Visionary Materialism in the
Early Works of William Blake
The Intersection of Enthusiasm and Empiricism
Matthew J.A. Green
Visionary Materialism in the Early Works of William Blake
Visionary Materialism
in the Early Works of
William Blake
The Intersection of Enthusiasm
and Empiricism
Matthew J.A. Green
© Matthew J.A. Green 2005
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified
as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2005 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–4231–9 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 1–4039–4231–5 (hardback)
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green, Matthew, J.A., 1975–
Visionary materialism in the early works of William Blake : the intersection
of enthusiasm and empiricism / Matthew J.A. Green.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1–4039–4231–5 (cloth)
1. Blake, William, 1757–1827—Philosophy. 2. Materialism in literature.
3. Enthusiasm in literature. 4. Empiricism in literature. 5. Visions in
literature. I. Title.
PR4148.P5G74 2005
821′.7––dc22
2004060647
10
14
9
13
8
12
7
11
6
10
5
09
4
08
3
07
2
06
1
05
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne
To my wife, Louise, without whom none of this would
be possible
He only who has enjoyed immortal moments can reproduce them.
– John Casper Lavater
Contents
Acknowledgements
ix
A Note on Texts and Illustrations
x
Introduction: Blake and His Traditions
1
1 Experiences of Empiricism
Blake and Locke: Friendship and enmity
Closet and cavern
Priestley and the material soul
10
15
26
34
2 The Tree of Mystery
Obscurity and the sublime
Infinity: Causes and consequences
The corporealisation of thought
‘Surgeing Sulphureous fluid’: The case of Urizen
41
44
50
56
61
3 Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
‘Where else is heaven?’: The ranting impulse
and inner light
The spiritual substance
The abyssal eye
71
73
82
91
4 The Opening Eye
‘He conversed with Angels’
Divine vision as political force
100
105
126
5 The Ark of God
‘What is Man!’
The first principle
Perception, liberty and organic light
The bounding line
Outlining the vessels of Eternity
131
134
137
139
153
162
vii
viii Contents
6 The Sublime Act
Incarnations and inheritance
171
181
Notes
191
Bibliography
204
Index
210
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Louise Mullany for her invaluable support and
inspiration. I would also like to express my gratitude to Edward Larrissy
for all of his suggestions, guidance and continued belief in this work, as
well as to Mark Vessey and Lino Colonello whose lessons, not all of them
easy, and wisdom have contributed more to this project than perhaps
they know. Thanks also to my parents, Robert and Ann, for teaching me
the value of principles and respect for the written word; to Chris and
Ted, for the pub lunches, late night chats and so much more; and to
Amanda and Alan, for the laughter and for keeping me grounded in
something like reality. This project has also benefited from the advice
given by John Whale and David Worrall in its earlier stages; from the
comments of the anonymous reviewer, which pushed it that little bit
further; and from the generosity of Keri Davies, who provided me with
indispensable material on the Moravians, and Claire Colebrook, whose
thoughts on Derrida have proved a valuable complement to my own.
Thanks are also due to Emily Rosser and Paula Kennedy, who between
them have seen the manuscript down the road to publication. And finally,
thanks to Jason, for sharing my enthusiasm for Blake in the early days
and first suggesting the infernal reaching of Blake’s ‘sublime act’.
ix
A Note on Texts and Illustrations
All Blake quotations are from The Complete Poetry and Prose of William
Blake, revised edition (London: Doubleday, 1988), edited by David V.
Erdman; hereafter abbreviated as ‘E’. References to the illuminated
books are given by plate number and, where applicable, line number
(l.). Except where otherwise noted, I have followed Erdman’s ordering
and numbering of plates. The annotations to Lavater and Swedenborg
are referred to by section/paragraph number (§) or page number (p.) from
the original text, whichever applies, followed by the page number from
Erdman. All references to prose material is referred to by page number.
Quotations from Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding are taken from
the edition by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), and
are referred to by section number (§).
All of the visual material from Blake’s work is available for consultation
on The William Blake Archive <www.blakearchive.org.uk>.
x
Introduction: Blake and His
Traditions
[A]s I understand Vice it is a Negative—It does not signify
what the laws of Kings & Priests have calld Vice we who are
philosophers ought not to call the Staminal Virtues of Humanity
by the same name that we call the omissions of intellect springing
from poverty
– William Blake, Annotations to Aphorisms on Man1
When Blake, in the final pages of his annotations to Lavater’s Aphorisms
on Man, refers to himself and the Swiss theologian as ‘philosophers’, it
might be tempting to dismiss this appellation as a mere rhetorical flourish
within a rather obscure piece of antinomian mysticism. Indeed, the
promotion of active ‘virtue’ in opposition to ‘vicious’ restraint and the
rejection of ‘Sin’ as a concept seem far closer to radical Protestant
enthusiasm than to the style of philosophy that the late eighteenth
century inherited from figures such as Locke, Newton and Bacon (ibid.).
To be sure, a number of apparently contradictory meanings converge
in the ‘philosopher’, who may be learned in one or more branches of
knowledge ranging from the rational and natural to the occult and even
magical. In what follows, I will argue that Blake’s early works evince
a philosophical position that expands the boundaries of what it is
conceivable to know, exceeding the restraints and exclusivity built into
competing discourses of enlightenment and counter-enlightenment.
Nevertheless, Blake articulates his ‘strong objection to Lavater’s principles’,
which appears on the final pages in his copy of Aphorisms on Man, by
splicing together the twin discourses of enthusiasm and empiricism: the
language of ‘accident’ and ‘Causes & Consequences’, employed by
Locke and his descendants, is interwoven with talk of ‘bad or good
1
2 Visionary Materialism in Blake
spirits’, of ‘God & heavenly things’, which are presented as topics of
first-hand, revelatory experience.
This reading of Blake is deeply indebted to the conception of him as
a bricoleur, first mooted by Larrissy, who remarks upon the ‘curious
conjuncture’ of diverse traditions in Blake’s works, noting that ‘there
are elements in each tradition which conflict with elements in the
others’ and suggesting that ‘Blake has to “graft” different discourses
onto each other’.2 However, the very possibility of such a graft indicates
certain systemic or doctrinal affinities, however well-concealed by a rhetoric
of mutual opposition. The grounding of knowledge in a mode of experience
derived through the body, conceived alternately as spiritual or material,
operates as a common tenet within Blake’s intellectual inheritance and
it forms the basis of the world-view that underpins his imaginative
endeavours. The incommensurate legacy, at once ontological and epistemological, that provides the raw cultural materials of Blake’s art can aptly be
described as ‘visionary materialism’, a term intended to highlight the
highly politicised convergence of variant traditions whilst remaining
sensitive to their differences and to the contradictions generated by this
coming together. Blake himself does not use this term, though he does
speak at length of ‘vision’, which in a spiritual sense is often conjoined
with ‘inspiration’, both divine and artistic. Thus we find him praising
Lavater’s provision of ‘A vision of the Eternal Now—’ (§407; E592), claiming
‘Inspiration & Vision’ as ‘my Eternal Dwelling place’ (Annotations
to Reynolds, p. 244; E660–1), and describing the ‘dark visions of Los’
(Urizen, 15.12; E78) viewed from Eternity. There is nothing ephemeral
about such visions – ‘This World Is a World of Imagination & Vision’,
Blake tells Trusler, ‘I see Every thing I paint’ (23 August 1799; E702) –
and it is not only possible, but indeed beneficial to view the visionary in
the context of a certain mode of ‘materialism’ produced through a fusion
of natural philosophy, social critique and prophetic experience.
While the description of Blake as a materialist may at first appear counterintuitive, such a reading highlights not only Blake’s sense of the interplay
between social relations and material conditions – between spirit and
body – but also emphasises the possibility of radical transformation, of
universal redemption, that we find articulated throughout his work. Blake’s
rejection of the body–soul dichotomy remains consistent throughout
his earliest works and those produced in Lambeth. The extent to which
Blake’s thought in this area changes after the turn of the century remains a
matter of considerable scholarly debate that is, however, beyond the scope
of the present discussion. In any case, even when seemingly at his most
dualistic, in descriptions of the spiritual world as opposed to the natural
Introduction: Blake and His Traditions
3
world, Blake represents the former as a place that he knows first and
foremost through direct perception: ‘I know it for I see it’ (To Hayley,
11 December 1805; E767).
A careful consideration of Blake’s cultural context provides numerous
antecedents and contemporaneous analogues to the combination of
spiritual perception and an emphasis on embodiment that produces the
spiritually charged materialism that we find throughout his early work.
This context includes Joseph Priestley’s work on physical bodies and
chemical reactions, Erasmus Darwin’s study of organic bodies, the theosophical representations of spiritual bodies in Emanuel Swedenborg and
Jacob Boehme, and the focus on Christ’s corporeal existence and suffering
in Moravian spirituality.
My application of the term ‘visionary materialism’ to Blake’s outlook
rises out of a similarly multiplicious scholarly tradition and is indebted
to generations of Blake scholars, with perhaps the greatest debt owed to
Frye’s distinction between the mystic, who seeks an incommunicable
spiritual communion with the divine, and the visionary, who ‘creates
or dwells in, a higher spiritual world in which the objects of perception
in this one have become transfigured and charged with a new intensity
of symbolism’. Frye’s classification of Blake as one of the latter already
speaks to the prominence of empirical views in Blake’s thought, though
Frye’s own readings, particularly of the opposition between Blake and
Locke, will be strongly interrogated in subsequent chapters. A similar
indebtedness can be attributed to Beer’s description of Blake’s style as
‘visionary-realist’, a term intended to describe the effect of combining
an ‘experience of humanity and society’ with ‘the more imaginative
statements of the mystics’. In more recent scholarship, there are also
affinities with Ferber’s ‘social materialism’ and Connolly’s ‘mysticalempiricism’, though following Frye my discussion finds ‘visionary’
more applicable to Blake than ‘mystical’.3
The investigation of Blake’s representations of the conjunction between
the spiritual and the material, between man and God, undertaken in the
following pages is conducted with a view to enhancing an understanding of
his ideas about human identity, artistic production, interpretative practices
and the redemptive potential of interpersonal exchange. It considers
the significant intersection of eighteenth-century empiricism and radical
Protestantism in Blake’s representations of textuality, of the deity and of
corporeal existence. The detailed examination of Blake’s response to this
complex interplay of, on the one hand, approaches to knowledge and
perception and, on the other, exegetical practices and ontological theories
provides insight into his relationship with the dominant philosophical
4 Visionary Materialism in Blake
and religious discourses of his period. Moreover, such an enquiry fosters
an increased understanding of Blake’s belief in the messianic capacity
of human beings and the redemptive potential of his own art, produced
through his unique method of illuminated printing.
The importance of the Bible, of God and of the body within Blake’s
texts has been widely discussed by scholars too numerous to name here,
but who will appear throughout subsequent chapters. Similarly, much
has been written about Blake’s antagonism towards Lockean epistemology
and his anxieties over the growing authority of empirical science. However,
despite his uncompromising accusation that the Enlightenment empiricists ‘mock Inspiration & Vision’ and despite his insistence that he feels
nothing but ‘Contempt & Abhorrence’ for them (Annotations to Reynolds,
p. 244; E660), these issues are far from clear. Frye’s comments on the
matter are characteristic of the firmly established assumption that ‘as
Locke [. . .] is constantly in Blake’s poetry a symbol of every kind of evil,
superstition and tyranny, whatever influence he had on Blake was clearly
a negative one’ (p. 14). This view has been brought under increasing
criticism in recent years by scholars such as Clark and Glausser, who
argue that despite Blake’s overt opposition to empiricism, and to Locke
in particular, there are many similarities between the two writers. These
include a radical response to the political institutions dominant in their
respective lifetimes, an emphasis on clarity of vision, a sense of the
importance of mental effort and a belief in an inclusive Christianity.4 An
accurate understanding of Blake’s relation to Locke, and to empiricism
in general, is particularly significant because it bears directly upon his ideas
about man’s mental and sensory capabilities, which themselves relate to
both his understanding of ontology and of theology, as the manner in
which one perceives reality has an immediate effect on one’s ability to
engage with the divine as manifest in both human and artistic forms.
For many years, scholars have acknowledged that Blake’s theological
position is extensively influenced by a variety of occult and enthusiastic
traditions. Two of the foundational texts in this area are Raine’s Blake
and Tradition and Hirst’s Hidden Riches, both of which provide extensive
discussions of Blake’s relation to hermetic and Kabbalistic traditions as
mediated by Emanuel Swedenborg, Jacob Boehme and William Law,
among others.5 More recently, Mee and Thompson have demonstrated the
importance of considering Blake’s relationship to lesser-known enthusiasts
and Protestant sects, with Mee focusing on figures living and writing
during Blake’s lifetime, such as Richard Brothers, and Thompson tracing
a line of radical, anti-rational sectarian ideas from the seventeenth century
through to the 1800s.6 As will no doubt become clear in the following
Introduction: Blake and His Traditions
5
pages, I find many of Thompson’s arguments convincing, although
there are also points at which our readings differ. Thus, while I would
agree with his warning that we must beware of making overly academic
assumptions about Blake, I also believe that Raine provides an insightful
discussion of, for example, his adaptation of Behmenist doctrine.
Thompson’s influence is perhaps felt most strongly in my treatment of
the Ranters and Muggletonians, though here too we differ slightly in
our approaches. Moreover, the recent work of Davies and Schuchard has
disproved Thompson’s hypothesis that Blake’s mother was a Muggletonian,
demonstrating instead that she was in fact linked to the Moravians,
a connection with many implications for our own understanding of
Blake.7 The beliefs and practices of this influential religious community
intersect in several significant ways with Blake’s own epistemological
and ontological perspectives, as discussed in Chapter 4. Nevertheless,
the religious views of the Ranters and Muggletonians remain valuable in
exploring the relationship between experience and faith in anti-rationalist
strands of radical Protestantism. In particular, reading the Ranters and
Muggletonians alongside their contemporary, Thomas Hobbes, highlights
some hitherto unacknowledged points of intersection, facilitating a comprehensive interrogation of the rigid dichotomisation of ‘enlightenment’
and ‘counter-enlightenment’ implicit in the work of Thompson and
others.
As suggested above, Blake’s responses to epistemological debates are
interconnected with his thoughts on religious matters. However, to date
there has been little done to bridge the increasingly disparate gap between
the reassessment of Blake’s relationship to enlightenment epistemologies
on the one hand, and the connections being made with antinomian
and anti-rational movements on the other. This is surprising given the
fact that the scholars working in each of these areas do not, for the
most part, seem to regard themselves as situated in opposing camps. For
example, in two recent books edited by Clark and Worrall, Historicizing
Blake and Blake in the Nineties,8 articles on eighteenth-century science
and empiricism sit comfortably alongside articles on antinomianism
and Swedenborgian theosophy. There is widespread recognition that
Blake’s incorporation of ideas from one movement or tradition does
not preclude a shared involvement with others. Thus, while Mee argues
that, in certain respects, Blake ‘has more in common with an enthusiast
like the visionary Richard Brothers than the perhaps better known
millenarianism of Dissenters like Richard Price and Joseph Priestley’, he
also notes the significance of Priestley with regard to Blake’s attacks on
dualism (Dangerous Enthusiasm, pp. 20, 138).
6 Visionary Materialism in Blake
That Blake was the recipient of such a multiplicious inheritance should
not surprise us, given that as a poet, visual artist and commercial engraver
he was positioned at a particularly complex ideological juncture. Blake’s
family background acquainted him with the language of enthusiasm
and he was certainly exposed to alternative religious traditions, but as
a poet he was similarly well versed in the only slightly more mainstream
Protestantism passed down by Milton and Bunyan. His interest in
Swedenborg and Boehme brought him into contact with Judeo-Christian
mysticism, while his early reading of Bacon, Newton and Locke familiarised him with the philosophy behind the new empirical science.
Moreover, his somewhat ambiguous position within the Matthews and
Johnson circles both placed him on the periphery of ‘polite society’,
with its notions of taste, culture and sensibility, and acquainted him
with the political and scientific thought of writers such as Priestley,
Wollstonecraft, Paine and Darwin. In order to form an accurate picture
of Blake’s radical inheritance – which is at once political, religious and
intellectual – we must take this diversity into account. Not only are we
unable to assume that Blake’s inheritance was homogeneous, we cannot
take his injunctions against Locke and Newton as evidence that he
remained unaffected by the philosophical and scientific upheavals
occurring around him. Rather, we must ask ourselves what this excessive
animosity towards, and repeated attacks on, the forefathers of the British
Enlightenment conceals. If we are to accept Thompson’s maxim that
‘an intense sectarian dispute is often the signal of an affinity’ (p. 66), we
must rethink Blake’s relationship to spiritual opponents such as Locke,
whose texts are no less religious than Blake’s own.
While Blake’s relationship to Locke has been considerably reassessed by
the scholars noted above, these recent developments in Blake scholarship
have opened the way for the forging of new connections between
Blake’s diverse inheritances. In particular, the following pages examine
the manner in which Lockean empiricism, with its ‘continued religious
basis’ (Clark, ‘Blake’s Response to Locke’, p. 134), interacts with the
theosophical and/or anti-rational discourses of enthusiastic and ‘counterenlightenment’ writers, who despite their differences demonstrate an
affinity with Locke’s emphasis on the primacy of experience and perception.
The idea of such a shared experiential impulse will be discussed at
length in Chapters 1–4, which provide a detailed discussion of both
the points of unity and of the variety apparent in Blake’s multifarious
inheritance. Along similar lines, later chapters investigate the manner
in which Blake fuses concepts and terms from scientific discourses with
spiritual doctrines and meanings. On another level, my consideration
Introduction: Blake and His Traditions
7
of his response to Priestley’s materialism integrates an exploration of
the materiality of Blake’s own works with specific reference to recent
developments in our understanding of the processes involved in illuminated printing. In seeking to draw together the various strands of our
Blakean inheritance, which is comprised both of the cultural heritage
that informs his work and of the many subsequent discussions of that
work, this study attempts to combine an investigation of Blake’s work
inside a broader history of ideas with a historically minded approach
that considers the social and political contexts in which that work is
produced. Blake clearly believed that he could hold his own against the
forefathers of British empiricism and modern science more generally,
but his cultural and historical placement has a direct impact on both
the combative procedures and the resources available in such mental
war. Central to the ensuing discussion is a commitment to reading Blake’s
response to the Enlightenment as a serious engagement with philosophical
issues that is nevertheless informed by his proximity to alternative
traditions and practices that call into question fundamental assumptions
about what it means to be human, interrogating concepts of identity
and variety, self and other.
As the title indicates, this study focuses primarily on Blake’s early works,
and specifically those produced between 1788 and 1795. The significance
of these dates is twofold. On a thematic level, there remains considerable
disagreement on when, and indeed if, Blake’s thoughts on religious,
philosophical and political issues began to move away from the outwardlooking stance of his early works and into the more mythical and
transcendental position often ascribed to his later ones. Whilst a detailed
engagement with this debate is beyond the scope of this book, his
thought during the period under consideration appears both sustained
and consistent. On another level, this sense of overall coherence is
demonstrated by the production history of the texts themselves. Although
Blake continually experimented with his methods of production, this
period in Blake’s artistic career is framed by the composition of the earliest
illuminated texts, All Religions and No Natural Religion, in 1788 and, as
Viscomi notes, the production of ‘a set of twelve or thirteen large-paper
copies of his entire canon in relief etching’.9 This suggests a culmination
of Blake’s artistic production after which he moved on to produce the
Small Book Designs and Large Book Designs before beginning work on
longer works such as The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. Nevertheless,
while my focus will be on Blake’s earlier texts, there are certain instances
when a consideration of later texts will be both necessary and profitable,
particularly in reference to his attacks on empiricism and his discussion
8 Visionary Materialism in Blake
of Paine, both of which are presented most overtly in his annotations to
Reynolds’ Works and Watson’s Apology for the Bible.
The contextual material that I will discuss has been selected with a view
towards balancing the claims of the variety of diverse traditions in the
eighteenth century with those that bear most directly on Blake and on
the topics under immediate consideration. For the most part, I have opted
to provide a detailed consideration of key texts within a given tradition
or movement rather than attempting to provide an overview of a larger
number of texts, which would, in a study of this scope, result in an
overly general or cursory discussion. Thus, for example, Locke figures
prominently in the sections on empiricism, while Bacon and Newton –
the other two persons in Blake’s ‘Satanic trinity’ – are discussed in less
detail,10 a decision motivated by the fact that Locke provides the most
in-depth discussion of empirical epistemology. However, the use of Locke
as a representative of an entire school of thought risks implying that empiricism, even as it is defined within the narrow bounds of ‘enlightenment’
sciences and philosophies, is constituted by a unified and consistent
body of thought rather than the expression of related, but distinct,
ideas and methodologies. Therefore, while an examination of cultural
context necessitates a certain degree of generalisation, I have attempted
to particularise wherever possible. For example, when I refer to categories
such as ‘Lockean empiricism’, I am referring primarily to the ideas of Locke
himself, as expressed through his Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
although included in this is the sense of a wider tradition including not
only Bacon and Newton, but also subsequent philosophers, such as
Hume and Priestley, who explicitly connect Locke’s ideas with their own
even while challenging many of his assumptions. A similar principle of
selectivity and a comparable attempt to balance the demands of the
general and the particular inform my discussion of other traditions, such
as those known under the banners of radical Protestantism, enthusiasm
and mysticism.
Additionally, my decisions regarding the inclusion and the exclusion
of contextual material have been informed by the projects that Blake
himself worked on as an engraver. The most relevant of these are Darwin’s
Botanic Garden, Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy and Cumberland’s Thoughts
on Outline. Despite Worrall’s thorough elucidation of the connections
between Blake and Darwin,11 the impact of botany and nascent biology on
Blake’s thought remains under-explored. Nevertheless, Blake’s willingness
to integrate newly emergent ideas and phenomena explored by late
eighteenth-century scientific discourses with those from more explicitly
spiritual texts bears directly upon the process of ‘grafting’ described by
Introduction: Blake and His Traditions
9
Larrissy. Lavater’s Essays, together with his Aphorisms, provide a bridge
between discourses that are more recognisably scientific and those that
appear to be more spiritual in nature. Blake’s annotations to Aphorisms
are especially informative in this respect. In the final chapters, therefore,
I present a detailed and systematic investigation of both Aphorisms
and Essays which, drawing on concepts from physiognomy, aims to
yield new insight into Blake’s understanding of the juncture between
natural and spiritual life. In these chapters I also present a discussion of
the connection between the friendship and the artistic ideals shared by
Blake and Cumberland, on the one hand, and, on the other, Blake’s
own thoughts on the relationship between essence and outline, which
inform his critique of the Lockean self. To my knowledge, this connection
between Blake’s engagement with Cumberland’s artistic projects and
his thoughts on epistemology has not been acknowledged and, as I hope
to demonstrate, it provides not only a new, but indeed a significant,
context in which to consider both Blake’s response to Locke and the
artistic ideals that inform his notion of redemptive vision.
