the guise of chastity. He says of Lavater and his contemporaries, " . . . They suppose that Woman's Love is Sin; in consequence all the Loves & Graces with them are Sin." (A.L.A.: p. 88) This is Blake's argument: when the passions of sex are denied, then all passions eventually become sinful and the staminal energy of the imagination is blotted out. 0 Human Imagination, O Divine Body I have Crucified, 1 have turned my back upon thee into the Wastes of Moral Law.

{¡er.: M. 24, p. 647)

Moral law curbs all loves and graces, all enthusiasm, all joy. In the extreme it gives rise to asceticism whereby fasting, living in a cell, wearing itching clothes, and hermiting oneself from all men become exemplary conduct. This renunciation of the powers God has instilled in man, this atrophy of the divine imagination which is not merely the tree of life, but, to quote Blake, the vine of eternity, can meet only the severest rebuke on his part. Repression of emotions has its terrors for Blake as it has for the most modern of psychologists. Luvah, repressed, becomes fierce Ore, and Urizen's code of moral virtues serves only to augment the infinite lust. The evils previously mentioned, slavery, war, thievery, and sacrifice, are themselves the product of chastity, of repression of the energies of man. Note how Blake says that chastity produces war, . . . I am drunk with unsatiated love, I must rush again to War, for the Virgin has frown'd & refus'd.

(Jer.: PI. 68, p. 707) Slavery, too, can result from chastity. Blake writes, . . . that Veil which Satan puts between Eve & Adam, By which the Princes of the Dead enslave their Votaries . . .

{Jer.; PI. 55, p. 686)

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It is not a far-fetched idea that people are enslaved by the preachings of chastity. A man, according to the everyday moral scheme of things (which has far more convention in it than morality) in order to possess a woman on a chaste basis, must have a visible means of support. He finds that, if he hopes to get this means of support, all too often he has to embrace a series of beliefs that ideally should have nothing to do with the earning of a livelihood. The individual must submit to his political boss, or his employer, or his union leader, or his church. Theoretically, the individual has the freedom of choice to act according to his conscience. But the fact that his possession of sexual satisfaction depends upon his means of support may well rob the ordinary man of any freedom of choice. The last evil of moral virtue to be discussed herein is atheism. That is, moral virtue, which is part and parcel of God's law to the narrowly religious mind, results in a denial of true religion. Blake says, The Moral Christian is the Cause Of the Unbeliever & his Laws.

(E.G.: p. 758)

Some of the reasons for this are not hard to find. The history of religion abounds with high-placed individuals who have transgressed the laws they preached. Consequently, with poor logic but plentiful example it is possible for many men to say that if the ministers do not believe in the law, there is no reason why anyone else should do so. Furthermore, simple humanity is often alien to good churchgoers. Thus, there always has been an abundance of evidence that one may profess the virtues of religion and yet not practice those virtues. But it is not the hypocrites alone who are responsible for atheism. After all, one does not with reason condemn religion because of subversive elements within that religion. Religions, by their countenance of the moral codes of good and evil, have aligned themselves with the devil, according to Blake. Blake nowhere speaks against true religion, for true religion, the worship of the divine vision, is his treasure. But organized religions, veering away from the teachings of Jesus,

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have made moral virtue a part of their doctrine, and have alienated themselves from true religion. When Satan first the black bow bent And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent, He forg'd the Law into a Sword And spill'd the blood of mercy's Lord.

(Jer.: PI. 52, p. 683)

Moral law is logically opposed to total forgiveness of sins, and as such is seen by Blake to crucify Jesus over and over again. Blake uses for support of his contention of the evils inherent in the moral law the story of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis. He calls it "Urizen's mysterious tree". When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree they lost their Eden and created the first evidence of chastity by clothing themselves with fig leaves. Blake interprets this story to mean that they were despatched from Eden not because they ate the apple, but because they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather than of the tree of life. That is, man himself ceased to behold Eden by creating a system of moral laws. The godship of reason, the assuming of power by Urizen, results therefore in great evils. By the use of abstraction and generalization, reason becomes the tool of the rulers of society who are themselves victimized by their own laws. These laws or moral codes enslave men, cause wars, foster crime, preach penitence, demand asceticism, and destroy belief in God. This list, incomplete though it is, shows to a large extent Blake's indictment against society, against the rule of the moral codes. Unlike so many other political philosophers, Blake specifically condemns the use of force to overthrow the present evils. His poem, "The Grey Monk", states the case very clearly in the last stanza, The hand of Vengeance found the Bed T o which the Purple Tyrant fled; The iron hand crush'd the Tyrant's head And became a Tyrant in his stead.