Ultimately, this project seeks to draw together several seemingly
disparate discourses from within current Blake scholarship and the
philosophical, religious and enthusiastic traditions which informed his
own artistic productions. It is my hope that it will help to clarify Blake’s
response to the Enlightenment, as embodied in figures such as Locke, at the
same time suggesting points of intersection amongst a diverse collection of
alternative traditions often described as ‘counter-enlightenment’.
Moreover, the exploration of these issues will be undertaken with a view
to understanding the manner in which Blake’s ideas about redemption
and humanity are related to his thoughts on art, prophecy and the
perceptibility of God.
1
Experiences of Empiricism
As the true method of knowledge is experiment the true faculty
of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty
I treat of.
– William Blake, All Religions are One (E1)
Blake’s annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds present his most
overt declarations against the epistemology that he associates with
Locke, Newton and Bacon. The fact that he responds to the philosophy
behind Reynolds’ aesthetics is doubly significant. Not only does it say
something about his response to philosophical issues, which is primarily
artistic, but it also indicates his sense that art, and the judgement that
assigns it value cannot be disentangled from the philosophical, or
indeed political, frameworks within which it is produced. Art must not
only be pleasing to the eye, but it must be intellectually and politically
sound, an attitude that requires us to pay particular attention to the
philosophical debates and positionings embedded throughout the illuminated books, no less than in the annotations, catalogues and letters
that have survived alongside them.
On the surface, Blake’s declaration that ‘Innate Ideas. are in Every Man
Born with him’ seems incompatible with the forms of sensationist
empiricism and inductive science put forward by Locke, Newton and
Bacon (Annotations to Reynolds, p. 59; E648). Similarly, his subsequent
labelling of ‘The Man who says that we have No Innate Ideas’ as ‘a Fool
& Knave. Having no Con-Science <or Innate Science>’ sits uneasily beside
weaker forms of empiricism, suggesting that science is itself innate (ibid.).
Moreover, the connection that Blake posits between denying innate ideas
and lacking a ‘Con-Science’ adds a moral dimension to the rejection of
Locke’s tabula rasa at the same time as it motions towards a conception
10
Experiences of Empiricism
11
of ‘Science’ that precedes, and is therefore not limited to, sense perception
as defined by the philosophy of the five senses. However, this insistence
on ‘Innate Science’ does not necessarily entail a rejection of empiricism
or the experimental method. Two pages later, Blake attacks ‘the Little
Bacon’ for saying that ‘Every Thing must be done by Experiment’ and
then saying that ‘Art must be producd Without such Method’ (p. 61;
E648). Blake himself was a great experimenter in the artistic domain,
not only with his development and use of illuminated printing, but also
with his constant attempts to improve that process through modifications
such as his experiments with colour printing. Blake’s attack on Bacon
represents a criticism of what he regards as Bacon’s exclusion of experiment
from art, rather than his advocacy of experimentalism itself. Blake
reads this lack of consistency, which Bacon passes down to Reynolds, as
‘Self-Contradiction & Knavery’ (ibid.), once again linking philosophical
inadequacy with hypocrisy and deception.
Blake’s claim that the Poetic Genius is ‘the true faculty of knowing’
because it is ‘the faculty which experiences’ suggests that ‘Innate Science’
does not represent a set of pre-inscribed maxims or doctrines so much
as an innate ability to perceive, to hear ‘the voice of God’ which he
declares, in opposition to Watson and Locke, is the true ‘Conscience’
(All Religions; E1; Annotations to Watson, p. 2; E613). As White notes,
Blake’s critique of Bacon, Newton and Locke points towards ‘a poetic,
rather than a logical genius initiating advances in science’, and he
highlights a number of intersections between Blake and his Enlightenment forebears.1 White’s analysis suggests that ‘Blake’s larger purpose in
attacking the logic of experimentalism was [. . .] to re-affirm the idea of
scientific progress in light of explanations which implied that science
could succeed only within an essentially fixed and stable world order’
and that he ‘appears to have adopted the very concerns and some of the
same metaphors of empirical philosophy in his criticism of it’ (ibid.).
The figure of the mill is a case in point as this image was used by
advocates of empiricism against traditional logic and is adopted by Blake to
question the supposed rationality of experimental science. In White’s
view, Blake suggests that experimental science progresses upon imaginative rather than logical associations and therefore ‘[points] the way to
something like a poetic, rather than a logical genius initiating advances
in science’ (111).
That Blake believed in a redemptive science, or more precisely in the
role played by science in redemption, is particularly evident in later
texts such as The Four Zoas and Jerusalem. The description of apocalypse
at the end of The Four Zoas is particularly notable as it is brought on by
12 Visionary Materialism in Blake
the redemption, rather than rejection, of Urizenic philosophy. On the
penultimate page, ‘Dark Urthona’ takes ‘the Corn out of the Stores of
Urizen’ and grinds them ‘in his rumbling Mills’ (p. 138, ll. 1–2; E406).
Rather than destroying the mills altogether, the potentially destructive
forces of ‘Thunders Earthquakes Fires Water floods’ tend ‘the dire mills’
on Urthona’s behalf (p. 138, ll. 7, 9; E406). Bearing in mind White’s discussion of the emblematic value of the mill in Blake’s work, these lines
would seem to suggest the radical opening up of empiricism by the forces
of prophetic wrath. The human effect of such milling is initially negative,
and the poem describes men bound ‘to sullen contemplations’ who ‘in
their inmost brain / Feeling the crushing Wheels’ rise and ‘write the bitter
words / Of stern Philosophy & knead the bread of knowledge’ (ll. 12–15).
However, the action in the mills is redeemed by Urthona, who uses
the grain to make ‘the Bread of Ages’, transforming the instrument of
limitation (the mill) into a tool that will permit humanity to ‘behold
the Angelic spheres’ and ‘the depths of wondrous worlds’ (ll. 23, 25):
[. . .] Urthona rises from the ruinous walls
In all his ancient strength to form the golden armour of science
For intellectual War The war of swords departed now
The dark Religions are departed & sweet Science reigns
(p. 139, ll. 7–10; E407)
These are the last lines of the poem and the fact that Blake decides to
end this vision of apocalypse with the reign of ‘sweet Science’ suggests
that the works of the prophet and the ‘scientist’ need not be divorced.
In fact, the use of mill as a two-sided emblem to refer alternately to a
misguided labouring after falsehood and to the search for spiritual truth
is something he likely picked up from the Swedenborgian doctrine of
correspondences:
By grinding at the mill, in a good sense, is meant examination and
confirmation of spiritual truth; but in a bad sense by mill is signified
the search after and confirmation of what is false.2
The mill thus represents the possibility of transforming false enquiry
into an enhanced spiritual experience, and its usage not only in The
Four Zoas, but also in No Natural Religion, points towards the reclamation
of empirical modes of thought. A similar suggestion of redemption
through association appears at the end of Jerusalem, where Bacon, Newton
Experiences of Empiricism
13
and Locke stand alongside the fathers of English literature, motioning
towards the notion of an incredibly complex inheritance that emphasises
the unity of the not yet dichotomised arts and sciences: ‘The innumerable
Chariots of the Almighty appeard in Heaven / And Bacon & Newton &
Locke, & Milton & Shakspear & Chaucer’ (98.8–9; E257).
Despite the obvious interconnection between the three persons in
Blake’s satanic trinity, it is Locke who in the early works is, in Hagstrum’s
words, the ‘chief villain’.3 Locke’s importance, in the eighteenth century
and beyond, to epistemological issues such as the self’s relation to the
body and to the external world is widely acknowledged and Clark
makes a persuasive case for regarding Locke’s Essay as a ‘formative
influence’ on Blake, which ‘continues to determine the underlying metaphorical structures of texts otherwise as generically dissimilar as prose
aphorisms There is No Natural Religion, satirical treatise The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell, burlesque cosmogony The Book of Urizen and manuscript
epic The Four Zoas’ (‘Blake’s Response to Locke’, p. 133).4 Hagstrum,
meanwhile, comments upon Locke’s more widespread influence on
eighteenth-century literature, remarking that ‘Lockean psychology
had insinuated itself into the work of virtually every neoclassical writer’
(p. 70). Moreover, Locke’s presence at Jerusalem’s apocalypse suggests
that Blake senses at least a partial affinity with him and we can speculate
that his overall response to Locke involves a process of filtering, sifting
and criticising not dissimilar to the manner in which he responds to his
Miltonic inheritance.
The early tractates, All Religions are One and No Natural Religion [a] and
[b], provide a case in point. Hagstrum argues that the tractates constitute
a ‘psychological attack on empirical rationalism’ and ‘establish the
most fundamental and irreconcilable polarities of Blake’s thought –
between the “Poetic or Prophetic character” and the “Philosophical &
Experimental”’ (p. 69). While Blake does oppose the notion that man
‘is only a natural organ subject to Sense’ with the proclamation that
‘Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception’ (No Natural
Religion [a], [b]; E2), the ‘irreconcilable’ polarisation of the poetic and
the philosophical which Hagstrum describes requires some qualification.
While these two modes of experience can, perhaps, be conceptualised
as Blakean contraries, the progression from the known to the unknown
seems to rely upon a particular understanding of their relationship that
perceives the manner in which opposing forces can work together.
Blake’s conclusion that ‘If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character.
the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all
things & stand still’ (No Natural Religion [b]; E3) implies that the ‘Poetic
14 Visionary Materialism in Blake
or Prophetic character’ functions as the inspiration or driving force
that renders the ‘Philosophic & Experimental’ productive, rather than
negating philosophy and experimental science altogether. In effect,
philosophy and experiment provide the structure or skeleton of
thought that the poetic impulse animates, just as, in The Marriage,
reason provides the bounds within which energy becomes manifest
and just as the human body provides the medium through which that
called spirit participates in human existence. Blake makes clear the
necessity of this reciprocal relationship in the ‘Application’ of the
tract’s conclusion, where he tells us ‘He who sees the Infinite in all
things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only’ (ibid.).
While it may seem that the perception of ‘Infinite’ and ‘God’ reduces
man and the ‘Ratio’ to insignificance, such an interpretation is an
inversion rather than an expansion of the sensationist philosophies
themselves. As such, it simply replaces one ratio for another, for those
who see God without seeing man fail to recognise the nature of the
relation between the two: ‘God becomes as we are, / that we may be /
as he / is’ (ibid.).
The seven principles of All Religions support this reading, extrapolating
upon, rather than refuting, the empirical tenet sounded in its argument
and revising the empiricist’s position by redefining ‘the faculty which
experiences’ rather than by rejecting the premise that experience is the
source of knowledge. The fact this argument occurs at the beginning of
Blake’s illuminated book-making project (c. 1788) is significant, as is
the fact that Blake reprinted the tract in 1795 after he had engraved and
printed Urizen with its scathing attacks on both empirical philosophy
and orthodox religion. First, it makes any characterisation of Blake as
an artist entirely antipathetic to empiricism somewhat problematic.
More than that, it suggests that the role Blake constructs for himself in
the early tractates owes something to the empirical method advanced
by early enlightenment figures such as Locke, Newton and Bacon – a
suggestion reinforced by their prosaic style, as well as their quasi-logical
division into principles, arguments and counter-arguments. Far from
rejecting empiricism entirely, Blake’s critique of Lockean empiricism,
like those of Berkeley and Hume, does not necessarily place him outside
the empirical tradition altogether. While Berkeley rejects the division of
reality into the mental and the material, and while Hume criticises the
circularity of the experimental method, Blake’s criticisms of enlightenment empiricism take issue with the narrow boundaries within which
experience itself is defined.5 This is not to say that Blake’s philosophical
position was identical to that of either Berkeley or Hume. There are
Experiences of Empiricism
15
important differences amongst all three writers, which reinforce the sense
that enlightenment empiricism was not a stable or unitary tradition
and that the disagreements between empiricists were no less significant
than their shared emphasis on the primacy of experience.
Blake and Locke: Friendship and enmity
In August 2000, the University of Essex at Colchester hosted a conference
provocatively entitled Friendly Enemies: Blake and the Enlightenment,
which sought to re-examine the inheritance of modernity at the outset
of the current millennium. In addition to the obvious relevance of those
discussions to the present investigation, the framing of this dialogue
within the antipodes of friendship and enmity is itself highly topical.
The seemingly oxymoronic yoking together of the amicable and inimical
speaks to the multiplicity and contradictions inherent in the act of
inheritance as a process of negotiation, of giving and receiving, call and
response. But more than this, the friendly enemy intimately involves
him or herself in the relations between self and other, calling into
question the very possibility of distinguishing friend from foe, truth
from falsity, essence from appearance. As such, it not only characterises
a particular type of relationship, Blake’s response to Locke for example,
but also draws attention to the very points of contention – moral, epistemic and ontological – that give shape and definition to the relationship
itself. The problems involved in discriminating friends from enemies
occupied Blake throughout his life, both personally and artistically, and
a closer inspection of the friendly enemy serves to open out the present
discussion in a number of perhaps unexpected directions.
‘I fear I have not many enemies’, Blake writes in response to Lavater’s
claim that ‘You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate
friends are all good, and whose enemies are characters decidedly bad’
(§151; E587). We should not be misled by the apparent artlessness of this
comment, however. Even as he is worrying about an apparent lack of
enemies, he is calling into question the moral positioning of an author
whom he clearly considers a friend and whose identity, moreover,
remains subject to a certain amount of debate.6 The confidence with
which Lavater speaks of moral absolutes is something for which
Blake takes him to task elsewhere in the marginalia and he describes
Aphorism 71 as ‘an oversight’, rejecting Lavater’s naïve suggestion that
hypocrisy cannot mimic ‘humility and love united’, ‘for what are all
crawlers but mimickers of humility & love’ (E586). And again, in
Lavater’s advice that ‘the great art to love your enemy consists in never
16 Visionary Materialism in Blake
losing sight of MAN in him’, we find Blake challenging the definition of
enmity itself:
none can see the man in the enemy
if he is ignorantly so, he is
not truly an enemy
if maliciously not a man
I cannot love my enemy for my enemy is not man but beast &
devil if I have any. I can love him as a beast & wish to beat him[.]
(§248; E589).
The true enemy is entirely other, less than human and more than
human at the same time, a beast and devil. It is only as a beast that
Blake can love his enemy, but this love itself is inextricable from the
impulse to dominate and injure: ‘I can love him [. . .] & wish to beat
him.’ Then again, it is entirely possible that such enemies do not exist,
for Blake still clings to the possibility that he might not have any. In the
waves of anti-jacobinism that swept through London following the
French Revolution, however, Blake sees the enemy exerting its power
in the persecution of figures such as Paine and Priestley, the series of
sedition trials and, in 1798, the imprisonment of Joseph Johnson. On
the title page of Watson’s Apology for the Bible, Blake declares that ‘To
defend the Bible in this year 1798 would cost a man his life’ for ‘The
Beast & the Whore rule without controls.’ Accordingly, he reports,
‘I have been commanded from Hell not to print this as it is what our
Enemies wish’ (E611).7 Despite such apocalyptic rhetoric, the annotations themselves retain a certain sense of ambiguity when it comes to
forging allegiances with different sorts of devils. Whereas Blake clearly
aligns himself with hell against ‘our Enemies’, it is a strange hell that
opposes the whore and the beast of revelation and the ‘Powers of Satan’
(p. 6; E614). Likewise although as Erdman remarks his exclamation,
‘Well done Paine’ (p. 109; E619), may well be a show of rapport for a
personal friend (Prophet, p. 156), his response to the author of The Age of
Reason is anything but unequivocal and he later declares that ‘Paine is
either a Devil or an Inspired man’ (p. 3; E613).
Blake’s letters and notebook entries make it clear that the problem of
the friendly enemy was personal as well as political and artistic, and no
more so than in the case of William Hayley. Tracing the philosophical
legacy of Aristotle’s address, ‘O my friends, there is no friend’, Derrida
turns his discussion to Blake’s short notebook poem, ‘To H——’: ‘Thy
Friendship oft has made my heart to ake / Do be my Enemy for Friendships sake’ (E506). At stake here is a distinction we have seen before,
between the semblance of friendship and forgiveness, that mimicry of
Experiences of Empiricism
17
humility and love, and honest friendship or true enmity – rather fittingly
‘To H——’ is followed by Blake’s complaint that ‘I write the Rascal
Thanks till he & I / With Thanks & Compliments are quite drawn dry’
(‘On H——the Pick thank’; E506).
Derrida remarks on this intertwining and exchange of the friend/
enemy in To H——:
the declared enemy (Blake declares the enemy by ordering him to
declare himself: be my enemy), the true enemy, is a better friend
than the friend. For the enemy can hate or wage war on me in the
name of friendship, for Friendships sake, out of friendship for friendship; if in sum he respects the true name of friendship, he will
respect my own name. He will hear what my name should, even if
it does not, properly name: the irreplaceable singularity which
bears it, and to which the enemy then bears himself and refers.
[. . .]. And if he desires my death, at least he desires it, perhaps, him,
mine, singularly. The declared friend would not accomplish as
much in simply declaring himself a friend while missing out on
the name: that which imparts the name both to friendship and to
singularity.8
The other declares itself honestly, disdaining the hypocrisy of the
crawler, and in place of the mockery of love and forgiveness proffered
by the unfaithful neighbour, it offers the insurmountable distance of
the interminable stranger. The redemptive value of enmity lies in the
declaration of difference, of an absolute alterity that validates the singular
existence of the self, even – and perhaps especially – when it desires
to put the self to death. ‘Death’, Derrida remarks elsewhere, ‘is very
much that which nobody else can undergo or confront in my place. My
irreplaceability is therefore conferred, delivered, “given,” one can say,
by death.’9 Blake does not take things this far. He does, however, share
the sense that what Derrida calls ‘a “superior” friendship’, a notion that
seems to carry an inflection of the Blakean distinction between spiritual
friends and corporeal enemies, depends on a mode of open hostility
that both draws up battle lines to clearly delineate the self and at the
same time fully commits itself to an active engagement with the other.
I can love him as a beast & wish to beat him.
In the following pages, I will suggest that Blake’s attacks on Locke are
motivated in part by a commitment, shared with Locke, to mental liberty,
to the primacy of experience and even to free enquiry over institutional
authority and public opinion. What Blake objects to, it will be suggested,
18 Visionary Materialism in Blake
are the narrow bounds within which Locke confines the understanding
and the consequent barrier that this places between self and other. Otto
presents a convincing argument that across Blake’s work the possibility of
redemption, the opening to Eternity, is indissolubly bound to a relaxation,
though not an erasure, of the boundary between self and other.10 He
suggests that, across Blake’s texts, ideas of poetic or prophetic vision are
derived from an ontological comportment constituted by an openness to
alterity and a willingness to engage with the call of the other, be that
God or other human beings. This reading is itself supported by recent
research into Blake’s methods of composition, which suggests that his
mode of artistic production and his comments on that process itself
evince an awareness and an embrace of the alterity imposed by both
language and the medium of illuminated printing. Blake’s invocation of
various muses, his sense of the integrity and independence of the
copper plates he engraved, his willingness to incorporate accident
into his production process, as well as his awareness of language as
something that is both internal and external all attest to his sense that
the production of art is itself a dialogic process involving the artist’s
engagement with an inspiring other.11
However, the openness to alterity that Blake associates with artistic
production and personal redemption does not constitute a loss of identity, even if, in later works such as Milton and Jerusalem, it comes to entail
the annihilation of certain modes of (Lockean) selfhood and even if fallen
existence itself bears the marks of horrific violation. Indeed, even as
Blake’s images of mental enslavement evoke what Williams calls a ‘protoconcept of ideology’, he holds fast to the integrity of a permanent and
irreplaceable identity.12 ‘Each Identity is Eternal’, he will proclaim in The
Description of the Last Judgement (p. 79; E556), and each identity is marked
by the bounding line or outline: ‘Protogenes and Appelles knew each
other by this line’ (Descriptive Catalogue, p. 64; E550). The willingness to
actively engage the other in dialogue or mental war is not to be confused
with the infiltration of self that hampers the expression of identity. And
in this sense it is Locke’s proximity to Blake, his capacity to persuade with
hypocritical and insidious reasoning, that fuels the hostility. ‘Locke’s
virile contempt of slavery, his defense of toleration and even the primacy
he gives to sense experience’, Frye notes, ‘are all Blakean qualities.’ He
contrasts Locke with Hobbes, whose ‘honesty’ renders him harmless:
it is the reasonable and persuasive Locke who is likely to attract a
well-meaning audience, and it is far more important to attack him
than Hobbes, who could be plausibly denounced by even a stupid or
malicious person. (pp. 187–8)
Experiences of Empiricism
19
There is, I think, more to Hobbes’ honesty than Frye acknowledges,
and likewise Blake’s sense of Locke’s hypocrisy was in certain respects
more accurate than Frye admits. His contempt for (and investment
in) slavery is ambiguous to say the least, he believed that the white
race was superior and his epistemological arguments reinforced the
dominance of the upper class as the only group who had sufficient
time to cultivate their understanding fully.13 These ambiguities were
widely remarked upon during Blake’s lifetime, adding further
grounds to Blake’s sense of Locke’s knavery, exemplified by the ease
with which he is taken up by out-and-out enemies such as Watson:
‘I believe that the Bishop laught at the Bible in his slieve & so did
Locke’ (p. 2; E613).
Blake seeks repeatedly to deny his Lockean inheritance, ‘To cast off
Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albions covering’ (Milton, 41.5; E142), for
in late eighteenth-century Britain Locke threatens him from all sides.
Ferber remarks on the ubiquity of Locke in Blake’s milieu, noting the
‘historical oddness’ of his antipathy:
But odd it surely was in one who at least peripherally joined the
circle around the bookseller Joseph Johnson, which included Thomas
Paine, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Dr. Price; who
may have come from a Dissenting family himself; who was trained
as an engraver by republican antiquarians and Miltonists; and who,
as a London artisan, almost certainly knew and felt sympathy for
radical reformist organizers like Hardy. (p. 14)
Locke surrounds Blake as a dark force poised for invasion or an intellectual
and spiritual contagion, much like the revolutionary fires that recoil on
Albion’s Angel in America:
The plagues creep on the burning winds driven
by flames of Orc,
And by the fierce Americans rushing together in the night
Driven o’er the Guardians of Ireland and Scotland and Wales
They spotted with plagues forsook the frontiers
& their banners seard
With fires of hell, deform their ancient heavens
with shame & woe.
Hid in caves the Bard of Albion felt the enormous plagues.
(15.11–16; E57)
20 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Blake himself becomes inflamed by certain strains of empirical epistemology, transmitted across generations by the spectre of Locke, champion
of liberty and legislator of slavery, forefather of free-inquiry and guardian
of divine mystery, advocate of toleration and mocker of enthusiasm.
Blake rigorously polices the border between his territory and Locke’s, but
despite all his self-professed contempt and abhorrence, as Hagstrum notes,
‘what he rejected in one of the mightiest efforts of his imagination had
in fact invaded the deepest recesses of his being’ (p. 67). In a similar
vein, Clark alludes to the radical Protestant heritage common to both
Blake and Locke and he notes that ‘the power of the Lockean qualities of
endeavour, self-discipline and achieved mastery of a recalcitrant world are
foregrounded and massively enhanced [in Blake’s texts]’ (‘Blake’s Response
to Locke’, p. 149). Glausser too notes that Blake and Locke shared a
similarly radical stance, remarking ‘Locke was not just a theorist of
sedition, but a seditious activist’ and ‘can be seen as a committed radical
who disguised his authentic self in the face of enemy surveillance’ (p. 103).
Blake’s contempt for Locke is related to their respective historical
positions, which serve to highlight their philosophical differences while
masking their similarities. Glausser qualifies his discussion of the radical
political position shared by Locke and Blake with the remark that
‘Blake, of course, was challenging the curtailed monarchy put into place
by Locke [. . .] in the seditious success of the Glorious Revolution’ (p. 92).
Clark, meanwhile, proclaims that ‘unlike the ultimately impotent
millenialists of the Commonwealth period, Locke was a successful
revolutionary’, and suggests that while ‘the evidence is extremely slight
that Blake had read Locke’s Two Treatises of Government’, Locke’s political
views ‘had sufficiently widespread dissemination in the 1790s to appear
in antithetical contexts: prominently cited by the defence in the Thomas
Hardy treason trial, but bitterly denounced by Joseph Wright, follower
of the prophet Richard Brothers’ (‘Blake’s Response to Locke’, pp. 134–5).
What I want to suggest is that from a particular oppositional standpoint,
Locke’s very success could be a mark of his failure. Although both Blake
and Locke begin by occupying an oppositional stance to dominant
cultural discourses, mutations in these discourses have served to alter
Locke’s position. By the 1790s, Locke – or, more accurately, the memory
of Locke, his spectral reincarnations – has begun to be appropriated by
revolutionaries and reactionaries alike.
Derrida’s discussion of Blake and the friendly enemy also touches
upon what he suggests is their mutual respect for the spectre (a concept
that he develops at length in his earlier work, Specters of Marx, where it
Experiences of Empiricism
21
appears as ‘not only the carnal apparition of the spirit, its phenomenal
body, its fallen and guilty body’, but also as ‘the impatient and nostalgic
waiting for a redemption, namely, once again, for a spirit’),14 and he
quotes from Jerusalem, plate 6, as evidence of this (Politics, p. 73).
Although Blake does not make an overt appearance in that earlier
work, there are a number of parallels between Blake’s ‘spectre’ and
Derrida’s, though there are significant differences as well. Unlike
Derrida’s spectre, Blake’s spectre tends to represent a negative force, as
opposed, for example, to Los, and Clark suggests that the concept is of
‘explicitly Lockean derivation’ (‘Blake’s Response to Locke’, p. 134).
Though it certainly goes beyond merely signifying the problems Blake
identified in Lockean philosophy, it does tend to embody only certain
strands of Blake’s inheritance, in contrast to Derrida’s usage of the term
which is not limited to particular thinkers or modes of thought. In any
case, the term is almost entirely absent from Blake’s early work, occurring
only four times in his poetry prior to The Four Zoas and a detailed
discussion of the matter is beyond the scope of the present study.15 Of
much greater relevance to the present discussion, however, are the
nodes of connection between Derrida’s articulation of a ‘hauntology’ – of
that which makes possible ‘ontology, theology, positive or negative
onto-theology’ – and Blake’s attempts to bring about a redefinition and
expansion of vision, which are in key respects more thoroughgoing
than Derrida himself suggests (p. 51).16 Several of these intersections
will be discussed below, but of particular relevance to the present discussion is the notion of cultural inheritance. Derrida notes the ‘radical
and necessary heterogeneity’ of such an inheritance, which necessarily
transforms reception into an exegetical act:
one must filter, sift, criticize, one must sort out several different possibles
that inherit the same injunction. And inhabit it in a contradictory
fashion around a secret. If the readability of a legacy were given,
natural, transparent, univocal, if it did not call for and at the same
time defy interpretation, we would never have anything to inherit
from it. We would be affected by it as by a cause – natural or genetic.
One always inherits from a secret – which says ‘read me, will you
ever be able to do so?’ (p. 16; emphasis in original)
The secrecy or uncertainties that adhere in the legacies of the past
imbue the figureheads of those legacies and the progenitors of the
inheritance, such as Locke, with an other-worldly or spectral status such
that the act of remembering the ‘great thinkers’ of a bygone age is itself
22 Visionary Materialism in Blake
a process of interpretative selection: ‘One never inherits without coming
to terms with some specter, and therefore with more than one specter.
With the fault but also the injunction of more than one’ (p. 21). Taking
this notion of spectrality into account, it can be suggested that while
Blake was acutely aware of the faults that could be perceived in the
philosophies of intellectual forebears such as Locke, his emphasis on
intellectual rigour as well as on the importance of experience indicate
at least a partial fulfilment of Lockean injunctions. Moreover, Blake’s
sustained hostility towards Locke may stem from the very multiplicity
of this inheritance. As Clark notes (‘Blake’s Response to Locke’, p. 140),
Paine and Watson invoke very different versions of Locke; they conjure,
in Derrida’s terms, different spectres. The near omnipresence of Locke on
both sides of doctrinal, political and philosophical conflicts lends credence
to the suggestion that at the close of the eighteenth century, Locke,
while far from being universally applauded, had acquired significant
status as both an opponent and an ally.
In his discussion of cultural inheritance, Benjamin notes that ‘all rulers
are the heirs of those who conquered before them’ and he describes a
‘triumphal procession’ in which ‘cultural treasures’ are carried along as
the ‘spoils’ of victory.17 Benjamin suggests that the contemplation of the
origins of such objects ought to be accompanied by a sense of ‘horror’
due to the injustice associated with a process of privileging the labour of
the few over the toil of the many. At fault here are not the objects of
inheritance, but rather the process of inheritance as an act of selective
memory. The great works of a civilisation, he remarks, ‘owe their existence
not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents of those who have
created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries’
(ibid.). Like Benjamin’s idealised ‘historical materialist’, Blake ‘regards it
as his task to brush history against the grain’ (ibid.). Locke’s spectre has
become part of the march of the victors, his treatises are being carried
along with the rest of the cultural treasures and it is the facile, unquestioning acceptance of this privileged position that raises Blake’s suspicions.
Of especial concern for an artist such as Blake is the manner in which
Locke’s philosophical tenets become incorporated into the aesthetic
treatise of one of the most prominent opponents to revolution in the
1790s – Edmund Burke. It is precisely Locke’s absorption into the discourses put forth by Reynolds and Burke which Blake points to in the
oft-quoted passage where he declares his contempt and abhorrence:
Burke’s Treatise on the Sublime & Beautiful is founded on the Opinions
of Newton & Locke on this Treatise Reynolds has grounded many of
Experiences of Empiricism
23
his assertions. [. . .] I read Burkes Treatise when very Young at the
same time I read Locke on Human Understanding & Bacons Advancement of Learning [.. .]. I felt the Same Contempt & Abhorrence then;
that I do now. They mock Inspiration & Vision
Inspiration & Vision
was then & now is [. . .] my Eternal Dwelling place. (Annotations to
Reynolds, p. 244; E660–1)
Although Blake makes these comments between 1801 and 1809,18 if
we take him at his word, this antagonism is both continuous and
longstanding. Moreover, he makes it clear that his opposition to
Locke, Newton, Bacon, Burke and Reynolds centres on his own ideas of
artistic production and perception, ‘Inspiration & Vision’. While ‘in
defending The Age of Reason [. . .], Blake finds himself aligned with a
person who admired Locke and to some extent resembled him’ (Glausser,
p. 8), and while ‘it is clearly Blake, rather than Reynolds, whose ethic
of “Mental Fight” is heir to Locke’s iconoclastic energy’ (Clark, ‘Blake’s
Response to Locke’, p. 140), Locke’s posthumous return as a cultural
icon at the heart of discourses that ‘mock’ his epistemological and
ontological positions – his ‘Vision’ and ‘Eternal Dwelling place’ – makes
him a fit recipient for Blake’s own iconoclastic lambasting. This response,
which appropriates even as it condemns, can be seen as representative
both of his reaction to the Enlightenment in general and of his
historical position within a century of scientific discovery, which
was not characterised by detached observation, but rather by an
active perception that sought to transform science into a redemptive
force, capable of exceeding the bounds of Lockean-style empiricism
by increasing, rather than denying, the significance of perception and
sensual existence.
Blake’s intense concern over Locke’s position of authority – an
authority so far-reaching that it is invoked by revolutionaries and
reactionaries alike – is succinctly expressed in his earliest reference to
Locke as ‘John Lookye’ in An Island in the Moon (p. 8; E456), written
around 1784 (Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 221–3). It is Scopprell who
makes the mistake, picking up Locke’s Essay and misreading both the
title ‘An Easy of [Human] <Huming> Understanding’ (ibid.) and the
author’s name. The error is immediately pointed out – ‘John Locke said
Obtuse Angle’ – but Scopprell gets it wrong again: ‘O O ay Lock’ (ibid.).
Although these malapropisms work to satirise Scopprell’s pretensions to
education, they also contain certain kernels of truth. Erdman glosses the
change from ‘Human’ to ‘Huming’ in the title of Locke’s book as meaning
‘humming’ (E849); however, it could also refer to ‘Hume’, perhaps
24 Visionary Materialism in Blake
alluding to Hume’s critique of experimental method. The initial rendering of ‘Locke’ as ‘Lookye’ would seem to suggest a representation of
Locke as an authority figure deploying perception, and perhaps even a
particular mode of vision, as a command: ‘Look ye’. Scopprell’s second
attempt, ‘O ay Lock’, speaks to the corollary of authoritarian imposition, the imprisonment of the mind that will become a recurrent trope
in Blake’s subsequent texts, which suggests that the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ in London (l.8; E27), the ‘chains [. . .] of weak and tame minds’ in
The Marriage (16; E40), the ‘mental chains’ in America (13.3; E56) and
the ‘chains of the mind’ in Urizen (10.25; E75) can all be traced back to
Lockean epistemology.
As will be suggested below, one of the major problems that Blake
attributes to Locke’s models of the mind is the type of division that
these draw between self and other. Through the figure of Urizen, Blake
comes to connect such divisions with the self’s retreat from experience, but
this suspicion of withdrawal is itself anticipated in the subsequent
incident in An Island. Here Miss Gittipin interrupts the quasi-philosophical
discussion of Scopprell and Obtuse Angle, criticising them for paying
more attention to books than the people around them:
Now here said Miss Gittipin I never saw such company in my life. you
are always talking of your books I like to be where we talk.—you had
better take a walk, that we may have some pleasure [.] (p. 8; E456)
The withdrawal from human intercourse, the failing to ‘be where we
talk’ can in fact be seen as a lighter, though no less serious, form of that
ontological distancing which Blake comes to associate with Urizen’s fall
from Eternity. ‘Lo, a shadow of horror is risen / In Eternity’, begins the
speaker in Urizen in Chapter 1:
[. . .] Some said
‘It is Urizen’, But unknown, abstracted
Brooding secret, the dark power hid.
(3.1, 5–7)
Although Miss Gittipin’s apparent naiveté and preoccupation with gossip are laughable, we cannot simply dismiss her comments out of hand.
The idea that a philosophical discussion can be seen as a withdrawal or
an absence, a failing ‘to be where we talk’, seems to anticipate both
Urizenic withdrawal and the retreat from perception that Blake warns
Experiences of Empiricism
25
against in his maxim that ‘We are led to Believe a Lie / When we see not
Thro the Eye’ (‘Auguries of Innocence’, ll. 125–6; E492).
Miss Gittipin is herself reproached by Mr Steelyard, whose name with
its connotations of industrialism, whose occupation as a ‘Lawgiver’
(p. 45; E457) and whose behaviour as a ‘Saint’ (p. 47; E457) all contribute
to a sense that his reproach may bear resemblance to a ‘kingly title’, if
we remember Blake’s later remark on ‘the fools reproach’ (The Marriage,
9; E37). In any case, Scopprell leaps to her defence, declaring ‘I think
the Ladies discourses Mr Steelyard are some of them more improving
than any book’ (An Island, pp. 59–60; E457). Again, we find this
emphasis on presence and on living discourse opposed to the dubious
‘improvement’ that can be offered by a book and again we find similar
suspicions arising in Blake’s later works – in this instance in Urizen’s
declaration:
Here alone I in books formd of metals
Have written the secrets of wisdom
The secrets of dark contemplation [.]
(Urizen, 4:24–6; E72)
Again we find the connection between withdrawal and ‘dark contemplation’ together with an emphasis on ‘metals’. The connection here is
not such as to indicate a direct link between Urizen and Steelyard,
which seems unlikely given that the latter is widely held to represent
Blake’s friend John Flaxman. However, while Urizen does not develop
out of Steelyard’s character, the two do seem to share some of the same
negative characteristics. Not only is Mr Steelyard a ‘law giver’ and a
‘Saint’, but in his tirade against Mrs Gittipin he praises the deference of
boys as opposed to the ‘tongue’ of girls:
A girl has always more tongue than a boy I have seen a little brat
no higher than a nettle & she had as much tongue as a city clark but
a boy would be such a fool not have any thing to say and if any
body askd him a question he would put his head into a hole & hide
it. (pp. 51–5; E457)
‘Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you’,
Blake declares in The Marriage (8; E36), three years before he gave shape
to Oothoon, his most noteworthy heroine and the first self-declared
opponent of Urizenic philosophy.
26 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Although Blake’s caricature of Flaxman may appear unexpectedly
savage, it is in fact characteristic of the multiplicious, if not ambivalent,
way in which he responds to friend and foe alike. Indeed, we need only
recall the parallels between Urizen’s brass books and Blake’s copper
plates, not to mention his self-parody in the form of Quid, to witness
the application of his satirical gaze to objects closer to home. Obtuse
Angle, who as Erdman notes may well be James Parker, Blake’s partner
at the time (Prophet, p. 98), also embodies the impulse towards selfenclosure and intellectual blindness. Like Urizen on the title page to his
book, Obtuse Angle finds that he too ‘always understood better when
he shut his eyes’ (E450) and from the security of this darkened room he
profoundly declares:
In the first place it is of no use for a man to make Queries but to
solve them, for a man may be a fool & make Queries but a man must
have good sound sense to solve them. a query & an answer are as
different as a strait line & a crooked one. (pp. 75–8; E450)
Again we hear the reverberation of something to come, for one cannot
read this passage without recalling Blake’s own declaration that
‘Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without /
Improvement, are roads of Genius’ (The Marriage, 10; E38).
Already in the early 1780s, Blake was evidently grappling with the
Enlightenment ideas inherited by the polite culture within which he was
then circulating. The recurrence of these themes throughout his subsequent works suggests that this process of assessing his enlightenment
inheritance was a labour Blake engaged in until the end of his life. More
specifically, the criticisms of Locke, biting in their opposition of the living
present (which Locke privileges) to the knowledge codified in texts that
withdraw the reader from the present (the effect of Locke’s text) and
ambiguous in the location of this critique in the mouths of simpletons,
suggest that even in 1784 Blake’s reactions to Locke were neither straightforward nor entirely antithetical.
Closet and cavern
The epistemology that insists that ‘Genius is not Born. but Taught’,
which Blake comes to attribute to Bacon (Annotations to Reynolds,
p. 147; E656), is elaborated by Locke who rigorously denies the existence
of any knowledge other than that which originates from the information
imprinted on the mind through the senses or through reflection, itself
Experiences of Empiricism
27
a form of inward-looking perception.19 Although Locke does admit that
new ideas can be generated by the reorganisation and reassessment of
these ‘sensory ideas’, this process is secondary and depends upon the
original sense-data, ‘the Materials and Foundations of the rest’ (Essay,
§2.12.1). This rejection of innate ideas functions as an empowering
move for Locke, who argues that the verification of principles and
opinions must come from the rational activities of the individual rather
than from an external source of authority. Locke insists that assent to
a proposition ought to be given on the basis of its probability and he
argues that the ‘firmest ground of Probability, is the conformity any
thing has to our own Knowledge; especially that part of our Knowledge
which we [. . .] continue to look on as Principles’ (§4.20.8). Furthermore,
he gives the following warning:
every one ought very carefully to beware what he admits for a Principle,
to examine it strictly and see whether he certainly knows it to be true
of it self by its own Evidence [. . .]. For he hath a strong bias put into
his Understanding, which will unavoidably misguide his Assent,
who hath imbibed wrong Principles, and has blindly given himself up
to the Authority of any Opinion in it self not evidently true. (Ibid.)
Nevertheless, Locke himself admits that under this model the mind acts
as the passive recipient of external reality. ‘In bare naked Perception’, he
writes, ‘the Mind is, for the most part, only passive; and what it perceives,
it cannot avoid perceiving’ (§2.9.1). As Clark indicates, this initial passivity
in Locke’s description of the act of thinking has led scholars such as
Frye to describe the Lockean mind as passive and devoid of energy.
However, as Clark points out, these criticisms fail to account for the
active role Locke attributes to – and indeed demands from – later mental
activities. Locke argues that despite the mind’s passivity in the reception
of sensory data, ‘it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its
simple Ideas [. . .] the other [thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning,
knowing, and willing] are framed’ (§2.12.1). The recognition of the
dynamic elements of Lockean psychology allows Clark to describe
Locke’s ‘analytic reduction’ of ideas to something analogous to physical
particles as the ‘radical and thorough-going’ application of Blake’s
declaration that ‘To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit’
(‘Blake’s Response to Locke’, pp. 136–7; E641). If Clark is correct, it is
Locke, not Blake, who best puts the latter’s principles into active use.
However, Clark’s implied pun on ‘Particular’, ‘Particularize’ and ‘Particle’
runs the risk of obscuring the fundamental division between Lockean
28 Visionary Materialism in Blake
and Blakean psychology. Locke’s mental particles are stable entities that
originate beyond the limits of the human mind; Blake’s are not. For
Locke, the building blocks of mental reality are imported – or more
accurately, translated – from the outside world. What’s more, these
mental particles retain the same autonomy as their external counterparts.
Locke argues that ‘the Materials in both [the mental and physical
world] being such as he has no power over, either to make or destroy,
all that Man can do is either to unite them together, or to set them by
one another, or wholly separate them’ (§2.12.1). Thus, man becomes
disengaged from his ideas, just as he is from his environment, for both
originate and exist beyond the bounds of his control.
Taylor notes that ‘not only Locke’s epistemology but his radical disengagement and reification of human psychology were immensely influential in the Enlightenment’ (p. 173). In the name of granting individuals
the ability to remake themselves, Locke’s method of self-examination
prescribes a radical-reflexivity that – seemingly paradoxically – is bound
to an objectification of the mind. As Taylor reports, ‘the modern ideal
of disengagement requires a reflexive stance’ because ‘we have to turn
inward and become aware of our own activity and of the processes
which form us’ (p. 174). We must turn inwards, away from the objects
of sense and focus on what we can know with certainty – the objects
and activities of our own minds. However, lest our own pre-formed
habits and desires mislead us, we must objectify our minds and consider
them dispassionately. Taylor cites Descartes as the forerunner in this
tradition of disengagement, but his discussion also focuses on Locke,
and it is at Locke’s feet that Taylor lays the ‘punctual self’, whose highest achievement is not only a disengagement from inherited cultural
beliefs and principles, but also ‘the disengagement both from the activities
of thought and from our unreflecting desires’ (p. 171). For Locke such
self-objectification depends in part upon the representation of the
mind, by metaphor and analogy, as being constructed out of things
such as atoms and blocks. Moreover, it involves explaining mental
processes according to mechanical principles, mapping the mind onto
the operations of the Newtonian universe. To this extent, Locke’s punctual
self operates as a precursor to the sorts of physiologically grounded
psychology practised by later thinkers such as Hartley and Priestley.
However, this line of inheritance cannot be translated into proof of
Locke’s own materialism. Despite the fact that his reification of the mind
functions as a precursor for later materialistic models, Locke represents
the punctual self as completely divorced from material existence. As
Taylor notes:
Experiences of Empiricism
29
this self which emerges from the objectification of and separation
from our given nature cannot be identified with anything in this
given. It can’t be easily conceived as just another piece of the natural
world. [. . .]. The punctual agent seems to be nothing else but a ‘self’,
an ‘I’. (p. 175)
In this conception of the punctual self as something entirely removed
from the visible world, we seem to be approaching the ‘abominable
void’ that marks the invisible appearance of Urizen (3.4; E70). Taylor
describes this model of the self as ‘one of the great paradoxes of modern
philosophy’, for the reification of the mind is concomitant with the
adoption of an uncompromisingly self-reflexive stance and, hence, ‘radical
objectivity is only intelligible and accessible through radical subjectivity’
(pp. 175–6). Thus, the self must be examined from the inside, but the
examiner must insert a distance between himself and the object under
consideration, even though in this case they are one and the same
being.
This divisive aspect of rational perception – that which allows for the
separation of the thing from its appearance – is central to Locke’s
notion of external as well as internal knowledge, creating a model of
knowledge in which external objects are known only through internal
ideas. Locke distinguishes between the ‘Ideas or Perceptions in our
Minds’ and the ‘modifications of matter in the Bodies that cause such
Perceptions in us’, noting that in the majority of cases our idea of an
external object bears no more likeness to objects in themselves ‘than
the Names, that stand for them, are the likeness of our Ideas, which yet
upon hearing, they are apt to excite in us’ (Essay, §2.8.7). The comparison
between sensation and verbal communication emphasises the split
between the idea of a thing and the thing itself. Immediately after he
has drawn this comparison, Locke diligently distinguishes between the
‘Idea’, which he defines as ‘whatsoever the Mind perceives in it self, or is
the immediate object of Perception, Thought, or Understanding’, and
the ‘Quality of the Subject’, defined as ‘the Power to produce any Idea
in our mind’ (§2.8.8).