(p. 431)

All men who use force are in error in using that force, unless such force is necessary to preserve the imagination. (Examples

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of this rare possibility are in the next chapter.) Contemporary America seems to have some understanding of this principle, for ministers of the various faiths, those presumed to be doing God's work on earth, were excused from army duty under the draft system. There is evidence in Blake's poems written during the period of the French Revolution that he then saw some hope in violence. But if this were so, such hope was of short duration. Blake's contemplated seven book poem, The French Revolution, seems to have ended after Book One. The outcome of the French Revolution may have convinced Blake, if he needed such convincing, that tyranny was not confined to any one social class. If it be argued that Blake uses all sorts of violence in his Prophetic Books, and that such violence gives way to a happy ending, there are two counter arguments to show that this does not prove that Blake approved of violence. First, such violence as does occur represents only a symbolic depiction of what has happened on earth, and the happy ending comes not because of this violence but in spite of it, for the divine imaginations must eventually persevere. Note that Jesus delivers the Zoas without using violence. Second, a careful consideration of the Prophetic Books makes it doubtful if there is any violence used at all. When Luvah is cast into a furnace or Urizen is bound in chains, what actually happens is that these personages, although they speak as if they were being persecuted, are self-imposing their imprisonments and tortures. They have ceased to behold the divine vision and therefore create their delusions. The reader by this time may think Blake an anarchist. Blake speaks against conventional moral virtues, against existing religions, against the rulers of the world. Has Blake n o morality? Has he no religion? These should be rhetorical questions, for Blake has both morality and religion. Blake everywhere preaches the religion of Jesus which he considers to be the forgiveness of sins. The true morality preached by Jesus has degenerated into superstition. Blake writes, Mr Paine has not extinguisih'd, & cannot Extinguish, Moral rectitude; he has Extinguish'd Superstition, whioh took the Place of Moral Rectitude. (A.W.A.: p. 384)

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Good and evil and the one-law-for-the-lion-and-the-ox moral virtues are the usurping superstitions. Blake's code of moral rectitude is actually a more compelling code than the present system which winks here and shuts its eyes there. Under Blake's system man can never do less than what is right. There are no lapses and no deviations. Blake's morality is not based on Urizen's reason. Rather, it is based on God or imagination, though not on the gods of the churches. Blake maintains that good comes not through revolution but through revelation.

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Blake's accounts of his visions have led some critics to suppose that he suffered from hallucinations or even that he was a medium subject to supermundane control. He himself constantly explained that he saw "in imagination" or "here," tapping his forehead, and that he only possessed a power common to others if they chose to exercise it. Linnell comments that Varley, for whom Blake drew the famous visionary heads, believed in the actual presence of the "sitters" in a sense which was not shared by Blake himself. Mona Wilson, The Life of William Blake (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1948), pp.

65-66.

Imagination is never completely lost to man, for there can be no existence without imagination, the basis and essence of all being. In its unified strength the imagination is God and has the powers of God. This imagination, manifested in each individual man, is capable of great things. To mention some of these things, poetry, painting, imaginative love, and forgiveness of sins are all evidence of the imagination in man. Man, however, is able to deviate from the supreme path of the imagination. As shown before, when man ceases to look to imagination for the source of his energy, then he worships the perception or creation of that energy. By so doing, man grows weaker and weaker as he shuts out the renewed imagination from his being. The same energy that man receives from God may be used by man to draw himself away from God just as an arm, receiving its energy from the body, can use that energy to

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amputate itself and fall lifeless. The mind can direct the finger that pulls the trigger which sends a bullet speeding into the brain. However, imagination in man, although it may be denied its rightful place, cannot be destroyed, for any possible destroyer is itself a product of the imagination and depends for its existence upon the fact that it is being imagined. Nevertheless, imagination can be curtailed, and this process of attempting to shut out the imagination is symbolized by Blake under the heading of "negation". As discussed before, everything consists of contraries, of energy and reason, of perceiving and perception. Urizen, acting as god, distorts these contraries into the labyrinth of good and evil. Imagination, placed under the sovereignty of Urizen, can use its powers only for the glory of the reasoning ability in man. Under such circumstances LosUrthona becomes a mere negation, the Spectre of Urthona, in many respects indistinguishable from Urizen himself. Blake describes the rise of negations, And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength: They take the Two Contraries which are call'd Qualities, with which Every Substance is clothed: they name thein Good & Evil; From them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation Not only of the Substance from which it is derived, A murderer of its own Body, but also a murderer Of every Divine Member: it is the Reasoning Power, An Abstract objecting power that Negatives every thing. This is the Spectre of Man . . . (1er. PI. 10, p. 629)

Thus, mankind, by cataloguing the contraries into good and evil, abstracts from the code of good and evil a negative power. This negative power denies the value not only of the imagination, but of everything. Since Blake in the above identifies negation with the Spectre, it may be questioned as to how Los-Urthona, the imagination, can become a negation. The truth is that man is governed by what he treasures and even resembles the goal he seeks to attain. "They become like what they behold", says Blake. (1er.: PL 65, p. 701) All of the Zoas become spectres, negations, when dominated by Urizen. The reason for discussing

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negations under the imagination, however, is contained in the fact that the chief evil of negations is their ability to pervert and enchain the divine imagination. The first part of this chapter, therefore, concerns the imagination as seen in the net of negations. These negations are the result of the Zoas' taking command of the imagination. Imagination guiding reason may produce faith, but reason guiding imagination produces doubt. LosUrthona leads Luvah in the path of imaginative love; but Luvah leads Los-Urthona in the paths of envy and malice. Los-Urthona guides the world of perceptions into created realities; but Tharmas, taking command of the imagination, produces the delusion of death. It is, of course, impossible under Blake's system for anything to exist completely devoid of imagination since imagination is the basis of all things. Thus, there can be no such thing as reason, emotion, or perception completely devoid of imagination. But when imagination becomes the servant of reason, emotion, or perception, imagination (along with reason, emotion, or perception) becomes a negation and a principle of self-destruction. There are two fundamentally bad results which occur when the imagination loses its essential unity. The first is the worship of the passive, feminine, outward appearance of reality - in a phrase, idol worship. The second is the worship of self or selflove. Worship of the passive side of reality can easily be seen as the natural effect of the subordination of the imagination. If an individual forgets that the imagination is the source of all being, then it is almost a necessity for him to consider the outer world as having a validity independent of the imagination. It becomes easier to perceive the thought than it is to see the power to think, just as it is usual to consider that the feeling of love is caused by the charms of a woman regardless of the imaginative capacity of the man in love. Reason, emotion, and perception set up their worlds, and the divided imagination becomes a tool which they use for their own ends. But, the artist who looks forever at a great painting will never paint his own works just as the lover,

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adoring forever the beauty of his beloved, will never express the inner glory of his imagination. While the last two instances are exaggerated and unlikely examples, they do show the effect of the negation of the imagination, in which state the object is worshipped rather than the source of that object. In normal affairs, such negation must result in an increasingly passive attitude. Laws, manners, and religious doctrines become standards which annihilate the fact that these laws, manners, and doctrines were, in the hands of their originators, merely imaginative responses to a given situation. The law that is based on precedent as well as the religion that is practiced by ritual denies the imaginative source and fosters the worship of the created idol. "The Whole of the New Church", says Blake, "is in the Active Life & not in Ceremonies at all." (A.S.D.L.: p. 92) The truly religious man exults with God and does not think the way to enter heaven is to crawl in on his knees. Thus, the negation of the imagination results in the passive, unvirile obedience to the created standard or image. To clear up a possible confusion, let it be understood that Blake's definition of activity is imaginative activity. The passive man may use much physical effort in the practice of his religion, but such effort, requiring slight use of the imagination, is passive effort. "Thought is Act", says Blake. (A.B.E.: p. 400) Such a conception is not entirely alien to the customary use of language. An active man is not called so because he is a fast runner or because he suffers from St. Vitus' dance. A man of action is a man who utilizes his abilities. Since to Blake all ability stems from the imagination, it is proper for him to call mere physical activity passive in comparison with the great activity of the artist. Neither a river running downstream nor a man performing in a conventional rut is a truly active entity. But the charge that the negation of the imagination results in inactivity is not the only count against such negation. While full use of the imagination would permit great spiritual happiness, is it not still possible for the passive man to be happy even if on a vegetable level? This last course, however, has its own difficulties. Imagination must exist even in the passive man for the

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simple reason that imagination is the stuff out of which he is made. If this imaginative energy is not utilized in its godly form, dire consequences take place. Man cannot vegetate, and if he worships the perceptions rather than the divine imagination he will eventually compel his neighbor to worship the perceptions. For example, in court the witness must swear by God although the witness may be a sincere atheist. Time and again the sincere man is cast off because he refuses to obey artificial standards. The saint of one religion is often the excommunicated heretic of another religion; and in this fact is the proof that many religions, starting off as they do by the imagination of an original genius, soon become negations of all future imagination. The evils resulting from a negative imagination are far more widespread than the mere affliction of a few geniuses. Note that Blake, as quoted before, gave as examples of negations not only attitudes of passive indifference. Imagination cannot be completely shut out, and when the perceptions are worshipped, the imagination will express itself in the form of pernicious negations such as spite, malice, and envy. The man who bases his love on the character of his wife will be envious of the man whose wife is of better character. So it is that the moralist who thinks more of his accomplishments than he does of his ability to accomplish will betray malice and spite in refuting the arguments of those who prove him wrong. What is even more important, men will seek the negation known as revenge when their preferences are trampled upon. But in seeking revenge man hurts himself, for no good can come from injury to another. With a grasp of economics far beyond most of his contemporaries Blake writes, The Increase of a State as of a Man is from Internal Improvement or Intellectual Acquirement. Man is not Improved by the hurt of another. States are not Improved at the Expense of Foreigners. (A.B.E.: p. 402)