Though these definitions further clarify the division between the idea
and that which it represents, Locke proceeds to make a characteristic
qualification of his position, attempting to present a stable ground for
knowledge whilst retaining his dual emphasis on uncertainty and the
limitations of the senses. Taking the process of division one step further, he separates the qualities into those that are primary (solidity,
extension, figure, texture, motion or rest, and number) and those that are
30 Visionary Materialism in Blake
secondary (colours, smells, sounds, tastes, etc.). The former are those
qualities that ‘are utterly inseparable from the Body, in what estate
soever it be’ and the latter are qualities ‘which in truth are nothing in
the Objects themselves, but Powers to produce various Sensations in us
by their primary Qualities’ (§2.8.9, 10). On one level, the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities functions as an explanation
of the process of sensation and Locke enjoins us to suppose that the
secondary qualities are produced through the primary qualities of tiny
bodies, such that ‘a Violet, by the impulse of such insensible particles
of matter of peculiar figures, and bulks, and in different degrees and
modifications of their Motions, causes the Ideas of the blue Colour, and
sweet Scent of that Flower to be produced in our Minds’ (§2.8.13). However, despite the limitations that this explanation places on perception,
reducing the greater portion of sensory experience to arbitrary representations that ‘are in truth nothing in the Objects themselves’ (§2.8.14), it
is underpinned by a faith in the knowability of primary qualities. On
another level, therefore, Locke’s account of sensation serves to reintroduce
an aspect of reliability, of a physical connection between the ideas and
the particular motions that produce them:
The Bulk, Figure, Number, Situation, and Motion, or Rest of their solid
Parts; those are in them, whether we perceive them or no; and when
they are of that size, that we can discover them, we have by these an
Idea of the thing, as it is in it self. (§2.8.23)
The crux here is the notion of ‘discovery’, for it is only when an object
can be clearly perceived that the mind can begin to conceive the thing
as it is in itself. At this juncture, between the primary and the secondary
qualities, Locke’s system is pulled in opposite directions, on the one
hand, refusing to forsake the notion of a correlation between the ideas
of an immaterial mind and the material objects in the external world
(united in the ideas of primary qualities) and, on the other, insisting
that such perception is beyond human capacity:
For our Senses failing us, in the discovery of the Bulk, Texture, and
Figure of the minute parts of Bodies, on which their real Constitutions
and Differences depend, we are fain to make use of their secondary
Qualities, as the characteristical Notes and Marks, whereby to frame
Ideas of them in our Minds, and distinguish them one from another.
(§2.23.8)
Experiences of Empiricism
31
Again the notion of a direct correlation between ideas and qualities is
supplanted by a system of imperfect and arbitrary representation, ‘as
the characteristical Notes and Marks’.
Notably, Locke represents the division between the external world of
objects and the internal world of ideas through the metaphor of a closet
or dark room:
For, methinks, the Understanding is not much unlike a Closet wholly
shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external
visible Resemblances, or Ideas of things without. (Essay, §2.11.17)
Otto suggests that this ‘closeted man’ is a precursor of Blake’s own
‘cavern’d man’, noting that ‘within the closet the other is perceived
as “an external visible resemblance”’ and ‘reason manipulates these
resemblances as if they were fixed coins or tokens’ (Constructive Vision,
p. 17). By glossing Locke in this way, Otto emphasises the economic
aspects of Locke’s model of the self, in which ‘there is certainly no room
for dialogue, or for the relationship between call [of the other] and
response [of the self] that is the ground of [Blake’s] Eternity’ (ibid.).
As an ardent dualist and empiricist, Locke adamantly believes in the
incarnation of the spirit within the body, but this incarnation manifests
itself as an incarceration since the visible resemblance of an external
body is not the same thing as the body itself. Thus, the world and
everyone in it are represented to us as nothing other than perceived
appearances, and these ideas are the property of a self that is, in Taylor’s
words, ‘extra-worldly’ (p. 175).
Locke’s philosophy reduces man to a ‘cavern’ in which God becomes
invisible and the world is externalised and cloaked in the veil of sensory
ideas. Frosch notes that in Blake’s view the dichotomisation of the
spiritual and the material represent ‘the twin antipodes of the fall’:
It follows that Blake is not interested in any God, paradise, or fulfilment
which is unavailable to the immediate experience of the body. The
withdrawal from direct perception as a trusted mode of cognition—
the path carved out for us by Plato, Paul, and Descartes—produces a
fatal gap between the real and the perceived, as does the empirical
subordination of sensory detail to mental pattern; and when what
we take to be ultimate reality is removed from the world of appearances,
so too is paradise, which is the state of our complete involvement in
that reality.20
32 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Blake’s avowal that ‘man has closed himself up, till he sees all things
thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern’ (14; E39) speaks to the imposition of
a barrier which, at its most extreme, prohibits any sort of meaningful
interaction between self and other. Colebrook notes that the ‘gesture of
enlightenment’ involves the removal of ‘all those ghosts, images and
illusions that haunt thinking and rob it of its own autonomous selfproduction’ (p. 21), and this is precisely the sort of empowerment that
Locke’s Essay promises. However, what the philosophy of five senses
actually does is to exchange one set of illusions for another, trading tradition, opinion and a faith in innate knowledge for a set of metaphysical
assumptions that actually foreclose on the possibility of moving beyond
the appearances that represent the known world to the understanding.
Colebrook’s analysis does not examine Blake’s relationship with Locke
specifically, but there are parallels here between his role as the progenitor
of caverned man and the ‘priests of metaphysics’ who in claiming to
know the ‘Idea of that which lies beyond experience’ actually render it
‘spectral’, reducing and limiting it to one figure among an infinite
number of possibilities (p. 20). Notably, the illusion Locke offers is an
image not of the unthinkable other, but of the self understood in a
particular way. The reified mind becomes, in Locke’s speculation on
personal identity, divorced from the corporeal world altogether:
Thus the Limbs of his Body is to every one a part of himself: He
sympathizes and is concerned for them. Cut off an hand, and
thereby separate it from that consciousness, we had of its Heat, Cold,
and other Affections; and it is then no longer a part of that which is
himself, any more than the remotest part of Matter. (§2.27.11)
And as for the limb, so too for the whole of the body, for by reducing
personal identity to the consistency of a consciousness delineated by
recollection, Locke, as Ricoeur remarks, invents ‘a criterion of identity,
namely mental identity, to which may henceforth be opposed the criterion
of corporeal identity’ (p. 126).
When Blake declares that ‘The ancient tradition that the world will be
consumed in fire is true’ (14; E39), he is not suggesting that the spirit
will triumph through the annihilation of the material world, for unlike
Locke he does not regard the body as a garment that can be changed or
discarded (Essay, §2.27.10). Blake insists that apocalyptic consumption
will occur through an ‘improvement’, rather than an annihilation, ‘of
sensual enjoyment’, a process that is initiated by Blake’s very physical
act of ‘printing in the infernal [or illuminated] method [. . .] melting
Experiences of Empiricism
33
apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid’
(14; E39). As Viscomi notes, ‘in this process, the relation between “surface”
and “infinite” is not analogous to that between body and soul’, for ‘the
key word is “apparent” and not surface; remove what appears to be true
to see what is really true’.21 With regard to the caves and caverns in The
Marriage, Viscomi points out that these ‘come in two states, open and
closed, representing either limited or [. . .] illimitable perception’ (p. 36).
Hence, while the cave can represent restriction, it can also operate as
Hell’s emblem and, as on plate 11, can appear ‘anti-Platonic, with reality
residing in and within the cave rather than outside and transcendent’
(pp. 35–6). While Hell’s fires and its caverns are capable of sustaining
contrary meanings, these are contingent upon the perspective of the
viewer. To the Angels, ‘the fires of hell [. . .] look like torment and insanity’
(The Marriage, 6; E35) – a perspective consistent with the belief that fire
is painful, damaging and destructive to the corporeal. But from the Devils’
perspectives, these fires are filled ‘with the enjoyments of Genius’ (ibid.)
and Blake tells us that, far from destroying the body, they are from the
body and are ‘salutary and medicinal’ (14; E39). Likewise, from the
perspective of caverned man, the cave is always already a symbol of
confinement, for it represents the enclosure of space within solid, impenetrable matter; but this incarceration is at least partially self-imposed – ‘man
has closed himself up’ (ibid.; emphasis added).
The inheritance of Lockean epistemology, Blake will suggest in texts
such as ‘The Human Abstract’ and Ahania, is corporeal – one might
almost say genetic – as well as mental and it involves a transformation
of existence in accordance with the onto-theology hidden inside the
philosophy of the five senses. But, if creation is ‘always inherited,
material, opaque and non-autonomous’ (Colebrook, p. 14), it is also a
matter of choice, the result of an originary decision that, though it
cannot be undone, has the potential to be made again with arrival of
every new opportunity to act. ‘Who can act or perform as if each work or
action were the first, the last, and the only one in his life, is great in his
sphere’, Lavater writes with Blake both marking his approval and
strengthening the force of the aphorism by deleting the final three
words (Aphorisms, §272; E589).22 If perception is restricted to peering
through the cave’s ‘narrow chinks’ (14; E39), it indeed appears that the
world beyond the cavern is out of bounds; however, ‘If the doors of
perception were cleansed every thing’, including the cave walls, ‘would
appear to man as it is: infinite’ (ibid.). This change in perspective does
not mean that for caverned man the wall of his cave is any less impenetrable, but the quality of impenetrability is imposed upon the body
34 Visionary Materialism in Blake
by his circumscribed perceptions, rather than inhering in the body
itself. The transcendentalist, immaterialist or abstract metaphysician
is trapped by the very ontology that structures the dream of escape,
representing the corporeal as a hellish place from which the good and
obedient will one day be freed. But, the Blakean ‘I’, who walks ‘among
the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius’ (The Marriage,
7; E35), realises that the journey through time and space is itself structured
by the manner in which one navigates various ‘impositions’ from within
and without.
One finds antecedents for the type of ontology Blake seems to be
imagining in the seventeenth-century philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza.
The model of personal identity as mental identity (as opposed to corporeal
identity), which Blake rejects in Locke is unthinkable within Spinoza’s
system, for mind and body are two attributes of the same substance and
therefore ‘a man does not know himself except through affections of
his body and their ideas’.23 Spinoza’s advocacy of parallelism, as Deleuze
remarks, ‘does not consist merely in denying any real causality between
the mind and the body, it disallows any primacy of the one over the
other’.24 Indeed, in a move that accords well with Blake’s comments on
the matter, Spinoza proposes not only that ‘the mind and the body, are
one and the same individual’, but also that ‘the mind does not know
itself, except insofar as it perceives the ideas of the affections of the
body’ (2.P23, P21). Moreover, Spinoza’s statements on the nature of
substance – that there can only be one substance, God, and that it consists
‘of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite
essence’ – and on the relationship between God and existence, ‘whatever
is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God’, sound
very similar to Blake’s descriptions of the Poetic Genius in All Religions
(Ethics, 1.P15, P10). However, Ethics’ categorical dismissal of any
move towards anthropomorphism directly contradicts Blake’s unequivocal and frequent statements concerning God’s humanity, while their
adherence to a geometric model would not, we can safely assume, have
been well received by Blake. Nevertheless, a pursuit of the intersections and
overlaps between Spinoza’s thought and Blake’s can be expected to
bear much fruit, and his name will crop up again throughout subsequent
chapters.
Priestley and the material soul
Johnson notes that throughout the eighteenth century scientists and
philosophers engaged in fierce debates over the constituent elements of
Experiences of Empiricism
35
the material universe, with discussion focusing on the question of the
relationship between matter and energy.25 Priestley’s view is particularly
significant due to the congeniality of many of his ideas with Blake’s,
not the least of which is his formulation of a system of materialism
that, in uniting the spiritual and the physical, is capable of rescuing
Christianity from the transcendentalism imposed upon it by pagan
philosophers. The probability that Blake would have found certain
elements in Priestley’s system of materialism congenial was first
mooted by Paley, who remarks that ‘Priestley’s denial of the dichotomy
of soul and body and his claim that energy could be an attribute of
body are very close to the ones expressed by Blake’s “voice of the
Devil” ’.26 Paley proceeds to compare relevant passages from Priestley’s
Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit with the first two counterpropositions presented by the Devil on plate 4 of The Marriage:
I Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a
portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses. the chief inlets of Soul
in this age
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the
bound or outward circumference of Energy. (E34; cited in Paley, p. 9)
Paley remarks that ‘we should not be misled by Priestley’s professed
materialism and Blake’s hostility to materialist philosophies’ and he
notes that ‘the natural world, according to Priestley, is composed of
God’s energy’ (ibid.), a view that Blake seems to have shared, though he
distrusts the idea of the ‘natural’ when it appears in isolation from, or in
opposition to, the spirit.
Although Blake’s personal acquaintance with Priestley and familiarity
with his texts remains a matter of some speculation, they were both
closely associated with Joseph Johnson and they shared philosophical,
theological and political allegiances. Moreover, Blake’s apparent familiarity with Priestley’s ideas has been widely noted by generations of
Blake scholars such as Mee, who notes that ‘Priestley may well have
been a direct source’ for plate 4 of The Marriage and was at the very least
‘an important if more diffuse general influence’ (Dangerous Enthusiasm,
p. 138).27 Perhaps the earliest example of such influence appears in
An Island, embodied in the character ‘Inflammable Gas’. While Damon
suggests that the character was directly inspired by Priestley, this
conjecture now seems unlikely (p. 197).28 Rodney and Mary Baine point
out that ‘since Priestley was twenty-four years older than Blake, was
eminent in his profession, and lived in Birmingham from 1780 to 1791,
36 Visionary Materialism in Blake
he does not fit into the picture at all’. Instead, they suggest William
Nicholson as the source of the caricature; however, Nicholson himself
provides yet another link with Priestley and his system of materialism,
as he summarises Priestley’s views in his own Introduction to Natural
Philosophy.29
Despite widespread acknowledgement of Priestley’s potential impact
on Blake’s work, a number of important parallels remain unexplored.
Like Blake, Priestley considers natural philosophy and theology to be
intricately intertwined. In particular, he traces the dichotomisation of
body and spirit to pagan corruptions of true Christian religion, arguing
that not only does the Bible present man as a homogeneous being, but
also Christianity can only be understood correctly when viewed from a
materialistic perspective. ‘By the help of the system of materialism’,
Priestley writes, ‘the christian removes the very foundation of many
doctrines, which have exceedingly debased and corrupted christianity’.30
He maintains that the ‘heterogeneous mixture’ of paganism, which
denies the homogeneity of man, corrupts Christianity by introducing
the idea of a separate, immaterial soul. The manner in which Priestley’s
rejection of the separate soul functions as a repudiation of transcendentalism becomes clearer in his discussion of the place of God in his system
of materialism:
Certainly this idea is much more consonant to the idea which the
sacred writers give us of the omnipresence of the divine Being, and
of his filling all in all, than that of a being who bears no relation to
space, and therefore cannot properly be said to exist any where; which
is the doctrine of the rigid immaterialists. (p. 112)
Thus, rather than ending up with a mechanical system from which the
creator is withdrawn, Priestley interweaves the experimental with the
exegetical to produce a conceptualisation of the deity as an entity
infused throughout and supporting existence. This representation of
God is contingent upon the depiction of spirit as having extension, a
property which the dualists not only attribute to matter (as distinct
from spirit), but also list as one of its defining properties. It is the
removal of extension from the spirit that necessitates the removal of
the deity from the universe and the construction of apocalypse as a
transcendence of the material.
Immaterialism, Priestley argues, is unscriptural for several reasons.
First, in the scriptures themselves, ‘the circumstances which attended
the giving of the law [. . .] could not leave upon it the idea of an immaterial
Experiences of Empiricism
37
being, but of a being capable of local presence’ (Disquisitions, p. 139).
Similarly, ‘an audible voice is certainly calculated to give us the idea of
a locally present being, and this is frequently represented as proceeding
immediately from God’ (p. 140). This localised presence is consonant
with the presentation of the deity as ‘constantly supporting, and at
pleasure controlling the laws of nature’, and is reinforced both by the
signification of his presence by visible symbols and by the representation
of him as ‘residing in the heavens’ (p. 113). Priestley admits that such
representations may not be ‘philosophically just’ but insists that, first,
they are made out of ‘condescension [. . .] to the weaknesses of human
apprehension’ and, secondly, that they provide ‘an easy, and a very
innocent manner of conceiving concerning God’ (ibid.). This philosophical injustice is ‘innocent’ because it is calculated to produce an idea of
the deity that does not participate in the dualists’ contradictory assertion
that omnipresence refers to God’s ‘power of acting every where, though
he exists no where’ (p. 54). On the other hand, immaterialism is doubly
erroneous as it contradicts the precepts of both scripture and reason.
Priestley attacks the doctrine of the immateriality of spirit on the
grounds that it is a logical impossibility concealed by the notion of
divine mystery – a concept that corrupts Christianity and subjects the
vulgar to the guile of priestcraft. Significantly, he represents the imposition of this error as an oppression of the imagination. ‘Let a man torture
his imagination as much as he pleases’, he writes, ‘I will pronounce it to
be impossible for him to conceive even the possibility of mutual action
without some common property’ (p. 61). The figure of religious mystery
imposing upon and torturing imagination immediately brings to mind
Blake’s own descriptions of the tyranny of Reason and the subjugation
of the imagination or Poetic Genius: ‘Those who restrain desire, do so
because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason
usurps its place and governs the unwilling’ (The Marriage, 5; E34).
The affinities between Priestley and Blake become still more overt in
Corruptions. In a discussion that accords well with Blake’s later declaration,
in the preface to Milton (1; E95), that the Greeks and Romans stole and
perverted the teachings of the Bible, Corruptions describes a process in
which Christianity was infiltrated by pagan beliefs and assimilated into
the metaphysical system of the neo-Platonists. Priestley argues that the
application of Plato’s doctrine of Logos – ‘that very system [. . .], which
made Christ to have been the eternal reason’ – signified the first corruption
of Christianity.31 Notably, Priestley reports – in a manner reminiscent of
his privileging of the vulgar belief in a localised deity – that ‘the doctrine
of the divinity of Christ did not establish itself without much opposition,
38 Visionary Materialism in Blake
especially from the unlearned among the Christians, who thought that
it savoured of Polytheism, that it was introduced by those who had had
a philosophical education’ (p. 19). Priestley is adamant that the Bible
does not speak of souls as separate from bodies, insisting that the
erroneous interpretation stems from an exegetical error that occurred
after the time of John. Such interpretative errors have had profound
effects on church doctrine, dragging in their wake the twin heresies of
atonement and mystery (Corruptions, pp. 51, 141). Although the Bible
does refer to Christ as a sacrifice, Priestley insists that this is figurative
language and he argues that Christ is no more the archetype towards
which the Jewish sin-offerings alluded than he is a high-priest – a title
which the Bible also applies to Christ in what must, according to Priestley’s
opposition between Christ and priestcraft, be a strictly figurative sense.
Priestley enables himself to make this argument by insisting that a
correct understanding of Christ’s life and death ‘seems to be not so
much what we may expect to find in any particular texts [. . .], as what is
suggested by a view of the history itself’ (Disquisitions, p. 57). And this
historical overview suggests that Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection
were intended as an example of the sort of immortality which Christians
can expect. Given that Christ was entirely human, when he died he
died completely, and his resurrection was a demonstration of the manner
in which God will bring the dead (who are dead in both body and soul)
back to life by reorganising the particles of their bodies which have dissipated during post-mortal decay (Disquisitions, pp. 156–7). As Priestley
well knew, this argument had been made in the preceding century by
Hobbes, who insists on a literal reading of the Gospels, arguing, as
Priestley would a century later, that Christ’s pledge concerns ‘the Resurrection of the Body’, for immortality is a condition granted ‘not by a
property consequent to the essence, and nature of mankind; but by the
will of God’.32 The body is central in the eschatological thinking of these
two materialists, appearing as an emblem of the power of divinity to
transgress the laws of nature in a radical alteration of existence. In their
perception of an emotive and redemptive power in the materiality of
Christ’s physical form and in the very human mark of its mortality, no
less than in their irreducible faith in Christ’s promise, Hobbes and
Priestley come remarkably close to territory delineated not only by
Blake’s Marriage, but also – as we will see – to the beliefs and practices of
his more enthusiastic forebears.
The injunction that compels Priestley to read Christ’s title of ‘high
Priest’ as figurative in the same way as the description of him as a ‘sacrifice’
arises from a larger distrust of priestly power. Priestley represents the
Experiences of Empiricism
39
Priesthood as originating in the formation of a religious elite which
continues to sustain itself by appealing to the idea of divine mystery
and which has evolved from a concept designed to justify the exclusion
of laypeople into a disguise for the contradictions of a corrupt Christianity:
By the term mystery was meant, originally, the more secret parts of
the heathen worship, to which select persons only were admitted,
and those under an oath of secrecy. Those mysteries were also called
initiations: those who were initiated were supposed to be pure and
holy, while those who were not initiated were considered as impure
and profane. (p. 141)
It goes without saying that those excluded from this secret were the
‘vulgar’ and the ‘unlearned’ whose common sense ideas – of Christ as a
man, of God as localised and present, and of the soul as a perceivable
substance – caused them to resist the very impossibilities which that
‘mystery’ came to conceal. Thus, Priestley is able to present himself at
the forefront of a more egalitarian Christianity, penetrating the mystery,
revealing its impossibility and replacing it with the totally scriptural
and entirely reasonable conceptualisation of man as ‘an homogeneous
being’ (Corruptions, p. 140). His has become the voice of vulgar understanding as much as rigorous rationality, of common sense as well as
experimental method, and his discourse is not only philosophical but
redemptive, for ‘when [. . .] we shall acquiesce in the opinion that man
is an homogeneous being [. . .], the whole fabric of superstition, which had
been built upon the doctrine of a soul and of its separate conscious
state, must fall at once’ (ibid.). In this sense, the spirit of ‘free inquiry’
which guides his Disquisitions works ‘to overturn the antichristian systems
that have been permitted by divine providence to prevail so long [. . .]
and consequently (though probably in a remote period) the antichristian
tyrannies that have supported them’ (p. ix).
Priestley very much represents himself as part of a larger, English
tradition of liberated philosophy – a philosophy freed from both the
rational circularity of the schoolmen and the irrational superstitions of
the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches – and it is no surprise
that he invokes the name of that other infamous materialist and
advocate of common sense, Thomas Hobbes. In his depiction of himself
as daring to challenge the mistaken prejudices of his age, he declares
‘like Mr. Hobbes, I may for generations lie under the imputation of
absolute atheism’ (p. xvi). That Blake would have similarly rejoiced in
this spirit of intellectual liberty and rebellion goes without saying, and
40 Visionary Materialism in Blake
from this perspective his own attacks on Locke can be seen as continuing
the intellectual war against oppression and superstition which Locke
helped to initiate. Despite his endless tirades against enlightenment
philosophy and rational religion, we cannot doubt that in this mental
battle Blake would have been inclined to forge alliances with Priestley
similar to those he formed with Paine – welcoming but wary, ready to
accept their promotion of liberty without subscribing to all of their
doctrines.33
2
The Tree of Mystery
Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;
And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.
He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain
– ‘The Human Abstract’,
Songs of Innocence and Experience (E27)
41
42 Visionary Materialism in Blake
‘The Human Abstract’, one of two companion pieces to ‘The Divine Image’
from Songs of Innocence, begins by describing a moral condition in which
the performance of morality depends upon systems of impoverishment
and inequity, pity requires forced deprivation and mercy can only exist
as long as there is suffering in the world. The first stanza consists of two
couplets, in which the first lines name a Christian virtue and indicate
its contingency upon the anti-Christian condition stated in the second.