A man sees better scenery if he can induce his neighbor to improve his grounds, whereas the man with the most beautiful flowers who refuses such flowers to his neighbor will be compelled to look at inferior surroundings.

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The second result of the negation of the imagination is the worship of the selfhood. When a man places his faith in the perception rather than in the perceiving ability, it soon becomes apparent to him that no perception is as important as he himself is. A man comes to regard himself, for instance, as more important than God. As an example, when most men pray they ask for one or more favors; few limit their prayers merely to the asking of God to perform His Own Will. That is, each petitionprayer is really an attempt to superimpose one's own desires on God. "Prayer is the Study of Art", says Blake. (L.G.: p. 776) True prayer is not based on the attainment of goods for the selfhood, rather it is based on the study of God's nature, of art. Man too often tries to make God look like a man, whereas man actually should try to conform himself to the image of God. The evils of the worship of selfhood are largely apparent. Man uses his abilities only for the immediate betterment of himself, and by so doing neglects the benefit of the whole which might in the long run do most good to the individual. Man, to protect himself, imposes rules of restraint which not only curb others but act as reins on his own conduct. The man who worships his selfhood is not easily subject to improvement, since he refuses to use his imagination except as a means to promote his immediate selfish ends. He is like the rich man who spends thousands of dollars on expensive doctors but not one cent on scientific research which might make much medical care unnecessary. But imagination, no matter to what depths it may sink, is still of divine power. Urizen, Luvah, and Tharmas can be destroyed, that is, made solid and inactive; but Los-Urthona is always activity. Los says to Albion, "Thou wast the Image of God surrounded by the Four Zoas. Three thou hast slain. I am the Fourth: thou canst not destroy me." (Jer.: Pl. 42, p. 670) It is man's eternal salvation that Los-Urthona cannot be destroyed. Although Blake considers the concept of death as a rationalized unreality and an utter impossibility, Blake is never-

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theless thoroughly horrified by anything that approaches a state of death, that is, a limit of contraction and opaqueness. "Mark!" he cautions, "Active Evil is better than Passive Good." (A.L.A.: p. 77) Active evil, containing imagination, perverted and stifled as it is, is better than passive good because such a state, being passive, contains no imagination. Those who are not with Blake are against him, and he is glad of it. It is possible to convince one's most unscrupulous opponent; but one cannot convince an individual who is so indifferent that he refuses even to be annoyed. This is what Los has in mind when he says to his spectre, But still I labour in h o p e , . . . That he who will not defend Truth may be compell'd to defend A Lie: that he may be snared and caught and snared and taken: That Enthusiasm and Life may not cease . . . . (Jer.: PI. 9, p. 628)

Enthusiasm, activity, life, imagination - these are the LosUrthona that cannot be destroyed. This brings in the aspects of the unified imagination. Just as the divided imagination is a destroyer, a thing that promotes passiveness, so the unified imagination is a builder, something that is synonymous with activity. Blake, in his praise of the activeness that is the imagination, runs the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime. "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires", rants Blake. {M.H.H.: p. 152) Logically, since an unacted desire would result in true death, while physical murder would kill only a vanishing body, Blake's proverb holds some argumentative water despite the improbability of anyone's ever having to decide between the two. A more moderate expression of the same idea is, Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & govern'd their Passions or have N o Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion, but Realities of Intellect, from which all the Passions Emanate Uncurbed in their Eternal Glory. (V.L.J.: p. 615)

Activity, not restraint, is Blake's rule for living. Activity is the principle of the unified imagination. Some readers may have wondered, after reading the last

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chapter, whether Blake had any morality at all. Actually, Blake's philosophy is based completely on the good, the virtuous, and the moral. Unlike contemporary moral codes, however, Blake's morality is based not on the bounds of reason but on the energies of the imagination. From a limited point of view it could be said that Blake stresses the attainment of good rather than the avoidance of evil. But an accurate statement demands the inclusion of the fact that Blake's morality is based on creation and considers all destruction as immoral. All definite rules, all codes of good and evil, since they do destroy the imagination in an individual, are immoral. If the reader doubts this statement as too extreme, let him consider what Blake said about Jesus, the example of virtuous existence, "Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules." {M.H.H.: p. 158) Note, too, Blake maintains that, " . . . every thing that lives is Holy." (M.H.H.: p. 160) Thus, what applies to Jesus applies to all men. Whatever is living, active, impulsive, and imaginative is holy and moral. Those who, reading this, feel that Blake advocates a life of unrestraint whereby babies are permitted to throw knives at parents and any young man is to be encouraged in his efforts to ravish the daughters of the countryside - such readers still have no true conception of the imagination. Actually, anyone who advocates conduct like the above is basing his code of morals on reason, on static morality, just as much as is the ascetic who preaches chastity and restraint. Both the ascetic and the libertine preach a morality of destruction, the former through atrophy and the latter through direct attack. Modern psychology that preaches the evils of repression and advocates such ideas as sublimation of energy is actually advocating a change from one form of repression to another. The psychologist who advises that the oversexed boy be persuaded to join the Boy Scouts is unfair both to sex and the scouts. On the other hand, some psychologists maintain that all repression is bad, and that the only way to avoid evil is by allowing it to expend itself in the young child. If the child is not restrained he will grow up a good man, they maintain. This latter group, too,

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has failed to marry the contraries. They have set Luvah over Urizen, but Los-Urthona has been cast out. And this is where Blake shows himself not merely in advance of his day, but in advance of this day. The basis of all morality, of all action, is the imagination. This imagination must not be confused with mere emotion, for imagination is the power that visualizes the relationships between all emotions, all reasons, and all perceptions. The imaginative man knows that if he desires personal liberty, he must accord that liberty to others; that if he does not want to be hurt by his neighbor, he must do nothing to harm that neighbor. The imaginative man will not do unto others as he would have done unto him, rather he will try to do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. The imaginative man abhors compulsion as much as restraint. He needs no code of morals and will act in each situation according to the virtues of that situation; but he will always realize that no matter how sound, how sincere, how just, and how thorough his analysis of a situation may be, it is still possible for the next man to disagree with his answer to the problem. The imaginative man, therefore, will judge the next man's virtue not by that person's code of conduct nor by his action in any particular case. Rather, the imaginative man will perceive his fellow's virtue by the latter's refusal to judge him. Thus, to bring the matter to concrete examples, the imaginative person may be a teetotaler, but he is never a prohibitionist; he may deplore birth control, but he will never favor a law against it; he may belong to a labor union, but he will not force others to belong to it; he will be imaginatively active, but will never use that imagination to destroy the imagination of others. This system of morality based on imaginative energy is not without its difficulties. It indeed works less than perfectly unless all men believe in it. Blake does not show any quick way to bring this unanimity about. Also, he does not say what is to happen when two men honestly and imaginatively think that they are entitled to the same thing. But this last is a minor problem when men are motivated by imaginative love. No family, if it exists on the basis of love, need ever have any serious quarrel as to

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who is to get the wing of the turkey and who the drumstick. The benefits to be derived from the brotherhood of all men are so great that no one realizing these benefits would hesitate to give up some possession in order to help maintain the brotherhood. A second principle of the unified imagination emerges from the above. This is the concept of the annihilation of the selfhood. If the individual identity will persist in striving to maintain his own rights regardless of the harm such conduct might do to the brotherhood of man, that individual identity will cease to operate according to the unified imagination. Self-annihilation, the giving up of what one has when doing so would promote the general good, is a necessity of Blake's system. Blake writes, Such are the Laws of Eternity, that each shall mutually Annihilate himself for others' good, as I for thee. (Mil.: PI. 38, p. 5 3 0 )

Mutual self-annihilation is an eternal law because only by the inclusion of such a law can the imagination remain unified throughout all trials. To state a case, the imagination is the source of all perceptions, of all selfhoods. And just as the two arms of a man can struggle against each other by means of the energy which the body gives them, so can two selfhoods struggle against each other by means of the imaginative energy which is theirs. But the imaginative man will quickly perceive that the important consideration in any case is not the perception, the arm, or the leg, or the property - for these things can be created and can be destroyed. The important thing is always the eternal and expanding source of these perceptions. Who but an obstinate, negative person would fight over a piece of candy if the mere wish could bring him a box full? Just so, no two imaginative men will fight with each other over any perception, since the giving up of that perceptual property by either would attain the joys of brotherhood for each of them. The question arises, however, as to how the imaginative man should act when he meets an unimaginative individual. Should the imaginative man still practice self-annihilation? Should the

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imaginative man permit the rotter to steal his money, the foreign enemy to plunder his country, or the public to stifle his imaginative energy? Obviously, no imaginative man could permit the stifling of his imaginative energy, for to do so would remove him from the ranks of Los-Urthona. No man may morally sacrifice his imaginative energy, for such negation is a death far worse than the mere passing out of the physical body. Blake says, I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination, imagination, the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. (Jer.: Pl. 77, pp. 716-717)