It ends with a semicolon after the final ‘we’, which suggests that the
second stanza will continue in the same spirit as the first, describing the
paradoxical position of morality in lapsarian existence. At first glance,
this seems to be the case, for line 1, stanza 2 reads: ‘And mutual fear
brings peace’ (l.5; E27). The conjunction ‘And’ suggests that this couplet
will provide a third instance of virtue depending upon vice. The couplet
does in fact do this, but it deviates from the couplets in stanza 1 by condensing its moral paradox into the first line. It does this by describing a
paradoxical activity – ‘mutual fear brings peace’ – rather than presenting
a contingent virtue followed by the condition upon which it paradoxically
depends.
Line 2, stanza 2, introduces a temporal element to the poem – beginning
with the conjunction ‘Till’, rather than with ‘If’ or ‘And’ – and from this
point onwards, the poem ceases to state conditions, but rather occupies
itself with the provision of a narrative. After ‘the selfish loves increase’,
‘Cruelty’ – possibly their product or progeny – creates a trap, then
‘with holy fears’, which may be the same as the mutual fear in stanza 2,
‘waters the ground with tears’ that allow ‘Humility’ to take root. From
this root spreads ‘the dismal shade / Of Mystery’, which will provide
food for ‘the Catterpiller and Fly’, will bear ‘the fruit of Deceit’ and will
provide a home for the Raven. This tree, whose roots are humility and
boughs are mystery, is an early description of the ‘Tree of Mystery’ that
will reappear in Ahania. There we are told that the Tree’s growth is
driven by the composition of Urizen’s ‘book of iron’ and it functions as
a conflation of the tree of knowledge and the cross upon which Christ
was crucified, with the latter all but stripped of its messianic potential
as Urizen’s crucifixion of his ‘first begotten’ forges a link between the
doctrines of mystery and atonement, thus parodying the twin heresies
that Priestley traces to the impact of paganism on the early church
(Ahania, 3.64, 4.5; E86; Priestley, Corruptions, p. 51). Although ‘The
Human Abstract’ does not present itself as a narrative of the fall in quite
the same way as Ahania, parodying specific ‘virtues’ rather than church
doctrines and biblical texts, the poem’s ominous tone combined with
The Tree of Mystery
43
the image of the tree and its fruit are enough to suggest that the story
related in stanzas 2–5 also represents a narrative of Fall that perpetuates
and perhaps even accentuates the moral or amoral condition of iniquity
described by the first stanza. In the final stanza, however, we are told
that the tree of mystery is not something external, but instead ‘grows’
inside ‘the Human Brain’. The use of the present tense here appears to
differ from that in the preceding stanzas in that it does not suggest an
action occurring within the narrative, but rather describes a timeless or
universal state. Moreover, the fact that this ‘growth’ is the same process
as that described by the narrative indicates that the story is itself occurring in the timeless present, that it is a series of events involved in
ceaseless repetition. This use of the timeless present brings us back to
the first stanza because the universalising tone of its claims about Pity
and Mercy already suggests that the speaker sees his discourse as timeless
and suggests that the fall both results from and creates the condition
of iniquity presented in stanza 1. On the one hand, this represents a
logical impossibility, but on the other it is presented as a grim reality that
cannot be rectified by turning to external nature. This use of the timeless
present thus disrupts the organising principles of sequence and causality,
producing an effect that generates its own cause.
In this way, the poem problematises a fundamental element in
Priestley’s work, the belief in cause and effect, at the same time providing
a powerfully condensed version of ecclesiastical history congenial to
Priestley’s own critique of state religion. The similarities between the
representations of Mystery put forward by Blake and by Priestley are
further apparent if ‘The Human Abstract’ is read in the context of The
Marriage, printed four years prior to the printing of Experience. Just as
Priestley describes mystery as a means for sustaining priestly power, so
Blake’s ‘Catterpiller’, who in The Marriage is like the priest in choosing ‘the
fairest leaves to lay her eggs on’ (9; E37), feeds ‘on the Mystery’ (‘The
Human Abstract’, l.16; E27); and just as Priestley’s priests follow their
heathen predecessors into the ‘secret parts of [. . .] worship’ (Corruptions,
p. 141), so too the Raven, who in ‘A Song of Liberty’ is called ‘tyrant’
and has ‘Priests [. . .] in deadly black’ (27; E45), makes his nest in mystery’s
‘thickest shade’ (‘The Human Abstract’, l.20; E27). Moreover, in making
‘Humility’ the root of Mystery, Blake, like Priestley, recognises a link
between exclusivity, priesthood and the humility of the excluded: by
rendering humility a virtue, the priest consolidates his power within a
hierarchy structured by an incremental accumulation of mystery – the
mysteriousness of disembodied reason and an invisible God’s obscure will.
44 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Obscurity and the sublime
The connection between obscurity and holy fear had, by Blake’s time,
already been firmly established by Edmund Burke, who explicitly connects
the impediment of vision with both religious awe and political tyranny:
To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be
necessary. [. . .]. Those despotic governments, which are founded [. . .]
principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may
be from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases
of religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark.1
Although in this passage, Burke attributes the use of mystery to ‘despotic
governments’ and ‘heathen’ religion, in Reflections on the Revolution
in France he proceeds to argue that mystery and ‘pleasing illusions’ in
government are both necessary and beneficial, rendering ‘power gentle,
and obedience liberal’. Confronting his audience with the humiliating
image of ‘our naked shivering nature’, exposed to ‘the new conquering
empire of light and reason’, Burke deploys what Whale describes as ‘an
alternative politics of seeing’ in which vision itself – its modes and its
objects – becomes a matter of choice to ‘the privileged subject of a refined
culture’.2 Though Burke’s politics change considerably during the three
decades between the publication of Enquiry and Reflections, his sense of
the political implications of perception and aesthetics stretch back to
the earlier work, where he insists that despite reflection on the wisdom,
justice and goodness of the Christian deity, ‘no conviction of the justice
with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with which it is tempered, can
wholly remove the terror that naturally arises from a force which nothing
can withstand’ (§2.5, p. 68). Burke is here treading quite comfortably on
territory delineated by the ‘humility’ and ‘holy fears’ which Blake’s
poetry rejects on aesthetic and political grounds. Not only does Burke
glorify the limited perception of fallen humanity, but by 1790 at the
latest he does so with a full knowledge of the ways that his system of
aesthetics could be used to reinforce an aristocratic power base. Not only
did Blake oppose Burke’s Reflections, but he would also have been well
aware of Burke’s own aristocratic lineage and he is uncompromising in
his rejection of the Burkean sublime: ‘Obscurity is Neither the Source of
the Sublime nor of any Thing Else’, he declares in response to Reynolds’
reiteration of Burke’s theory (p. 194; E658).3
Blake’s thoughts on the sublime are themselves deeply involved in
a wider tradition of enlightenment empiricism in which obscurity figures
The Tree of Mystery
45
as a constituent feature of the divine. When Burke praises Milton for not
forgetting ‘the obscurity which surrounds the most incomprehensible
of beings’ (Enquiry, 2.14, p. 80), he is situating himself within a Lockean
tradition that emphasises the inscrutability of the divine. As Jordan
notes, ‘the “authority” upon which Burke ultimately draws for the
experience of the sublime is the Christian deity, a source which is invisible
and inaccesible to empirical investigation’.4 Despite Locke’s emphasis on
clarity of thought and expression, which Blake himself invokes in his
refutation of Watson (Clark, ‘Blake’s Response to Locke’, p. 134), he
repeatedly shrouds the divine in the cover of impenetrable mystery.
Although we can in theory arrive at the complex idea of God ‘by enlarging
those simple Ideas, we have taken from the Operations of our own Minds,
by Reflection; or by our Senses [. . .] to that vastness, to which Infinity
can extend them’, Locke insists that the human mind has such ‘a finite
and narrow Capacity’ that ‘what lies beyond our positive Idea towards
Infinity, lies in Obscurity’ (Essay, §2.23.34, 2.17.15). Such impediments
to thought are represented as a problem of vision, resultant from ‘dull
Organs’, which, ‘like Wax over-hardned [sic] with Cold, will not receive
the Impression of the Seal’ (§2.29.3). Given these metaphors, we can see
that Urizen – who inhabits the ‘hills of stor’d snows’ with ‘cold horrors’
(Urizen, 3.32, 27; E71) and whose ‘net of infection’ exerts a ‘hardening’
on his children’s ‘nerves’ (25.24–5; E82) – represents not only Lockean
qualities of ‘passion, vigour and defiance’ as Clark suggests (‘Blake’s
Response to Locke’, p. 148), but also the obscurity that despite Locke’s calls
for clarity continues to function as the essential element of both the
unseen creator and his creation. At the horizon of experience, ‘we fall presently into Darkness and Obscurity’ and the objects of both perception and
reflection – both the self and its environment – are elevated to a condition
of absolute alterity, for ‘our Faculties are not fitted to penetrate into the
internal Fabrick and real Essences of Bodies’ (§2.23.32, 4.12.11).
While he takes pains to prove that God exists and that our knowledge
of him is not innate, Locke excludes God from the domain of human perception and, moreover, he conjoins this religious mystery with a failure to
clearly perceive both the material world and the inner workings of the self:
For though in his own Essence, (which certainly we do not know,
not knowing the real Essence of a Peble [sic], or a Fly, or of our own
selves,) God be simple and uncompounded; yet, I think, I may say we
have no other Idea of him, but a complex one of Existence, Knowledge,
Power, Happiness, etc. infinite and eternal: which are all [. . .] originally
got from Sensation and Reflection. (§2.23.35)
46 Visionary Materialism in Blake
It is precisely because knowledge of God is derived from empirical
observation, which precludes in Locke’s view the clear perception of
infinity and Eternity, that human beings should not pretend to divine
knowledge. Empiricism under the Lockean model thus shields the deity
from rational inquiry and interrogation: ‘For it is Infinity, which, joined
to our Ideas of Existence, Power, Knowledge, etc. makes that complex Idea,
whereby we represent to our selves the best we can, the supreme Being’
(ibid.). God acts and exists in a manner beyond human experience and
to suggest otherwise would be to fail to understand the representational
aspect of human knowledge, to fall into the error of mistaking the word
for the idea or indeed of confusing the idea with the thing itself.
‘They who are wiser than the common People pronounce God to be
invisible’, Swedenborg writes in Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, ‘which
proceeds from their not being able to comprehend how God, as a Man,
could have created Heaven and Earth, and fill the Universe with his
Presence’.5 Like Priestley, Swedenborg seems to be suggesting that the
‘common People’ have a more accurate conception of the deity than
the supposedly wise, and there may well be an ironic nod towards Locke
here. Blake leaves no doubt as to the source of this error, explaining in
the margin to the right of this text that ‘Worldly wisdom or demonstration
by the senses is the cause of this’ (E603). Such ‘worldly wisdom’ is already
at one remove from Locke in that its demonstration is sensual rather
than abstract, which, as we will see, is a mode of demonstration that
Blake categorically rejects. In denying innateness and removing the
divine from the world of experience Locke rejects the faculty, the Poetic
Genius, which, for Blake, permits man to perceive God – an act which
performs an ontological transformation of one’s environment of the
same kind, but with different effect, as that initiated by Urizen’s
withdrawal from Eternity. Moreover, his circumscription of knowledge
has far-reaching implications for his thoughts on ethics, which are
rendered distinct from sensation and experience. ‘General and certain
Truths, are only founded in the Habitudes and Relations of abstract
Ideas’, but ethics, Locke insists, deals with abstract ideas and therefore
its propositions can be demonstrated by following a mathematical model
(Essay, §4.12.6–8). ‘Morality’, Locke insists, is ‘amongst the Sciences capable
of Demonstration’ and thus, ‘from self-evident Propositions, by necessary
Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematicks, the measures
of right and wrong might be made out’ (§4.3.18). ‘Bring out number
weight & measure in a year of dearth’, we read in The Marriage, and there
is dearth aplenty in Locke’s vision of a geometrically sound moral code
which divides the ethical from the sensual.
The Tree of Mystery
47
Locke has replaced conscience, the only ethical arbiter Blake seems to
have recognised, with the promise of an absolute and universal code of
conduct. Locke’s founding of morality on mathematical demonstration
has antecedents in Spinoza who had used the geometric method to
arrive at a strategy for determining good from evil, but for Spinoza these
categories are relational. That which we call ‘good’ involves a compatible
relationship between our body and another, and ‘evil’ connotes an
interaction with something destructive: ‘bad encounters, poisoning,
intoxication, relational decomposition’ (Deleuze, p. 22). Moreover, virtue
is not obedience but the striving for self-preservation, a definition that,
as we will see, is very close to Blake’s (Ethics, 4.P22). In contrast, rather
than looking outwards to the self’s relations with others, Lockean ethics
depend on an inward turn that is not only reflective, but transcendental;
moreover, as Blake knew first-hand, they lend themselves to appropriation
by enemies of life, such as Watson in his attacks on the freedom of
conscience advocated by Paine. ‘Virtue & honesty or the dictates of
Conscience are of no doubtful Signification to any one’, Blake declares:
Opinion is one Thing. Pricipl[le] another. No Man can change his
Principles Every Man changes his opinions. He who supposes that
his Principles are to be changed is a Dissembler who Disguises his
Principles & calls that change[.] (Annotations to Watson, p. 3; E613)
In a move not dissimilar to that made by Spinoza, Blake identifies
conscience, the innate voice of God with Virtue & honesty as well as
with Principles. The identification of ‘Virtue’ with ‘Principles’ is significant,
for the latter term would appear to refer to an originary source of
identity and action rather than an abstract moral guide or law. This
reading is consistent with Blake’s application of ‘virtue’ in the annotations to Lavater and it clearly links his remarks on conscience with what
he says elsewhere about the Poetic Genius, which Ezekiel tells us is
the foremost of ‘the principles of perception’ (The Marriage, 12; E39).
It is in the Poetic Genius that the moral and the philosophical trajectories
of Blake’s critique of enlightenment science intersect. The first ‘PRINCIPLE’
in Blake’s original stereotype, ‘That the Poetic Genius is the true Man.
and that the body or outward form of man is derived from the Poetic
Genius’ (All Religions; E1), clearly links the faculty which experiences not
only with the body, but also with others who by entering into relation
with that body give life to experience. The Poetic Genius is thus the
presence in the self of the power that initiates newness and makes
experience possible by embodying existence in form:
48 Visionary Materialism in Blake
PRINCIPLE 2d As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with
the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius
PRINCIPLE 3d No man can think write or speak from his heart,
but he must intend truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the
Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual
PRINCIPLE 4. As none by traveling over known lands can find out
the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could
not acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists.
(All Religions; E1)
The expansion of knowledge is tied directly to an alterity that makes
experience possible, that not only offers the world to us as a gift but also
allows for the possibility of newness and of thinking beyond the bounds
of experience. Blake here anticipates Derrida, and his ‘principles’ themselves offer an explication of the principles of existence, both individual
and universal.6 As that ‘which by the Ancients was call’d an Angel &
Spirit & Demon’, the Poetic Genius implies a mode of possession, an
anterior impulse at the very heart of the self, without which identity
itself would not be possible: ‘the forms of all things are derived from
their Genius’ (ibid.).
On plate 11 of The Marriage, we find two sorts of genius: the extraordinary
poetic abilities of the ancients and the ‘Gods or Geniuses’ with which
the ‘ancient Poets animated all sensible objects’ (E38). The plate proceeds
to depict the process by which this creative activity, the expression of
the impulse behind both philosophy and religion, falls into corruption.
This history, as Blake notes earlier, is ‘written in Paradise Lost’ (The
Marriage, 5; E34), but it also follows a pattern deployed throughout the
Enlightenment in texts such as Volney’s Ruins and Priestley’s Corruptions.7
Notably, the enslavement of the vulgar is initiated through the attempt
to ‘abstract the mental deities from their objects’ (The Marriage, 5; E38),
and the fruits of such attempts are apparent in Locke’s promise of an
ethics founded on abstract demonstration. But this promise could not
be made unless the spirit of divinity had already been extricated from
the objects of perception, unless, that is, God had already been rendered
invisible. What this suggests is that Locke’s empiricism is itself grounded
on an onto-theology that is anti-empirical. In debunking the (Lockean)
myth which equates innateness with mental and political enslavement,
Ferber remarks that while ‘the three most influential radical writers,
Priestley, Paine, and Godwin, were in some sense empiricists and
materialists, it is also true that many equally radical thinkers were not’.
Moreover, he notes that Lockean empiricism itself ‘has affinities with
The Tree of Mystery
49
conservatism, elitism, and relativism when it ceases to criticize superstition
and erects an ethic of its own’ (Ferber, p. 23). What Ferber’s account
leaves out is a closer account of the empiricism of a figure such as Paine,
which carries within itself traces of that form of innateness that Ferber
identifies with ‘an older Christian sense’, subscribed to by ‘the majority
of the artisans and poorer classes of “radical London”’ (ibid.). In The Age
of Reason, even as he insists on the expulsion of ‘all ideas of revealed
religion, as a dangerous heresy and an impious fraud’, Paine motions
towards an ethics founded on ‘the natural dictates of conscience’,
which we are told ‘are nearly the same in all religions and in all societies’.
And in Common Sense, the declaration that ‘the palaces of kings are
built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise’ is followed with the remark
that ‘were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly
obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver’.8 Blake, as we have seen,
identifies with, and approves of, this aspect of Paine’s thought (even
though he expresses some concerns about Paine’s deism), and it is a belief
that can be clearly traced back through numerous strands of Protestant
theology in the figure of the divine light within.
Blake’s comments on principles, virtue and the Poetic Genius point
towards an ethics based not on obedience but on honesty, and in
particular on honesty to the self before all others. Such an ethics is closely
bound up with the radical Protestantism of Milton, at least the Milton
who is ‘of the Devil’s party without knowing it’ (The Marriage, 5; E34),
but it is articulated perhaps most clearly by Shakespeare:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.9
If it were possible to speak of a concept such as original sin in Blake’s
work, it would be hypocrisy, and the origins of that sin would lie, as they
do in Augustinian theology, within the soul. The original transgression, the
primary deception from which all others follow is a deception of the self,
or more accurately a betrayal, and a betrayal through denial of other within.
In his meditation on the ethics of Abraham’s decision to sacrifice Isaac,
Derrida comments on the absolute other before whom the patriarch
must answer:
If God is completely other, the figure or name of the wholly other,
then every other (one) is every (bit) other. [. . .]. God, as the wholly
other, is to be found everywhere there is something of the wholly
50 Visionary Materialism in Blake
other. And since each of us, everyone else, each other is infinitely
other in its absolute singularity, [. . .] then what can be said about
Abraham’s relation to God can be said about my relation without
relation to every other (one) as every (bit) other, in particular my relation
to my neighbor or my loved ones who are as inaccessible to me, as
secret and transcendent as Jahweh. (pp. 77–8)
We are close to the ethics implied by the Poetic Genius here, though the
secrecy and transcendence here ascribed to Yahweh should give us reason
for pause, given Blake’s characteristic mistrust of obscurity and mystery.
What is notable here, however, is that absolute alterity, which cannot
easily be dissociated from what Blake might call ‘infinite variety’, initiates
an ethics that is not ‘justifiable before men or before the law of some
universal tribunal’ (p. 77).
The alterity in the face of which Locke circumscribes experience and
takes recourse to an ethics of abstract demonstration is interiorised in
the figure of the Poetic Genius, which allows for the very possibility of
experience itself – it is not only the faculty of experience, but also the
source of all things corporeal and spiritual. Elsewhere, Derrida connects
alterity and indeed revelation with the aporia of what he refers to as the
perhaps: ‘without the opening of an absolutely undetermined possible [. . .]
there would never be either event or decision’, but by the same token
‘nothing takes place and nothing is ever decided without suspending
the perhaps while keeping its living possibility in living memory’ (Politics,
p. 67). Like the perhaps, the Poetic Genius does not properly speaking
belong to an ontology or theology, but rather it is that which makes such
systems of thought possible as it adapts itself to the weakness of every
individual. The history of thought relayed on plate 11 of The Marriage is
designed to remind us that ‘All deities reside in the human breast’, but
the Poetic Genius itself precedes this history, which begins with the
externalisation of genius and is itself an embodiment of only one line
of an infinite set of possibilities.
Infinity: Causes and consequences
In opposition to Locke’s division of knowledge into demonstration and
sensation, Blake declares that ‘Demonstration is only by bodily Senses’
(Annotations to Divine Love, §41; E64). Following Swedenborg’s lead,
Blake insists that demonstration is itself limited to working with the materials provided by sensation. However, whereas Locke’s vision of enhanced
sensation is based on a process of mechanical magnification – ‘this
The Tree of Mystery
51
Microscopes plainly discover to us’, Locke writes in support of his claim
that colour is the product of size, bulk and texture (§2.23.11) – in Blake’s
view it is not how much you perceive, but rather how you perceive that
will determine what you perceive. Locke approaches the notion of
enhanced perception with an ambivalent combination of longing and
suspicion. ‘And if by the help of such Microscopical Eyes’, he writes,
speculating on a physiological improvement in sensation:
a Man could penetrate farther than ordinary into the secret Composition, and radical Texture of Bodies, he would not make any great
advantage by the change, if such an acute Sight would not serve to
conduct him to the Market and Exchange; If he could not see things,
he was to avoid, at a convenient distance. (§2.23.12)
The empiricist in Locke seems to delight in imagining the augmentation
of perception that would allow penetration into the mysteries of nature,
but as a theologian he steadfastly insists that the creator has limited our
sensory abilities for our own good.
The contrary impulses that drive Locke to question the nature of reality
and yet prevent him from actively articulating the desire for a penetrative
gaze, that lead him to posit a world which the microscope perceives yet
which remains unknown, are reiterated by the figures of Bromion and
Theotormon in Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion, which can be
read in part as a response to the system of morality underpinning Lockean
epistemology. Bromion, who as Frye notes ‘believes that there is an
unthinkably mysterious and remote world beyond his reach’ (p. 239),
embodies both Locke’s awe and admiration at the discoveries of the
microscope as well as his presentation of the problematic relationship
between perception and knowledge:
Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit;
But knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth
To gratify senses unknown? trees beasts and birds unknown:
Unknown, not unpercievd, spread in the infinite microscope,
In places yet unvisited by the voyager. and in worlds
Over another kind of seas, and in atmospheres unknown[.]
(Visions, 4.13–18; E48)
Bromion’s distinction between the ‘unknown’ and the ‘unperceived’
speaks to Locke’s contradictory representations of the primary qualities
52 Visionary Materialism in Blake
in objects, as those whose patterns are replicated faithfully in our ideas,
but whose operations on our senses are nevertheless unknown. Likewise,
Theotormon’s inquiry into the origin of joy – ‘Tell me what is a joy?
& in what gardens do joys grow?’ (3.24; E47) – is entirely at odds
with his moral position, which entails a rejection of Oothoon’s sexuality,
and his posture on the frontispiece, where he sits with his head bowed
and covered, suggests a refusal to confront the violence of desire and an
unwillingness to accurately see the world around him.