Thus, the negation of the imagination is un-Christian, against the preachings of the Gospel, and destructive of man's eternal body. Man should gladly suffer death rather than have the divine imagination snuffed out of him. Nowadays, the imaginative man ordinarily does not have to burn at the stake and may be permitted to live out his physical life ignored and impoverished as was William Blake. But as to property considerations, should the imaginative man permit the thief to take the bread from his table? Such a theft would by no means negate the imagination of the one robbed. To put the matter in terms of a present day situation, is passive resistance a suitable answer when there is a burglar in the house? Blake's own conduct shows that on at least one occasion his resistance was not passive, for he did forcibly eject a soldier from his own garden. But such lapse, by itself, is hardly proof of anything. Blake himself says that he believes Jesus literally turned the other cheek when struck by the officer. (A.W.A.: p. 395) This would indicate that Blake actually favored complete lack of resistance to those who imposed upon fhe physial possessions of a man. However, despite Blake's belief in what Jesus did, it is doubtful if Blake himself would have brought wine to the thief to help him digest the stolen meat. Blake's attitude on the matter probably is that even the imaginative man has a moral right to fight

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for his own possessions as long as such struggle does not impinge on the imagination. The man who turns his cheek shows by so doing how little real importance a physical blow has. Although Blake may favor the ignoring of an evil committed in anger, there is no reason to suppose that Blake would have been satisfied to permit a tyrant to trample over him while he dreamt dreams and saw visions. Blake himself hopes, as quoted before, that the man who will not defend the truth may be compelled to defend a lie. The man who will not raise his voice against tyranny is helping to enslave his children. All of this, of course, does not answer the question as to whether or not a man may use violence in his own defense. Blake has warned the reader about the man who crushed tyranny by force and became himself a tyrant. However, if anyone thinks that Blake abhors all violence even in righteous self-defense, let him ponder on a few lines taken from A Descriptive Catalogue. In this work Blake comments on his painting of the Canterbury Pilgrims. Had Blake detested all violence, could he have written with admiration about Chaucer's Knight? Note what he says, The Knight is a trae Hero, a good, great, and wise man; his whole length portrait on horseback, as written by Chaucer, cannot be surpassed. He has spent his life in the field; has ever been a conqueror, and is that species of character which in every age stands as the guardian of man against the oppressor. (D.C.: pp. 567-568) Surely no man who speaks of a conqueror, of a man who spent his life in the battlefield, as a good, great, and wise man can be said to be opposed to all use of force. There seems to be a measure of inconsistency in Blake on this point. In general it is true that Blake speaks out against the employment of physical force. Yet he on occasion, both in word and deed, violated this principle. Does Blake really contradict himself? Or is there a factor still unmentioned which can reconcile these apparent opposites? One consideration that may be reintroduced here is Blake's insistence against generalizations. To say that one must never use violence is a generalization and as such would meet Blake's

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disapproval. It would appear, therefore, that a more adequate statement of Blake's conception of the value of force would be to say that Blake disapproves of force except in certain instances where the imagination perceives that the use of it is justified. This kind of thinking, however, often leads to all sorts of tyrannies, for every warring nation finds ample moral reason for the course it pursues. Nevertheless, there are certain basic distinctions that may be drawn to show when violence is not right. Whenever violence negates the imagination it must be condemned. Thus, all wars to impose one nation's concept of righteousness on other nations are evil. All wars fought to obtain property rights are evil. All wars that end by establishing reparations, questions of guilt, and punishment are evil. They must be condemned because such wars are destructive of the imagination which forbids codes of morality, worship of property, and revenge. Similarly, no man may use violence to make another act against his own will, or to obtain goods from another, or to punish another, or to avenge himself. A man may defend his property if that property is necessary for his sustenance just as he may defend his own life against the oppressor who tries to kill him. But no man may lift his hand against another except in the protection of his imaginative abilities and in the protection of that minimum of material which in this world is essential to the functioning of the imagination while imprisoned in the physical body. Absolute proof of the suppositions in the above paragraph is lacking in Blake. The only excuse for here including such a discussion is its obvious importance in any complete philosophy. The facts about Blake's views on violence are limited first to his condemnation of physical force, and second, to his praise for a man who is symbolic of the warring defender of the oppressed. These two considerations have been interpreted in the light of Blake's conception of the imagination, and the conclusions arrived at have been given above for the reader to accept or reject. So far, the unified imagination has been shown to be an active, energizing entity. Blake bases his system of morality not on a code of rules but on the active application of the imagination.