Theotormon’s religious predilection, which according to Oothoon
has as its telos a ‘hypocrite modesty’ (6.16; E49), renders him unwilling
to contemplate the violent and dangerous desires of Bromion, of Oothoon
and of himself. Locke’s fascination with a penetrative vision that seems
to offend his religious sensibilities could be read as similarly hypocritical
and it is no coincidence that Urizen, the father of Theotormon’s jealous
religion, is, in the Song of Los, the figure who gives the ‘Philosophy of Five
Senses [. . .] into the hands of Newton & Locke’ (4.15–16; E68). Nevertheless, Locke unlike Theotormon allows himself to fantasise about the
enhanced sensation that he insists is off-limits, speculating on the
possibility that angels ‘can so frame, and shape to themselves Organs of
Sensation or Perception, as to suit them to their present Design, and the
Circumstances of the Object they would consider’. In the lines that follow,
he continues to justify this potentially transgressive speculation by
insisting it is within the bounds of sensation and reflection and, moreover,
is consistent with the teaching of ‘the most ancient, and most learned
Fathers of the Church’ (§2.23.13). Nevertheless, the force of his insistence
that ‘our thoughts can go no farther than our own [faculties]’ is weakened
by the fact that he does go further, imagining ‘Creatures with a thousand
other Faculties, and ways of perceiving things’ (ibid.). At points such
as this, where he is most transgressive and most inclined to ‘beg my
Reader’s pardon’, Locke begins to become the sort of figure that might
have appealed to Blake. Though he suggests that such super-sensual
powers might be disadvantageous ‘in our present State’, this itself motions
towards the possibility of an apocalyptic transformation in perception
and it is possible to find traces of Locke’s speculations on angelic sensation
in Blake’s depictions of the Immortals who can expand or contract their
senses at will (Urizen, 3.37–8, 15.9–13; E71, 78).
Blake also seems to have inherited Locke’s sense that at least to some
extent, certain forms of limitation are necessary to lapsarian existence.
His description of the fall as a process of division in texts such as
Urizen, in which ‘the Eternal Prophet was divided/ Before the death-image
of Urizen’ (15.1–2; E78), may well function as a broad parody of the
The Tree of Mystery
53
philosophical quagmires Locke encounters when discussing infinite
divisibility (cf. §2.2916); however, as Frosch suggests, Los’s forging of
a world of limited perception, ‘the physical form of man and nature, as
well as the outlines of sight’, prevents this fall from continuing forever,
‘from plunging further into an abyss of invisible abstractions’ (pp. 40–1).
But if Los’s universe represents the extremity of the fall, opening it up to
infinite perception requires the annihilation or drastic revision of the basic
building blocks of that world and everything in it. Blake’s comments in
The Marriage and elsewhere would seem to suggest he regarded the body
as itself constituted by the very forces that, when organised correctly,
give rise to existence as we know it.
Ideas such as this were highly topical within the philosophy of the day
and Blake’s thinking in this area is likely to have been influenced by
Priestley, ‘the strongest voice in England to propose that the atom is an
interplay of forces rather than a minute solid’ (Mary Lynn Johnson, p. 117).
‘It has been asserted’, Priestley writes,
and the assertion has never been disproved, that for any thing we
know to the contrary, all the solid matter in the solar system might
be contained within a nut-shell, there is so great a proportion of void
space within the substance of the most solid bodies. Now, when solidity
had apparently so very little to do in the system, it is really a wonder
that it did not occur to philosophers sooner, that perhaps there might
be nothing for it to do at all, and that there might be no such thing
in nature. (Disquisitions, p. 17)
In place of solidity, Priestley introduces the ‘power of attraction’ as that
which provides the cohesive effect that results in an object’s determinate
form (pp. 5–6). Similarly, he explains the appearance of ‘impenetrability’
as the result of ‘a power of repulsion’, the effects of which have been
observed in his own experiments with electricity and in Melville’s experiments on vision (p. 13). As with solidity, once the effects of impenetrability
have been attributed to a power, impenetrability itself is transformed
into an unnecessary philosophical chimera:
Now if resistance, from which alone is derived the idea of impenetrability, is [. . .] caused by powers, and in no case certainly by anything
else, the rules of philosophizing oblige us to suppose, that the cause
of all resistance is repulsive power, and in no case whatever the
thing that we have hitherto improperly termed solid, or impenetrable
matter. (p. 11)
54 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Once the appearances of solidity and impenetrability have been explained
as the result of contrary powers (attraction and repulsion), rather than
as inherent properties of matter itself, the dichotomisation of matter
and spirit no longer makes sense. A strict adherence to the experimental
method (which obliges us not to admit more causes of things than are
sufficient to explain them, and to assume the same causes from the same
effects) has, not coincidentally, yielded a description of reality consistent
with Priestley’s own interpretation of the biblical texts.
Priestley’s vision of the material universe as an energetic interaction
between the contrary powers of attraction and repulsion bears a striking
resemblance to Blake’s proclamation, in The Marriage, that ‘Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human
existence’ (3; E34). Moreover, Priestley’s rejection of solidity as a property
inherent in matter undermines the Urizenic attempt to reduce the universe
to ‘a solid without fluctuation’ (Urizen, 4.11; E71). However, the eternal
fires depicted in Urizen also evoke images of a Priestleyan universe in
which solidity is itself underpinned by energy. Urizen’s quest for solidity
is not only politically suspect, but also scientifically outmoded and his
struggle is erroneous not because it is scientific, but because it is based
on a circular model of reasoning that fails to take into account the fact
that ‘the ratio of all we have already known. is not the same that it shall
be when we know more’ (No Natural Religion [b]; E2).
There are significant differences between Blake’s discussion of the
necessaries of existence – ‘Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy,
Love and Hate’ (The Marriage, 3; E34) – and those described by Priestley.
As Paley notes, Blake, unlike Priestley, ‘conceives of energy as erotic in
origin and as revolutionary in its expression’ (p. 10). Moreover, Blake’s
inclusion of ‘Reason and Energy’ and ‘Love and Hate’ in his enumeration
of contraries effectively triples the number of contraries posited by
Priestley. These additions add a subjective dimension that has profound
consequences for Blake’s theory, suggesting not only that we can perceive
the effects of these powers (which is Priestley’s only claim), but also that
we can experience them directly in the motions and emotions of our
own bodies. Nevertheless, both Blake and Priestley use their respective
systems of contraries to similar effect, as part of an argument against the
dichotomization of mind and body, and the spectre of Locke is repeatedly
conjured by Priestley, who regards him as both a brother of enlightenment
and an opponent who must be addressed:
It is still more unaccountable in Mr. Locke, to suppose, as he did,
and as he largely contends, that, for any thing that we know to the
contrary, the faculty of thinking may be a property of the body, and
The Tree of Mystery
55
yet to think it more probable that this faculty inhered in a different
substance, viz. an immaterial soul. A philosopher ought to have been
apprized, that we are to suppose no more causes than are necessary to
produce the effects; and therefore that we ought to conclude, that the
whole man is material, unless it should appear that he has some
powers or properties that are absolutely incompatible with matter.
(Disquisitions, pp. 31–2)
Further into this discussion, Priestley chastises Locke a second time for
the same error:
Mr. Locke, who maintains the immateriality of the soul, and yet
maintains that, for any thing we know to the contrary, matter
may have the property of thought superadded to it, ought to have
concluded that this is really the case. (p. 73)
And although we might think that Priestley would have been tired of
his pursuit of Locke, we see him invoking him again, near the end of his
text, in order to deride him for not having the ‘courage, or consistency,
to reject the doctrine [of dualism] altogether’ (p. 218).
In short, Priestley’s criticisms of Locke amount to the accusation that,
for reasons of prejudice or fear of persecution, he failed to employ the
philosophical rigour required to embrace a doctrine of materialism.
Priestley presents his idea of the single substance as not only more
philosophically and theologically just, but also as easier to understand
than dualistic systems like Locke’s because it is more in accordance with
everyday experience and experimental evidence. However, like Locke
he feels compelled to defend materialism against not only the charge,
but the possibility that it will do damage to the deity by rendering him
subject to human comprehension; thus, he insists that ‘no proof of the
materiality of man can be extended, by any just analogy, to a proof [. . .]
of a similar materiality of the Divine’ (Disquisitions, p. 107). And, in this
defence he ends up reinvoking the same sort of obscurity as Locke, not
only in his description of an abstracted and mysterious deity, but also
in his discussion of empirical reality. Priestley remains faithful not only
to Newton’s rules of philosophical inquiry, but also to the philosophy
of five senses inherited from Locke. From Blake’s perspective, the fundamental error of this philosophy is not that it grants primacy to the
senses, but that it only pretends to do this, while in fact it is doing just
the opposite by limiting the senses to a perception of effects only. ‘The
Philosophy of Causes & Consequences’, Blake remarks at the end of
56 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Lavater’s Aphorisms, ‘misled Lavater as it has all his co[n]temporaries’
(p. 226; E601).
Both Priestley and Locke posit a reality of causes that exists beyond
our sense perceptions. Thus, although Locke maintains that our ideas
of cause and effect are derived from sensory perception (2.26.1), he
later argues that though we are able to perceive effects, ‘the causes,
manner, and certainty of their production [. . .] we must be content to
be ignorant of’ (4.3.29). Likewise, Priestley’s theory of materialism
itself exists within the impermeable limits he places upon perception.
Hence, his need to qualify his argument by noting that his discourse
on the powers of attraction and repulsion contains a great deal of
uncertainty:
I by no means supposed that these powers, which I make to be essential
to the being of matter [. . .] are self-existent in it. All that my argument
amounts to is, that from whatever source these powers are derived,
or by whatever being they are communicated, matter cannot exist
without them; and if that superior power, or being, withdraw its influence, the substance itself necessarily ceases to exist, or is annihilated.
(Disquisitions, p. 7)
Priestley’s experimental data have provided him with a series of effects,
which can only be translated into knowledge of causes by employing
the ‘established rules of reasoning in philosophy’. And this translation
will always be imperfect because Priestley, like Locke, needs obscurity in
order to preserve God’s philosophical usefulness. Despite the confessional
nature of Priestley’s declaration of uncertainty, this absence of knowledge
is framed in such a way as to produce certainty, to conjure as if by
magic the absolute belief in a disembodied deity. ‘Whatever source’,
‘whatever being’, the very language of the passage implicates the necessaries of existence in a hierarchy of being whose base consists of that
which must remain fundamentally unknown.
The corporealisation of thought
Despite the ambivalent language within which Priestley couches his
discussion of ultimate causes, he presents his system of materialism, via
Hartley’s doctrine of association, as a means to increase our knowledge
of both the self and its ideas. His edition of Hartley’s Observations on
Man is of particular interest as it provides an evolutionary link between
dualist psychology as it descended from Locke and Priestley’s own system
The Tree of Mystery
57
of materialism.10 Moreover, it provides insight into the manner in which
empirical and material approaches to psychology could be – and indeed
were – used to reinforce an authoritarian moral code.
Although we cannot know whether Blake was familiar with Priestley’s
edition of Hartley, it would have been available to him via Johnson,
who published Priestley’s edition in 1790, followed by a reprint of the
1741 edition, under the original title, Observations on Man, his Frame, his
Duty; and his Expectations, the following year.11 Johnson’s decision to
reprint the earlier text is itself significant, not only as he commissioned
Blake to engrave the frontispiece, but also because it suggests that the
publication of Hartley’s Theory in 1790 had stirred up enough interest to
warrant investing in a reprint. Hartley’s system draws upon the ‘doctrine
of vibrations’ posited by Newton in the Queries at the end of Optics
and the doctrine of association set out in Locke’s Essay (§2.33), yielding
a model in which the organs of perception are physically affected by the
objects of sense, which causes them to send vibrations along the nervous
tissue to the brain and thus produce ‘ideas of sensation’ (Observations,
pp. 12–13). More complex ideas – such as abstract thoughts, dreams,
reveries and imaginings – are formed through the mechanical association
of these ideas. As Priestley explains in one of his introductory essays:
If two different vibrations take place in the brain at the same time,
[. . .] the particles [. . .] will not vibrate precisely as they would have
done if they had taken place separately; but each of them will vibrate
as acted upon by two impulses at the same time; and [. . .] it necessarily
follows that, if [. . .] one of the vibrations shall be excited, the other
will be excited also. (pp. xx–xxi)
Thus the particular vibrations of the brain work to produce the associations
that underpin the entirety of mental activity.
In order to bring Hartley’s model into line with the results of his own
experiments, Priestley updates Hartley’s theory, replacing the depiction
of nerves as tubular – an idea that Hartley inherits from Newton – with
a representation of the nervous system as uniformly solid. This transition
from liquid to solid, this hardening of the nerves as it were, enables
Priestley to reconcile the immediacy of sensation and spontaneity of
thought with physical laws concerning speed, distance and resistance.
‘Because dense bodies conserve their heat a long time’, he writes, ‘and
the densest bodies conserve their heat the longest, the vibrations of
their parts are of a lasting nature; and therefore may be propagated
along solid fibres of uniform dense matter, to a great distance’ (p. xii).
58 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Priestley also seeks to replace Hartley’s dualism with his own system of
materialism. Priestley rejects Hartley’s fundamental proposition, that
‘MAN consists of two parts, body and mind’ (p. 1), again invoking
developments in the natural sciences (p. xxiv).
Of paramount concern for Priestley is the fidelity of the representation
produced by his reworking of Hartley’s model. In order to be philosophically valid, Priestley insists, psychology must provide a picture that is not
merely metaphorically representative of reality, but one which comes as
close as possible to depicting the world as it actually exists. For this reason,
he rejects ‘the language in which we generally speak of ideas’ as ‘characters
drawn upon a tablet’ because ‘neither can any such tablet be found in the
brain, nor any style, by which to make the characters upon it’ (pp. x–xi).
Priestley is clearly motioning towards Locke here, but he is also continuing
in the very Lockean project of reifying the human mind; by providing a
material basis for psychology and reducing the mental to the corporeal,
Priestley places objects of the mind on a par with the objects of the
material world. However, although his model of the mind may be more
accurate than that of predecessors such as Locke, it still does not close the
gap between mental representations and the world they represent:
Ideas themselves, as they exist in the mind, may be as different
from what they are in the brain, as that peculiar difference or texture
[. . .] which occasions difference of colour, is from the colours
themselves. (p. x)
A model such as Hartley’s can help us understand the operations of our
machine-like bodies – from our organs of sense, through our nervous
pathways, to our fibrous brains – and if it manages to account for the
plethora of mental phenomena of which we are conscious, we can judge
it to be empirically sound; however, no matter how well we understand
the machine, the ghost that pulls the strings remains well hidden.
Only by rendering the body as ineffable as the soul can Priestley
infuse it with the power to sustain mental faculties; only by adopting a
view of matter that is ‘subtle’ and ‘infinitely more complex than we had
[previously] imagined’ (p. xxi), can he imbue it with the capacity for
thought. Like Locke before him, Priestley binds this infinite complexity
to the omnipotence of God:
Now that we see that the laws and affections of mere matter are
infinitely more complex than we had imagined, we may [. . .] be prepared to admit the possibility of a mass of matter like the brain, having
The Tree of Mystery
59
been formed by the Almighty Creator, with such exquisite powers,
with respect to vibrations, as should be sufficient for all the purposes
above-mentioned; though the particulars of its constitution, and mode
of affection, may far exceed our comprehension. (Ibid.)
It would be perhaps too easy to read this ‘Almighty Creator’ as an
expression of absence, an inscrutable being invoked to conceal a lack of
knowledge which will disappear once we begin to know more. While
this may well be part of the story, this sense of mystery functions as
a constituent part of Priestley’s system. He is seeking to defend not only
his scientific theory but also his theological position, and God’s supremacy
both validates the philosophical possibilities that he explores and
forecloses other possibilities that could be theologically unsound. For
example, when he argues for a conceptualisation of human beings as
being of the same kind as animals, he qualifies this with the insistence that
this reclassification ‘does not necessarily draw after it the belief of their
surviving death, as well as ourselves; this privilege being derived to us by
a positive constitution, and depending upon the promise of God’ (p. xxiv).
Similar concerns over the moral implications of their theories lead
both Priestley and Hartley to tread carefully as they are ‘carried on’ by
association into a doctrine of necessity. Hartley insists not only that
‘I do most firmly believe, upon the authority of the scriptures, that the
future punishment of the wicked will be exceedingly great’, but also
that ‘there is sufficient provision in the course of our lives to generate
moral principles, sentiments, and feelings’ (pp. lvi, li). Volition and
the sense of moral duty are here accorded the status of natural states of
consciousness, embedded in human psychology and explainable in
physiological terms. Priestley informs his readers:
The first rudiments of the ideas of right, wrong, and obligation, seem
to be acquired by a child when he finds himself checked and controuled
[sic] by a superior power. [. . .]. He finds he cannot have his will,
and therefore he submits. Afterwards he attends to many circumstances
which distinguish the authority of a father, or of a master, from that
of other persons [. . .] and by degrees he experiences the peculiar
advantages of filial subjection. (p. xlvii)
This emphasis on force as the primary attribute of authority is reminiscent
of Burke’s discussion of the sublime attributes of God. Though the tone
with which Priestley discusses childhood experiences of power may be
milder than that with which Burke describes adult experiences of the
60 Visionary Materialism in Blake
divine, like Burke he suggests that ideas such as love are subsequent to
the experience of force. That said, Priestley carefully avoids the representation of moral behaviour as a simple matter of either advantage or
necessity, for as the child develops new associations ‘modify the idea of
mere necessity, till by degrees he considers the commands of a parent as
something that must not be resisted [. . .] even though he has a power of
doing it’ (p. xlviii). Once the idea of authority becomes internalised,
physical necessity is replaced by a sense of moral obligation, which
Priestley suggests is ‘easily transferred from the commands of a parent
to those of a magistrate, of God, and of conscience’ (ibid.).
With this sublimation of obedience, which internalises an abstract
idea of authority encompassing the commands of fathers, governors
and God, we find ourselves again drawing close to Blake’s image of the
mind-forged manacles. The physiological description of nervous fibre
has seamlessly blended into a discussion of the growth of moral fibre
within an individual. Indeed, the Net of Religion has been hanging over
the analytical descriptions of the mind’s internal processes from the
outset as it must, given the exclusion of divine wisdom, of first causes,
from empirical investigation. The representation of man in his entirety
as a body composed of solid nerves has indeed led to the formation
of laws of prudence, just as the narrowing perceptions of the children
of Urizen bind them down to the earth not simply by reducing them to
material entities, but by embodying them within a solid form that is
disposed towards subservience.
Blake appears to have been acquainted with at least the rudiments
of Hartley’s system and his knowledge of contemporaneous theories
about the nervous fibres is becoming increasingly recognised, as is the
ambivalence with which he depicts it. Remarking on the significance of
Blake’s visual images, Connolly remarks:
Through his illustration of fibres, which can be identified with nerves,
Blake calls attention to the usually hidden organ of sensitivity, the
nervous system which links body and mind, and in turn links people
with each other, keeping the individual from being a prisoner in his
own body. (p. 64)
This use of anatomical knowledge to represent a redemptive capacity
inherent in the body’s structure – Connolly notes that the cardiovascular system likewise implies a physiological basis for sympathy –
suggests an interest in the ways in which the body itself facilitates the
development of social relations. Glausser similarly suggests that Urizen
The Tree of Mystery
61
reworks both Lockean and contemporary ideas about the nervous system,
noting that ‘nerves make a nice vehicle for suggesting prelapsarian monism,
since they were said to communicate between spirit and matter’ (p. 55).
Although Glausser notes that the solidification of the Eternals’ ‘nerves of
joy’ (Urizen, 10.41; E75) is one of the effects of the Fall, he does not suggest
where Blake may have come across this progression. However, this transition would seem to reflect a knowledge of the history of enlightenment
psychology and physiology, of the changing representations of the nervous
system – from the tubular nerves filled with ether (Newton and Hartley)
or with animal spirits (Locke), to the solid nerves of uniformly dense
matter presented by Priestley. Moreover, this same history could have
suggested to Blake the idea of connecting nervous fibre with moral imposition in so far as the concept of association could be connected with a
model of education which aimed, at least in part, to instil a sense of
obedience and respect for authority.
‘Surgeing Sulphureous fluid’: The case of Urizen
Frosch points out that in Blake’s view epistemology can affect the form
of the human body itself, for ‘[he] believes that the human body changes,
that it has a history, as rich and specific as the history of thought’ and
‘he takes the given body to be an invention of the empiricism of Bacon
and Locke’ (p. 19). Urizen presents a parodic representation of the development of physiological representations of the nervous system, from
ether-filled, tubular nerves to solid fibres, and depicts this as a physical
transformation as well as a change in the manner in which the body
is perceived. Moreover, the text ties this transformation to the very
process of rational disengagement – the reification of the mind and the
development of the punctual self – which writers such as Priestley and
Hartley inherited from Locke.
Although Los has been widely credited with – and blamed for –
the creation of Urizen’s body, it appears that Urizen himself initiates
the corporeal changes that he undergoes. At the commencement of the
section describing the formation of Urizen’s body, the text tells us that
5: [Los] watch’d in shuddring fear
The dark changes & bound every change
With rivets of iron & brass;
6. And these were the changes of Urizen.
(8.9–12; E74)
62 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Los’s position as a spectator ‘smitten with astonishment’ (8.1; E74)
makes it clear that the ‘changes’ are ‘of Urizen’ both because they are
the properties of his body and because they are caused, albeit unconsciously, by Urizen himself. The work which Los performs during the
seven ages of dismal woe is not the creation of Urizen’s body, but the
continuation of the act of keeping ‘watch [. . .] to confine, / The obscure
separation [i.e. Urizen] alone’, which begins on plate 5 (38–9; E73). Far
from initiating Urizen’s metamorphoses, Los engages himself in the
task of confining this disease of Eternity within the limits of linear time,
‘forging chains new & new / Numb’ring with links. hours, days & years’
(10.17–18; E75). The connection between Los’s labour on plate 8 and
that on plates 10–13 is signalled on plate 10 by Los’s division of ‘The
horrible night into watches’ (10; E75). Plate 8 seems to suggest that the
act of watching itself effects the confinement of Urizen – as a spectator,
Los is alert to any changes which might portend Urizen’s escape, while
as a ‘watch’ or guard, Los is also the force preventing such escape from
actually occurring. The pun on ‘watches’ therefore suggests that the
division of the night has been effected with a view to creating a collection
of watches who can watch Urizen on Los’s behalf. The divisions of
clock-time – ‘the hours, days & years’ – whose symbol is a ‘watch’ (in its
signification as a timepiece) are able to guard against Urizen’s escape
because they are links on a chain that binds him down.
As Urizen becomes bound in the chains of time that Los forges to
hold him, the ‘Sulphurous fluid’ within which he has hidden his
‘phantasies’ undergoes a process of stagnation settling into ‘a lake
[. . .] / White as the snow on the mountains cold’ (10.14, 22–3; E75).The
use of snow to describe the lake suggests that it has been frozen and
this in turn suggests a solidification of the sulphureous fluid which
crystallises his thought and desire, thus precipitating the growth of
the ‘vast Spine’ that ‘froze / Over all his nerves of joy’ (10.37, 40–1; E75).