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Such a system demands that each man be willing to sacrifice his own selfhood for the benefit of the imagination, which benefit results in the man's own good. But, while a man may sacrifice any of his selfhood perceptions, he may never violate his imagination or the imagination of another. Thus, a man should not repress his energies, nor should he use force or duress to express them. Rather, he must strive unceasingly to use his imaginative energy, always realizing that until his brothers are also imaginative his own energies will suffer. Blake writes, . . . The Man is himself become A piteous example of oblivion, To teach the Sons Of Eden that however great and glorious, however loving And merciful the Individuality, however high Our palaces and cities and however fruitful are our fields. In Selfhood, we are nothing, but fade away in morning's breath. (.Jer.: PI. 4 5 , p. 6 7 5 )

Thus, however great your own imagination is, you are still your brother's helper if only for the fact that such help helps you. Blake does not presume that a morality based on the use of the imagination will always produce immediate happiness to the imaginative people. The man who saves the life of another sometimes loses his own life. But to Blake, believing as he does in the eternity of the individual identity, such things are no real tragedies. Man and God must and will act according to the dictates of the imagination for the simple reason that the imaginative way is not only the moral way but also the best, the happiest, the most beneficial way for each individual identity. The last sentence, be it noted, included not only man but also God. Why must God act according to the dictates of the imagination? Does this deny free will even on the part of God? Actually, God must act according to the imagination just because He is the Imagination - He must act according to His own nature. While each individual may act differently in the same situation, according to the individual's perception on the imaginative genius, God Himself can act only in one way in any given situation, and this way is the most imaginative and best way. But let the

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reader never for a moment think of Blake's conception of God as fatalistic. The necessity for God's acting according to his Divine Imagination must not be confused with fate or destiny, with chance or predestination. The fatalistic mind may refuse to see any difference between God's acting through His own necessity and the idea of fate. However, is it fatalistic for heat to rise and cold to descend? Is it fatalistic for a business man to act in the most profitable way? Is it fatalistic for a wise man to discover always the right answer to a problem? Raise this question to the level of God. "If God is anything he is Understanding." {A.S.D.L.: p. 89) Since God is all-wise, He will inevitably act according to the wisdom of a situation. Such actions do not occur because they are foredoomed, but because they are desirable. And the desirable, by virtue of its own desirability, will necessitate actions of God just because He is all-wise. To call Blake's conception of God fatalistic just because God is seen as always doing good is hardly reasonable. In the light of the above, weak indeed must seem petitions to God or attempts on the part of man to act in any way that does not try to approach the imaginative divine. The Ten Commandments give way in Blake's system to the One Delight: use your imagination. There is still another great aspect of the unified imagination that should be discussed. The forgiveness of sins occupies a paramount place in Blake's philosophy. But the importance of this topic is such that it is worth a chapter of its own.

8.

FORGIVENESS O F SIN

All that generous revolt in which he had shared against eighteenth-century conventions, tyrannies and injustices now became a more solitary and personal defiance, embittered by poverty and by the series of unsatisfactory dealings in which he was the sufferer - poverty causing every disappointment to stand out starkly and take on the aspect of malignity and fraud. "I must say," wrote Blake, in 1804, "that in London every calumny and falsehood utter'd against another of the same trade is thought fair play. Engravers, Painters, Statuaries, Poets, we are not in a field of battle, but in a City of Assassinations," . . . The caustic epigrams in which Blake relieved his feelings, with their variations on the theme of enmity and friendship (anticipating the paradoxical wit of the 1890's) are the signs of final disillusion and disgust. William Gaunt, Arrows of Desire (London: Museum Press, 1956), pp. 104-105. What is proposed in this chapter is, first, to indicate the evils inherent upon the failure to forgive sin (a word Blake uses almost as a synonym for mistake); second, to show the benefits to be derived from forgiving sin; and third, to point out the essential characteristics of true forgiveness. Blake suggests the importance of forgiveness of sin when he writes, Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice, Such are the Gates of Paradise.

(G.P.: p. 761)

But forgiveness is not only at the doorpost of heaven; it is also

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the divine spirit within and without the gates. "The Spirit of Jesus is continual forgiveness of Sin." (1er.: PI. 3, p. 621) In fact, this doctrine is the message of Jesus on earth. Blake writes, There is not one Moral Virtue that Jesus Inculcated but Plato & Cicero did Inculcate before him; what then did Christ Inculcate? Forgiveness of Sins. This alone is the Gospel, & this is the Life & Immortality brought to light by Jesus (E.G.: p. 757)