The process by which Urizen freezes his passions and encapsulates his
thoughts is repeated in the curse he imposes upon his ‘eternal creations’ in
Chapter VIII:
He in darkness clos’d, view’d all his race
And his soul sicken’d! he curs’d
Both sons & daughters; for he saw
That no flesh nor spirit could keep
His iron laws for one moment.
(23.22–6; E81)
The Tree of Mystery
63
The text makes it clear that the fault lies not solely in Urizen’s children,
suggesting instead that Urizen’s curse results from his realisation that
sin is unavoidable in a world closed off from Eternity. The recognition
of this inevitability causes Urizen’s tears to ‘[flow] down on the winds’
(25.4; E82). This evokes the image of the biblical flood as does the text’s
final line: ‘And the salt ocean rolled englob’d’ (28.23; E83).Urizen conflates the deluge with the reduction of bodily stature and this reduction
parallels the condensation and freezing of his own thoughts and desires
earlier in the book. Like Urizen, his children ‘felt their Nerves change
into Marrow’ and their ‘Senses inward rush’d shrinking, / Beneath the
dark net of infection’ (25.24, 29–39; E82). Urizen’s fulmination operates
as a contagion, and the Net of Religion, itself ‘twisted like to the human
brain’ (25.21; E82), infects its captives, binding them ‘down / To earth
by their narrowing perceptions’ (25.46–7; E83).
Urizen’s web-spinning tears result from his own failure to subjugate
his passions. Through a process of incessant division, Urizen has managed to fashion a body for himself in accordance with his iron laws.
However, the by-products of that division, the leftover, waste material,
his ‘eternal creations’, cannot keep to these laws. Ironically, his web of
tears is strong enough to enclose the ‘wings of fire’ (25.19; E82), and
his shadow manages to effect the bodily changes he himself has already
undergone. However, even this is not enough, for at the end of the
book:
Fuzon call’d all together
The remaining children of Urizen:
And they left the pendulous earth:
They called it Egypt, & left it.
(28.19–22; E83)
This exodus begins a process of rebellion in which the son combats
his father and open energy attacks hidden reason – the story told in
Ahania.
Urizen’s displaced desire becomes transferred onto Fuzon whose ‘hot
visage / Flam’d furious’, but in his attack Fuzon merely continues the
process of disengagement initiated by his father, ‘dividing’ Urizen’s ‘cold
loins’ and parting him from ‘his invisible lust’ (Ahania, 2–3.29, 30; E84).
Fuzon has, in good Priestleyan fashion, learned the rudiments of
power and authority from his godlike father. The narrator describes the
paternal lust dissected by Fuzon as Urizen’s ‘parted soul’ and instructs
64 Visionary Materialism in Blake
the reader to name it ‘Ahania’ (ibid., 2.32; E84). Thus separated from his
soul, Urizen might appear dead and this is certainly the idea harboured
by Fuzon who ‘Thought Urizen slain by his wrath’ (3.37; E86). However,
Urizen’s existence itself is predicated on an attempt to empty himself
of desire. From Fuzon’s perspective, the departure of the last vestiges of
desire, the rendering of Urizen soulless, indeed signifies death. However,
from a Urizenic vantage point, it is the ultimate triumph. Urizen has
become the embodiment of pure will and it is this triumph that allows
him to smite Fuzon’s ‘beautiful visage’ with the darkness of his own
powerful sublimity (3.37, 41; E86). Once his lust is externalised, Urizen
is able to name ‘sin’ and to crush Fuzon beneath the rock of Mount Sinai,
the locus of the stony law. Urizen signifies his victory by nailing Fuzon
onto the ‘Tree of MYSTERY’ (4.6; E87), a tree that as Blake has already
told us is located in the human brain.
It seems entirely probable that Blake’s image of this tree owes something
to the reduction, in Priestley and Hartley, of thought to a system of solid
fibres, though he may also have had in mind images of the sort found
in William Cowper’s Anatomy of the Human Bodies, with its tree-like
illustrations of the nervous and cardiovascular systems.12 Moreover,
Urizen’s roles as father, priest and king might well provide an example
of Priestley’s inculcation of morality taken to the extreme and they are
certainly related to his activities as an empirical scientist throughout Urizen
and Ahania. From his shadowy emergence in the ‘soul-shudd’ring vacuum’
(3.5; E70), he becomes associated with scientific modes of knowledge
production, attempting to divide and measure existence (Urizen, 3.5, 8–9;
20.33–41; E70, E80–1). As Kittel points out, Urizen ‘is Blake’s poetic
embodiment of Locke’s self ’, attempting to disengage from, and
dominate, the other aspects of his identity and to remove himself from
the Eternal community by creating his own world ‘Space by space in his
ninefold darkness’ (Urizen, 3.11; E70).13 The parallels between Urizen’s
nervous body and the body described in texts like Priestley’s edition of
Hartley are part of this process of subjugation and control. On the one
hand, Urizen’s body becomes the manifestation of his desires and
fantasies, but this embodiment serves only to distort his lusts and obscure
his eternal identity. On the other, the external world which Urizen
inhabits is both constituted and populated by the materialisation of his
divided soul (as in the case of Ahania), of his possessive emotions (such
as his ‘mountains of Jealousy’ [Ahania, 2.33; E84]) and of his abstract
thoughts, which emerge as ‘torrents of mud’ carrying ‘Eggs of unnatural
production’ (Ahania, 3.9, 10; E85). However, Urizen’s attempts to liberate
himself from his divided images lead not to a liberated individualism, but
The Tree of Mystery
65
to tyranny, to the triple imposition of ‘One King, one God, one Law’
(Urizen, 4.40; E72).
The connection between Urizen’s imposition of authority and a
belief, such as Priestley’s, that an empirically derived doctrine of association can first establish and then replicate a system of moral order
becomes evident through Urizen’s triumph over Fuzon. Fuzon’s defeat
results from the ability of Urizen’s body to conceal, and by concealing
increase ‘the primeval Priests assum’d power’ (Urizen, 2.1; E70). At the
beginning of Ahania, Fuzon lists Urizen’s obscurity as a reason to
reject his authority:
Shall we worship this Demon of smoke,
Said Fuzon, this abstract non-entity
This cloudy God seated on waters
Now seen, now obscur’d; King of sorrow?
(2.9–13; E84)
However, it is Urizen’s capacity for self-concealment which ultimately
effects his supremacy. The bow with which Urizen slays Fuzon is formed
in ‘dark solitude’ and is prepared in ‘silence’ (3.5, 24; E85). In addressing
his weapon, Urizen himself associates its secrecy with the encapsulation
of lust in nervous fibre: ‘O Bow of the clouds of secresy! / O nerve of that
lust form’d monster!’ (3.26–7; E86). Likewise, in commanding the bow
to ‘Send this rock swift, invisible thro’ / The black clouds’, he emphasises the stealth involved in his attack (3.28–9; E86). The narrator makes
it clear that the bow is a weapon of obscurity, masking itself within
‘A circle of darkness’ (3.32; E86). Thus, the success of Urizen’s secret
plan derives from Fuzon’s mistaken belief that Urizen has been ‘slain by
his wrath’ (3.37; E86) and appropriately Fuzon’s defeat is portrayed as
the triumph of darkness over light:
His beautiful visage, his tresses,
That gave light to the mornings of heaven
Were smitten with darkness[.]
(3.41–3; E86)
This subordination of light to darkness which heralds the triumph of
static solids over fluctuating desires is prefigured in Urizen, for Fuzon’s
crucifixion is anticipated by the entanglement of Urizen’s children –
Fuzon included – within the Net of Religion.
66 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Although Ahania initially seems to continue the narrative from Urizen,
the melting and subsequent solidification of Urizen’s ‘Nerves of Joy’
from Urizen (10.37, 40–1; E75) occurs again after Fuzon has been crucified.
On the one hand, this suggests the circularity of Urizen’s struggle against
desire, suggesting that, even at the zenith of victory, he has begun to
approach the nadir of his defeat – notably, at the very point in Ahania
when the formation and imposition of the solid body is complete, Fuzon’s
life is reaffirmed, however pathetically, by his groan ‘on the Tree’
(4.44; E88). As Worrall suggests, this intersection of narrative fragments
parallels and parodies Genesis by providing manifold retellings of the
same event;14 however, this sameness is threatened by the text’s attempt
to arrange them within a linear narrative. Such repetition also emphasises the psychological dimension of the text, for the battle against desire
is first and foremost an internal conflict. Just as the bodily changes
undergone by Urizen operate as the prototype for the changes undergone by his children, so too their subjugation is prefigured in Urizen’s
own struggle against the turbulent elements in his world, his ‘unseen
conflictions with shapes / [. . .] / Of beast, bird, fish, serpent & element /
Combustion, blast vapour and cloud’ (Urizen, 3.14–17; E70). Although
these are the primordial constituents of an inchoate world, they are
also the outbirth of Urizen’s own internal conflicts. The text tells us that
these shapes are ‘Bred from his forsaken wilderness’ (3.15; E70; emphasis
added) and that the ‘enormous labours’ which occupy him are the efforts
of a ‘self-contemplating shadow’ (3.22, 21; E71). Viewed in this light,
we can read the fire with which he strives on plate 4, the fire by which
he is ‘consum’d / inwards’ (4.14–15; E72), as the physical manifestation of
the ‘tormenting passions’ that render him ‘unseen’ to the eyes of the
Eternals (3.19; E71). Thus, Urizen’s announcement of ‘A wide world of
solid obstruction’ (4.23; E72), which is followed by the announcement
of his metal books and codified moral laws, prefigures his later obfuscation
of desire, which manifests itself in the formation of the fibrous body.
In the figure of Urizen as a will struggling against the turbulence of
passion, we can hear echoes of Priestley’s definition of volition as ‘a
modification of the passion of desire, exclusive of any tumultuous emotion’
(Hartley’s Theory, p. xxxiv), as well as Locke’s emphasis on reflexivity,
disengagement and reification (that is, on transforming mental
events into objectified things). To the extent that Urizen represents the
enlightenment philosopher, we can see him as the unwitting producer of
both a lapsarian mindset and a fallen body. However, while the enclosure
effected by the production of this body is itself problematic, the more
immediate problem is the fact that it is barely visible or, more precisely,
that the energetic potential of the body is inaccessible to the sort of analysis
The Tree of Mystery
67
conducted by Priestley and Hartley. By examining the body from a thirdperson perspective, by disengaging from bodily passions and desires,
Blake’s scientific contemporaries are in effect examining a corpse. Moreover, their preconceptions of what a body is – not just a human body, but
any body and indeed matter itself – preclude their ability to see the thing
in itself. And this denial of vision occurs concomitantly with the presupposition that such a penetrating gaze does exist in the mind of a deity
whose knowledge is total and whose authority over his subjects is absolute.
This denigration of human sense, which is itself inscribed within an
unshakeable faith in divine omniscience, recalls a further aspect that
Derrida attributes to the spectre:
Nor does one see in flesh and blood this Thing that is not a thing,
this thing that is invisible between its apparitions, when it reappears.
This Thing meanwhile looks at us and sees us not see it even when
it is there. A spectral asymmetry interrupts here all specularity. It
de-synchronizes, it recalls us to anachrony. We will call this the visor
effect: we do not see who looks at us. (Specters, 6–7)
Derrida’s thinking here is framed by his reading of Hamlet’s ghost, but
it is also connected to his thoughts on the link, highlighted through a
reading of Patocka, between responsibility and the ‘absolute being who
transfixes me, takes possession of me, holds me in its hand and in its gaze
(even though through this dissymmetry I don’t see it[)]’ (Gift, p. 32).
This notion of divine possession, of an alterior and divine light that
penetrates the self, is one which Blake will capitalise on in his remarks
concerning Christ and the Poetic Genius, which seek to open experience
up to an apprehension of the spectre in Derrida’s sense of the word.
However, in Urizen his concern is to highlight the limitations imposed
by a move akin to the ‘visor effect’. In Priestley, no less than in Locke,
the act of positing an invisible essence as the cause of sensuous appearance
interposes a layer of uncertainty between the philosopher and the
already deadened form that is to be studied, a gap between what can be
seen and what can be known:
Till the shrunken eyes clouded over
Discernd not the woven hipocrisy
But the streaky slime in their heavens
Brought together by narrowing perceptions
Appeard transparent air [. . .].
(Urizen, 25.31–5; E82)
68 Visionary Materialism in Blake
It is easy to assume that this ‘streaky slime’ is the material world itself,
the appearance that conceals the spirits of Eternity. However, the problem
is not that this slime prohibits vision, but that it has itself been
rendered invisible to eyes that have become ‘small like the eyes of a
man’ (25.36; E82). Indeed, given that this slime is in the ‘heavens’, we
can associate it with the ‘woven hipocrisy’ and the ‘Female in embrio’,
whose embryonic form constitutes the ‘Net of Religion’ (25.18, 22; E82).
The hypocrisy is involved not only in the formation of laws that flesh
cannot keep, but, more profoundly, in the establishment of an empirical
epistemology that refuses to see and that sacrifices understanding to
obedience of a moral system that justifies the unjustifiable through alternately concealing and explaining away the inequitable relations between
human beings.15
Transformations of Urizen’s body and his world suggest that the body
or outward form derives its existence from energy or desire, which is by
definition dynamic and therefore the antithesis of the sort of body – the
‘solid without fluctuation’ (Urizen, 4.11; E71) – after which the Urizenic
philosopher-priest strives. In his emphasis on embodied experience,
therefore, we can say that Blake embraces and elevates the transient
world of appearances which within enlightenment empiricism is not
only the object of scientific enquiry, but also the emblem of the ultimate
limitation of human knowledge. If humankind were not obsessed with
covering the body up or, worse still, with debasing it by reducing its
ontological status to that of a mere effect, perhaps it would be possible
to read in the body the signs of its origin, to read in its lineaments the
story of prophetic creation during the fall from Eternity. This sort of
exegetical act would seem to be what distinguishes Blake’s description
of the human body in Urizen from that of his more scientific counterparts, for although this description operates as a parody it goes beyond
merely mimicking its targets and beyond suggesting their flaws to
provide a glimpse of Eternity that is kept hidden in the empirical texts
of his day.
The empiricists, no less than their opponents, felt the need to contain
science and in so doing they ensured that human knowledge could
never actualise its redemptive potential: at the end of history, God would
still be necessary to restore eternal harmony and to grant immortality
to human beings. Blake believed the opposite: redemption could only
be attained by human endeavour, the palace of Eternity could only be
built with human hands. Unlike the self-proclaimed fathers and sons of
‘Enlightenment’, the terrifying sublimity of the divine results for
Blake not from mystery, but from awareness. As All Religions tells us, the
The Tree of Mystery
69
source of existence inheres in existence itself: it is the Poetic Genius,
and it inhabits every thing. It is the Poetic Genius which allows human
inquiry to proceed from the known to the unknown and the fact that
science has resulted in an acquisition of knowledge proves, for Blake,
that this Genius exists. Moreover, by including ‘Reason and Energy’ and
‘Love and Hate’, as well as ‘Attraction and Repulsion’ in its list of necessary contraries, The Marriage humanises the powers that make up the
fabric of existence. We can experience these forces as they are incarnated
within our bodies and this is the experience of God. In the context of
what Blake has said earlier in All Religions, the affirmation at the end of
the text that ‘The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius’
suggests a power which is both internal and external. Likewise, the
devilish proclamation on plate 22 of The Marriage, that ‘The worship of
God is. Honouring his gifts in other men each according to his genius’
(E43), seems to imply an external source similar to that posited by
Priestley and Locke. However, Blake seems to qualify or even repeal this
on plate 16 with the equally forceful statement that ‘God only Acts &
Is, in existing beings or Men’ (E40). While it is possible that this tension
may be the result of Blake’s inability to decide one way or the other, it
may also reflect Blake’s unwillingness to fall into another dichotomous
trap. Arguing that every man is God removes the need for otherness
and seems to not only justify, but also promote the retreat into the self
which Blake found so repugnant in Locke. On the other hand, emphasising otherness too much would result in the abstraction of divinity
which Blake regarded as such a dangerous element in orthodox religion.
The fact that this tension between the divinity of the self and the other
occurs in All Religions, which had a much shorter production history than
The Marriage, suggests that he envisioned divine power as constituted
by the interaction of self and other. Blake’s enumeration of contraries
suggests as much by virtue of the fact that each contrary can only arise
in the space between two bodies. Attraction itself ceases to exist without
the presence of an attractor and attractee, while emotions such as love
and hate arise out of relationships between self and other.
Blake’s absolute resistance to the sort of mystery produced by the
abstraction of ideas, passions or divinities from their bodies is evinced
in his consistent use of verbal and visual figures to represent these powers
on a universal level. By using archetypes such as Urizen, Orc, Enitharmon
and Los within a medium that self-consciously embodies the interaction
of self and other, Blake manages to grant his discourse a universal or
eternal status and thereby makes his personal visions of divinity applicable
to a wider audience. Replacing the orthodox conception of an abstract,
70 Visionary Materialism in Blake
obscure and mysterious deity with one arising out of the interaction of
embodied spirits (i.e. existing beings or men – note the plural) removes
the impulse to found either religion or science upon secrecy and thus
facilitates a liberation from moral law and a celebration of energy as
‘Eternal Delight’ (The Marriage, 4; E34). This system can be aptly described
as ‘visionary materialism’, a system in which seeing the physical world
entails a vision of the spiritual, in which the sensual is not denied, nor
restricted to the pursuit of philosophical pleasure, but improved to such an
extent that corporeal and intellectual pleasures occur simultaneously.
3
Right Reason and ‘Sense
Supernaturall’
I know now by experience, that there is a great deal of difference
between knowledge, and thinking I know; for true knowledge
it gives satisfaction to the spirit of man, and whoever knoweth
the true God, must needs know the right devil: [. . .] for by this
knowledge the spirit of man hath peace with God.
– Lodowick Muggleton, A True Interpretation1
‘The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original derivation from the
Poetic Genius’, reads the sixth principle of All Religions, ‘this is necessary
from the confined nature of bodily sensation’ (E1). The confinement of
sensation, as we have seen, results from historically specific representations
of the body, and of matter in general, which sharply distinguish the
material from the spiritual, the human from the divine. The derivative
status of the Bible, however, is more difficult to reconcile with Blake’s
later description of the First and Second Testaments as ‘the Great Code
of Art’ (Laocoön; E274). Though these comments come much later in
his life (Bentley suggests a possible dating of 1826),2 the centrality of
the biblical text, both conceptually and stylistically, remains consistent
across his corpus, even if Blake insists on reading it diabolically. Perhaps
we may see a certain anticipation of Paine’s prioritisation of conscience
over scripture at work in All Religions, as we find it reverberating
throughout the annotations to Watson:
The Bible or <Peculiar> Word of God, Exclusive of Conscience or the
Word of God Universal, is that Abomination which like the Jewish
ceremonies is for ever removed & henceforth every man may converse
with God & be a King & Priest in his own house. (p. 9)
71
72 Visionary Materialism in Blake
These comments are consistent with a certain ambivalence, not to
mention a disturbing anti-Semitism that we find throughout these
annotations, which consistently represent the First Testament as ‘only
an Example of the wickedness & deceit of the Jews’ (p. 5; E614).
But the ‘original derivation’ in Principle 6 belies a deeper ontological
aporia that threatens to engulf the entirety of mental and corporeal
existence. The body, religion and philosophy, we are told, are each
similarly derivative, adding urgency to the question of in what sense a
derivation can justifiably be described as ‘original’. The only intelligible
interpretation is to read the ‘original’ as the first of its kind, but a first
that is always ancillary and contingent. The origins of the first would thus
be traceable to an originary antecedent that precedes any recognisable
form of existence. There are clear links with Derrida’s remarks on a certain
madness of the perhaps here, which themselves – deliberately or without
meaning to – reverberate with the echoes of a Blakean cosmogony:
The modality of the possible, the unquenchable perhaps, would,
implacably, destroy everything, by means of a sort of self-immunity
from which no region of being, phúsis or history would be exempt.
[. . .]. This would be an unprecedented time; a time which, reserving
itself in the unique, would then remain without relation to any
other, without attraction or repulsion, nor living analogy. Without
even this friendship for itself, nor this enmity: without the love or
the hate that would make this time appear as such. (Politics, p. 76)
This vision of the unprecedented time of the perhaps, Derrida insists, is a
fiction, though the stories it appropriates are familiar to the late twentieth
century – the fall of the Berlin wall, the end of capitalism. There is an
eschatology at work here and an aetiology, a nostalgia for the originary
impulse of the event. There is also – and this is significant for a philosophical
turn that describes itself as ‘madness’ – a hearkening after an antinomian
and pre-enlightenment mode of theosophy:
We give you to understand this of the divine essence; without nature
God is a mystery, understand in the nothing, for without nature is
the nothing, which is an eye of eternity, an abyssal eye, that stands
or sees in the nothing, for it is the abyss; and this same eye is a will,
understand a longing after manifestation, to find the nothing; but
now there is nothing before the will, where it might find something,
where it might have a place to rest, therefore it enters into itself, and
finds itself through nature.3
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
73
The Poetic Genius stands poised between the perhaps and the abyssal eye,
the product and progenitor of a polymorphous inheritance. But what
would Blake make of Boehme’s abyssal eye, itself a version of that
mystery or mysterium which haunts Derrida’s meditations in The Gift of
Death and elsewhere? If as suggested above Blake goes further than
Locke in developing an experience-based epistemology and further
than Priestley in his contempt for mystery, what are we to make of the
ulterior positioning of the Poetic Genius?
‘Where else is heaven?’: The ranting impulse and inner light
Two things are worth noting here. First, Blake, unlike Derrida and to
an even greater extent than Boehme, insists on embodying the source
in a human form. This is an idea that he picks up from Swedenborg,
though he may also have in mind the Kabbalists’ Adam Kadmon, and
the production history of the illuminated books can in some sense be
read as an attempt to make manifest this universal man. The second
and related point pertains to the question of vision, and in particular
to the expansion of perception associated with the concept of visionary materialism touched on above. Exceeding the bounds of Lockean
empiricism and Priestley’s doctrine of the single substance, a visionary
materialism would share certain affinities with Derrida’s description of
the perhaps, which is itself related to the development of an hauntology
alluded to in Specters of Marx. Whereas the perhaps makes possible
the arrival of newness, of the event that cannot be anticipated or
predicted, cannot be mapped out in advance of its arrival, the hauntology involves a thinking beyond the experience of the known through
the figure of the spectre, which can represent a tentative embodiment
not only of one or more ghosts from the past, but also of the event
to come:
If the enlightenment critique sought to remove the spectres or illusions
that cloud perception, the post-enlightenment is counter-conjuration.