Thus does Blake identify Jesus with the doctrine of forgiveness of sin, a living and everlasting Gospel. Since Blake says that "God is Jesus", (L.G.: p. 777) it is most obvious that Blake considers forgiveness of sin to be of divine command. It is an excellence of Blake's philosophy that, while direct statement is necessary to prove specific points of his philosophy, it is possible to demonstrate the logical connection between various concepts that he held and to show that the degree of consistency in his works can hardly be overestimated. And this feat becomes even more remarkable when it is realized that Blake's philosophy is not based on hard and fast moral rules. His philosophy might be compared not to the perfect house with each of its parts appropriately fitted in on a firm foundation. Rather, Blake's philosophy might be compared to a perfect body with each of the organs perfectly tuned to accommodate movement by the other organs. Note, for example, the necessity for Blake to make forgiveness of sins an essential part of his philosophy. He has said, as shown before, that all men are immanent in each other through the body of God. Thus, if one man refuses to forgive another man, he is actually hurting himself, since he is immanent in that man. While most men are so far removed from the imagination that they cannot see this immanence with one another, it is still true that the average parent suffers with the hurt of his child, or, as Levin finds out in Tolstoy's great book, Anna Karenina, a husband cannot be angry with his wife without doing self-harm. Furthermore, Blake, by saying that imagination is the essence of all existence, makes forgiveness of sin a necessity. What greater imagination can there be, as so many writers on Blake

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have pointed cut, than to enter into another's soul and suffer as he suffers? Anyone who has imagination enough to be able to do so must, logically, forgive sins if he wishes to avoid suffering with those who suffer. Still more, Blake has said, as shown in the chapter on Urizen, that sin is not to be imputed to the individual. Thus, to fail to forgive sins would be to hold the individual responsible for something that is not really his fault, and such conduct would be as unfair as it is illogical. Greater yet is the fact that Blake considers God to exist in all men and to suffer as all men suffer. Blake writes, Think not thou And thy maker Think not thou And thy maker

canst is not canst is not

sigh a sigh by; weep a tear near.

O! he gives to us his joy That our grief he may destroy; Till our grief is fled & gone H e doth sit by us and moan.

(Inn.: p. 123)

Since God does moan while man grieves, to fail to forgive man results in further grief to God. The parent must suffer when two children are at odds one with the other. From the above, four harmful aspects of the failure to forgive sins become apparent. Not forgiving sins results in self-harm, destruction of the imagination, injustice, and even in grief to God. But the mind of the usual man, ordinarily more concerned by a soft corn on the left small toe than by a flood inundating millions in China, may easily shrug off the above major catastrophes. T o bring something home to a man it may be necessary to take that thing right into his house. It should be obvious that the failure to forgive sins puts further sinning in at least a semiadvantageous light. If the repentant boy finds that he will be spanked when he admits that he went swimming out of season, there is a normal pleasure-pain balance that tends to make the boy keep silent and enjoy another swim the next day. If the politician knows that his defeat at the polls will not only remove

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him from office but may well land him in jail once his opponents rule the courts, this politician may deem it necessary to get votes by any means. The cornered animal is the most dangerous, and the man who has sinned and will not be forgiven may feel that he has no choice but to continue in his sinful way. The truly reformed prisoner, released from jail, may find it a matter of living-or-starving necessity to commit further crimes just because the public will not forgive him to the extent of allowing him to work for a living. Philosophers may argue about truth, justice, morality, reality, etc., but the fact is that a large number of people are quite content to seek their philosophical values very much in accord with their own advantage. The advantageous life is viewed as the good life. What religion ever was popular unless it offered the reward of heaven, or, at least, the avoidance of the pains of hell? How many who cherish riches can welcome an economic system that destroys private wealth? And even those men good and great enough to be truthful and honest regardless of personal hurt and loss, do not even those men recognize a definite advantage in their exemplary conduct, if only that right behavior gives them pleasure? Blake is quite willing to admit that truth is compatible with advantage to the individual. The good man is led by his own interest, and that, in the light of Blake's concepts of the immanence of all men, means that the good man seeks for everyone's advantage. Blake writes, Those who say that men are led by interest are knaves. A knavish character will often say, "of what interest is it to me to do so and so?" I answer, "of none at all, but the contrary, as you well know. It is of malice and envy that you have done this; hence I am aware of you, because I know that you act, not from interest, but from malice, even to your own destruction." (D.C.: pp. 572-573) So it is with those who refuse to forgive sins; they act with malice and envy even to their own destruction. Punishment, although presumed to be a deterrent, never has done away with crime, just as revenge never restored to the avenger what he had been deprived of. Los speaks out,

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What shall I do? what could I do if I could find these Criminals? I could not dare to take vengeance, for all things are so constructed And builded by the Divine hand that the sinner shall always escape, And he who takes vengeance alone is the criminal of Providence.