The ghost, veil, figure or spectre – the movement of différance that
allows one to perceive a world beyond any particular, differentiating
between actual and virtual – is not added on to an otherwise whole
and autonomous life. It is only through the figure or image that life
gives itself to be thought, to live. In the beginning is the ghost. Without
the figure of the not-given, virtual, anticipated whole of life, there
could be no thought or future. (Colebrook, p. 23)
74 Visionary Materialism in Blake
This sense of the necessity of visualising the invisible is, Colebrook
notes, central to Blake as it is for Derrida. Blake develops a conception
of appearance as that which clothes Eternity in a visible form, bringing
it into the world of experience. There is thus an analogue between the
Derridian spectre and the world forged by Los, in which the fallen body
contains within it a vision of the infinite – an idea which as Aubrey
notes seems to have been inherited from Boehme.4
In this respect, the visionary materialist apprehends the type of
experience embodied by Derrida’s spectre as a vision of the past, present
and future that is indissolubly linked to the infinite and eternal:
What distinguishes the specter or the revenant from the spirit [. . .] is
doubtless a super-natural and paradoxical phenomenality, the furtive
and ungraspable visibility of the invisible [. . .]; it is also, no doubt,
the tangible intangibility of a proper body without flesh, but still the
body of someone as someone other. [. . .]. This spectral someone other
looks at us, we feel ourselves being looked at by it, outside of any
synchrony, even before and beyond any look on our part, according
to an absolute anteriority [. . .] and asymmetry. (Specters, p. 7)
The spectre thus responds to the question whispered in the ‘fiction’ of
the perhaps: ‘without an enemy, and therefore without friends, where
does one then find oneself, qua self?’ (Politics, p. 77). The spectre, that is,
assumes the role of the friendly enemy, the absolute alterity with which
the self enters into relationship, expressing its identity before every other
who, by virtue of being other, becomes one of the infinitely various
members in the body of the ‘true Man’.
‘Five windows light the cavern’d Man’, sings the fairy on plate iii of
Europe, before proceeding to enumerate the five senses, finishing with
touch, through which man may ‘pass out what time he please’ (1–4; E60).
As Larrissy notes, though the senses are limiting, ‘they are also liberating’,
and the sense of touch, ‘which Blake compounded with sexuality [. . .]
will permit humanity to escape from its imprisonment’ (p. 92). Aubrey
notes a distinction in Boehme, part of a Pauline inheritance, between ‘flesh
(sarx), which is fundamentally opposed to spirit, and body (soma), to
which no such intrinsic dualism can be applied, [. . .] made for the Lord,
and ultimately bound for him’. However, Boehme departs from Paul by
partially effacing this dichotomy with the suggestion that ‘the spiritual
body lies within the natural body, and is therefore potentially available
in the present’ (p. 52). This potentiality is expressed differently by Blake’s
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
75
fairy and by Derrida’s spectral body without flesh, but both point
towards a relationship with the other that will allow for an approach to
divinity that is dependent both upon the confined nature of bodily
sensation – the arrival and irredeemably pastness of the event – and upon
which that experience of the body itself depends.
While Boehme did not ‘wish to promote the kind of indulgence in the
senses that Blake advocates’ (Aubrey, p. 54), precedents for proverbs such
as ‘the lust of the goat is the bounty of God’ can be found throughout
a range of groups, many of whom embraced aspects of Behmenism and
which collectively form part of Blake’s multifarious spiritual inheritance
(The Marriage, 8; E36). The celebration of sexuality as an enactment of
union with the divine was, for a time at least, a central component to the
beliefs of the Moravian Congregation in Fetter Lane, to which Blake’s
mother belonged and with whom his father was also associated during
the ‘Sifting Period’, a period of ‘experiments in social egalitarianism,
magical practices, and sexual antinomianism’.5 Likewise, Swedenborg,
who experimented with erotic, heterodox Jewish mysticism and ‘recorded
many of the lurid sexual ceremonies of the Moravians, which initially
attracted but later repelled him’ (Schuchard, ‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’, p. 50),
ascribed a high spiritual significance to conjugal love. And, an indulgence
in sensuality also figured highly amongst many of the evangelists and
pamphleteers from the civil war period, known retrospectively as
the Ranters. Thus we find Laurence Clarkson (or Claxton) drawing on the
concept of interior light and antinomianism latent in Pauline theology:
that act called Adultery, in darkness, it is so; but in light, honesty, in
that light loveth it selfe, so cannot defile it selfe: for love in light is
so pure, that a whore it cannot endure, but estranges it selfe from
darknesse from whence whoredom has its first original. Love is so
pure, that it will not lodge with two; but treads the steps of the
Apostle, saying, Let every one have his own wife [I Cor. 7.2].6
‘Brothel’s [are built] with bricks of Religion’, we read in The Marriage
(8; E36), and Blake’s own polygamous beliefs, founded on a similarly
‘infernal’ reading of the Bible, are widely documented, though the
extent to which he sought to conform practice to theory is still a matter
of speculation (Schuchard, ‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’, pp. 43–7).
A consideration of inner light forms a pivotal point in Derrida’s
meditation on the economics of justice between the human and the
divine, which imbricates the sacrifice of Isaac with the Gospel of
76 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Matthew. God returns Isaac, relinquishes his demand, ‘once he is assured
that a gift outside of any economy, the gift of death – and of the
death of what is priceless – has been accomplished without any hope
of exchange, reward, circulation, or communication’ (Gift, p. 96). When
Christ thrice reiterates, in Matthew 6.2, ‘and thy Father which seeth
in secret shall reward thee’, it is this renunciation of calculation, this
breaking with a terrestrial economy of reciprocity, that will open the
celestial economy of non-reciprocity and bring to the table a reward,
the value of which cannot be measured in human terms. But the spirit
of the act is of paramount importance – the ulterior motive behind the
charity (agapaô/caritas) extolled by Paul in I Corinthians 13 is constituted by love not calculation – and it must therefore be accessible and
assessable. Thus, the interiorisation of light is required to heal the
wound opened by the rending of heaven from earth and Derrida proceeds
to trace a certain logic of inner light: ‘Once the light is in us, within the
interiority of the spirit, then secrecy is no longer possible’, he remarks,
noting that once the soul shines with this light it is no longer possible
to hide the objects of this world – ‘cities, nuclear arms’ – from view
(p. 101). The internal and subjective thus takes priority over objective,
worldly means of calculation and judgement. The conscience, Blake’s
‘voice of honest indignation’ (The Marriage, 12; E38), cannot be objectified, reified, quantified or measured by the rules of Newton or Locke:
‘There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find’, Blake writes in
Milton, whilst in The Marriage he notes simply that ‘He whose face
gives no light, shall never become a star’ (Milton, 35.43; The Marriage,
7; E136, 35).
But Blake cannot be mapped this neatly on Derrida. For ‘if this
spiritualization of the “interior light” institutes a new economy [. . .],
then it is breaking with, dissociating from, or rendering dissymmetrical
whatever is paired with the sensible body’ (Derrida, Gift, p. 101). But,
for Blake, ‘the abyss of the five senses’ that we find on plate 6 of The
Marriage (E35) speaks to the incorporation of divine prolificity in the
sensible body and is, as Viscomi remarks, the medium of transport by
means of which the artist travels to the printing house of hell and back
(Swedenborg and Printmaking, pp. 35–6). In this respect, Blake expresses
a more extreme reading of the Gospels that resurrects the demonstrative impulse of Ranters such as Clarkson, Coppe and Salmon who
not only locate, but seek to enact redemption in the world of corporeal
experience. ‘Where else is heaven, but in our present peace / From
him?’, Clarkson asks in the prefatory poem to his evocatively titled
‘A Single Eye’:
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
77
[. . .] look not above the Skies
For God, or Heaven; for here your Treasure lies
Even in these Forms, Eternall Will wil reigne.
(p. 162, ll. 15–19)
In Clarkson’s compatriot, Coppe, this emphasis on sensual perception
takes on an overtly exegetical function, for ‘the eternall God may be
seene, felt, heard, and understood in the Book of the Creatures, as in the
Book of the Scriptures’, while in Salmon spiritual perception yields a
vision of ‘the sparkling beams of eternity, darting out their refulgent
beauty in and through variety’.7 Such divine immanence clearly intersects with Behmenism – in particular with Boehme’s reworking of Paul’s
division of sarx from soma – and it is echoed by Europe’s fairy who when
asked ‘what is the material world, and is it dead?’ responds by promising
to ‘shew you all alive / The world, when every particle of dust breathes
forth its joy’ (iii.13, 17–18; E60).
This spiritualisation of experience, the infusion of divine energy
throughout existence corresponds with a conceptualisation of a light
that is both celestial and terrestrial:
God that is light appeareth in you, discovering to you that the light
in the creature is not the same light of the Sun, yet the appearance of
light in me, sheweth me (and that from Scripture declareth to me)
that one is as much divine as the other; no more precious (simply in
it self) then the other: for as you have heard, though Lights, yet but
one Light with God. (Clarkson, p. 166)
The interiorisation of light thus participates in the logic of light that
Derrida connects to justice, but for the Ranters the breach between
the divine and the human has indeed been effaced, breaking apart
all modes of ethical economy. ‘Remember that if thou judge not thy
self’, Clarkson reminds his readership, ‘let thy life be what it will [. . .]
yet if thou judge not thyself, thou shalt not be judged.’ The gaze of
the deity, the absolute other – who to be sure is still walking the
corridors of the soul – is here identified with the carnal eye of the self:
‘yea act what thou canst’ (p. 171). For some such as Salmon, however,
the opening of the spiritual eye involves that ‘enthusiasm or fervor
for fusion’, that ‘demonic rapture’, which, Derrida tells us, Patocka
connects to ‘the loss of the sense or consciousness of responsibility’
(Gift, p. 1):
78 Visionary Materialism in Blake
I appeared to my selfe as one confounded into the abyss of eternitie,
nonentitized into the being of beings; my soule split, and emptied
into the fountaine and ocean of divine fulness: expired into the
aspires of pure life:
In briefe the Lord so much appeared that I was little or nothing
seene; but walked at an orderly distance from my self. (‘Heights in
Depths’, p. 212)
The vision of the formerly invisible other here annihilates the self, but
the identity of that self has not been consigned to oblivion – a spectral
self it walks ‘at an orderly distance’. The celestial economy of justice has
here been fulfilled, God has showed himself, presented himself before
the gaze of the human soul, but this excessive appearance – ‘the Lord so
much appeared’ – rends apart the onto-theological ground of the self,
forever altering the one who sees. And this justice of incommensurate
experiential exchange has been brought about precisely by the gift of
death: ‘I was alive once as well as you, and in my life I laboured amongst
you [. . .]; but I am now dead with the Lord.’8
For the likes of Coppe, Salmon and Clarkson, visibility of the mysterious
other removes the visor-effect that Derrida associates with the spectre,
the experience of being seen without seeing that initiates ‘an essentially
blind submission to his secret, to the secret of his origin: this is a first
obedience to the injunction’ (Specters, p. 7). And this deity is no less
tremendous for being seen. To be sure, the sublime experience described by
Burke, the overwhelming of the finite self by the infinite other, remains,
but the vision abolishes law and renders obedience obsolete. All of this
comes about through the interiorisation of mystery, of a light that is
also a darkness: ‘to this end you may read Light and Darkness as both
alike to God’ (Clarkson, ‘Single Eye’, p. 165). The unfolding of the divine
mystery in the soul, for a seer such as Coppe, heralds an identification
with that which is hidden, which with no hint of paradox allows it to
be identified and deciphered. Offering up one ‘Clavall hint’ to his readers,
Coppe declares:
That which is here (mostly) spoken, is inside, and mysterie. And so
farre as any one hath the mysterie of God opened to him, In Him,
can plainly reade every word of the same here. (Sweet Sips, p. 49)
Coppe writes of emptying out of ‘selfe’ and ‘flesh’ and the expulsion of
the other that tries to hide inside the soul. But this unwelcome visitor
that refuses to make itself presentable is in fact the antithesis of the
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
79
interiorised light: ‘and therefore pray—that Antichrist in you (fore he
hath been, and is in us when we knew it not) may be dispossessed, [. . .]
may be destroyed, with the brightness of [God’s] coming’ (p. 56). But
far from heralding an end to responsibility, the opening out of mystery
and casting out of the once-secret self initiates what might be called an
ethics of the perhaps, a new form of hospitality: ‘I will come to Visions
and Revelations of the Lord’, Coppe writes, ‘and these are looked upon
as new Lights too, and Strangers’; such strangers are to be welcomed,
Coppe tells us, for the unfolding of mystery does not herald an end to
the possibility of being surprised by the divine: ‘be not forgetfull of
entertaining Strangers, for some in so doing have entertained Angels
unawares’ (p. 63). This living-in-mystery, the experience of being let
into the secret, not only preserves the sense of messianic expectation, of
eschatological hope, but retains a sense of the political, of the friendly
stranger and of the known enemy. Internalising the prophetic voice of
Isaiah, Coppe heralds the arrival of divine retribution: ‘Behold, behold,
behold, I the eternall God, the Lord of Hosts, who am that mighty
Leveller, am coming (yea even at the doores) to Levell in good earnest.’9
The neighbour here has become the enemy and the stranger/self waits
at the door, ready to give the gift of justice, of death to those who will
not accept it of their own accord.
The opening of spiritual mystery is connected to what Hill refers to as
the democratisation of the Bible,10 which for Coppe proclaims the
arrival into history of the promise of justice, of redress. If priests and
kings teach that ‘those words are to be taken in the Mystery only; and
they onely point out a spirituall, inward levelling (once more, for your
owne sakes, I say) believe them not’ (p. 88). The promised reward is not
to be received in private, but will be displayed openly.
This making public of the secret is in accordance with a variant translation
of Matthew 6.2 that opens the way for a markedly different interpretation
of Christ’s promise. The French version employed by Derrida translates
the final three words as ‘te le rendra’ (he shall reward thee),11 a literal
rendition of the Greek and Latin texts (reddet tibi/apodosi soi) that preserves
the sense of secrecy initiated in the relative clause, ‘who sees in secret’.
However, the King James Version, as well as John Wesley’s 1790 translation, implies a removal of secrecy, an open reward: ‘thy father which
seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly’. This variant accords
well with the development of an alternative history of interiority, one
which seeks to make the light of the soul public, to bring it into the
light of day and identify the faces of Angels and Devils in the countenances and acts of the men and women who walk the streets: ‘This Angel,
80 Visionary Materialism in Blake
who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend’, Blake tells us,
echoing Coppe, who likewise beholds ‘Angels (now) come down from
Heaven, in the shapes and formes of men’, whom ‘I have been
acquainted withall’ (The Marriage, 24; E44; ‘Fiery Flying Roll’, p. 91).
This alternative tradition of divine mystery, one which incarnates it
within the world of experience and still preserves the anticipation of
change both in the self and the other, highlights the disjunction,
alluded to above, between Blake and Derrida: the asymmetry and nonreciprocity of the gaze. With echoes of an inheritance shared with
Boehme, Derrida remarks on the mysterium tremendum:
the terrifying mystery, the dread, fear and trembling of the Christian
in the experience of the sacrificial gift. This trembling seizes one at
the moment of becoming a person, and the person can become what
it is only in being paralyzed, in its very singularity, by the gaze of
God. (Gift, p. 6)
This then is the initiation in the secrecy of interiority ascribed to the
light within and it is the inheritance of Locke more than of Coppe,
Clarkson and Salmon. In tracing the ethical genealogy outlined by
Patocka, Derrida notes the transformations and incorporations – the
process of vanquishment, incorporation and repression – of the orgiastic
or demonic mystery that occur in Platonism and Christianity successively. In particular, he comments on the exchange of mystery for
secrecy – ‘the secretum whose sense points towards a separation
(se-cernere) and more generally towards the objective representation that
the conscious subject keeps within itself’ – and this act of separation itself
‘involves gaining access to the individualisation of the relation to
oneself, to the ego that separates itself from the [orgiastic] community
of fusion’ (p. 20).
In this disengagement of the self, with its rejection of the orgiastic
and communal in favour of autonomy we may well perceive the spectre
of Locke’s punctual self. Moreover, with the inward turn that perceives,
or rather demonstrates through reason and intuition, the presence of an
ulterior and inaccessible force capable of perception and cognition,
we come close to the unempirical knowledge that the Lockean self
possesses with regard to the deity (Essay, §4.10.1–12). Mathematical
demonstration and abstract ideas perhaps have more in common with the
orientation of the Platonic self towards the Good, but in the obscurity and
confusion that for Locke cloaks the infinite and the eternal, there is at least
an anticipation of the secret of the mysterium tremendum, ‘which retains
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
81
something of the thaumaturgical tradition, and the secret of the orgiastic
mystery from which Plato tried to deliver philosophy’ (Gift, p. 7). The
orgiastic and demonic mystery therefore remains repressed, kept in
secret but kept all the same, and Derrida, following Patocka, notes that
‘every revolution, whether atheistic or religious, bears witness to a return
of the sacred in the form of an enthusiasm or fervor, otherwise known
as the presence of the gods within us’ (p. 21). This eruption of the
orgiastic is evident in both England and France during the 1790s, as it
was during the English Civil War over a century before, but it did not
disappear during the intervening period of rational ‘enlightenment’,
as Thompson makes clear (pp. 22–64). Nor can this alternate tradition
of open or public mystery be said to have been driven entirely underground. Indeed, the Moravians provide an excellent, if somewhat
atypical, example of a spiritual community, whose practices and beliefs
display marks of the orgiastic in their emphasis on the worship of an
embodied, visible and highly eroticised deity, but who nevertheless
achieved parliamentary recognition as sister Church to the Church of
England (Schuchard and Davies, p. 38).
The post-enlightenment stance that Blake shares with Derrida – his
opening of onto-theological systems to the experience of newness,
his recognition of the (Derridean) spectre and his sense of the self’s
relation to an absolute other who is every other – is not only complemented by, but in fact develops out of a pre-enlightenment inheritance
that promotes the opening of mystery and the accessibility of the
divine gaze. The unfolding mystery, the secret demanding to be
shouted from the rooftops (thy father which seeth in secret himself shall
reward thee openly, in public, proclaiming your gift to the world), this
variant version of the interiorised light has serious implications for
the definition of responsibility, which can no longer be defined only
as the ‘exposing of the soul to the gaze of another person, of a person
as transcendent other, [. . .] who looks without the-subject-who-saysI being able to reach that other, see her, hold her within the reach of my
gaze’ (Gift, p. 25). In the alternative genealogy of an open mystery, the
other is within reach: the seeing, hearing and holding are reciprocated
by the human self, even as it is overwhelmed by brilliance and magnanimity and even though the other always remains changeable, capable
of surprise:
And I have looked upon [Angels] as Devils [. . .] and have run
from place to place, to hide my self from them [. . .] and have been
utterly ashamed when I have been seen with them.
82 Visionary Materialism in Blake
But for my labour; I have been plagued and tormented beyond
expression. So that now I had rather behold one of these Angels.
(‘Fiery Flying Roll’, p. 91)
The spiritual substance
An emphasis on the corporeality of spiritual beings functions as a fundamental article of faith for that ‘peculiar people’, the Muggletonians,
who provide a ‘direct line of continuity between the antinomianism of
the Civil War sects and the London of the 1790s’ (Thompson, p. 65).
While it remains possible that Blake may have been acquainted with
certain tenets and practices of this sect, Thompson’s hypothesis that
Blake’s mother was a Muggletonian has now been definitively disproved
(see Davies as well as Schuchard and Davies). However, the Muggletonians
are interesting for another reason. Whereas Thompson treats the
anti-rational aspects of Muggletonian thought as evidence of their
part in a ‘ “counter-enlightenment” resistance’ (p. 86), a reading of their
texts alongside Hobbes’ Leviathan, produced during the same period of
civil upheaval, suggests that their tirades against reason can be seen as
a particular and indeed peculiar manifestation of an empirical impulse
that can be read as an analogue of Blake’s own visionary materialism.
Indeed, for Muggleton and Reeve, writing in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the attack on reason is framed by a redefinition and
expansion of perception that anticipates the distinction Blake draws
between organic and poetic modes of perception: ‘there is a true reality
in the spiritual sense, though invisible, which cannot be seen but by the
eye of faith, as the temporal was seen and known by the eye of reason’
(True Interpretation, pp. 51–2).
In comparing the Muggletonians to the Quakers and the Ranters,
Thompson remarks that ‘an intense sectarian dispute is often the signal
of an affinity’ (p. 66). However, Muggleton’s dispute with the Quakers
in particular results from an underlying and equally sectarian dispute
with those who would employ reason in the services of theology:
For every one that hath but one eye, that is the eye of reason, may see
that all the other churches, hath such a deal of corruption, superstition,
unjustness, idolatry, and many other wickednesses, which reason
itself doth judge cannot be the way of God. And that is the very cause
that when people have been unsatisfied in the way of worship in the
other churches, they have declined from them, and have turned
Quakers. (True Interpretation, p. 20)
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
83
Muggleton represents the dispute with the Quakers as a conflict in modes
of vision between the eye of reason and the eye of faith, ‘which the
Quakers ministery [sic] doth not teach’ (ibid.). The eye of reason can
only perceive outward ordinances and acts, for though ‘the righteousness
of faith is a real spiritual substance, as the righteousness of the law is;
yet none of them both can be seen by the visible eye of sense, not as
they be in their essence or seed, but by the effects or fruits they are
known’ (p. 36). This extrapolation on the limitations of reason and
sense perception accords well with the critique of enlightenment science
suggested above. That said, to describe Muggleton’s works as ‘counterenlightenment’ is anachronistic, given that the majority of these were
first printed decades before the texts of Newton and Locke. A more
accurate description of Muggleton’s dispute with reason, which indeed
anticipates later critiques of the Enlightenment, is to consider this as
part of a pre-enlightenment tradition that positions itself dialogically in
relation to the embryonic form of enlightenment science we find
contained in Hobbes and Bacon.
Muggleton’s insistence that the ‘eye of sense’ cannot perceive spiritual
substance echoes Bacon’s own insistence that the study of nature cannot
explain the mysteries of God:
if any man shall thinke by view & inquiry into these sensible and
materiall things to attaine that light, whereby hee may reveale unto
himselfe the nature or will of God: then indeed is he spoiled by vaine
Philosophy: For the conte[m]plation of Gods Creatures & workes
produce (having regard to the workes & creatures themselves) knowledge, but having regard to God, no perfect knowledge but wonder,
which is broken knowledge.12
In a similar vein, Hobbes differentiates between the objects which we
perceive and the appearances which constitute sense perception: ‘the
object is one thing, the image or fancy is another’ (p. 14). Moreover, he
distinguishes three distinct aspects of the divine voice, ‘Rational, Sensible,
and Prophetique’, which correspond with three modes of perception,
‘Right Reason, Sense Supernaturall, and Faith’ (p. 246). It is easy to overlook this threefold distinction of knowledge, for Hobbes focuses his
ensuing discussion almost exclusively upon the rational aspect of God’s
word. This privileging of the natural over the supernatural itself stems
from the limitations that Hobbes takes to be imposed by nature, for ‘no
man can infallibly know by naturall reason, that another has had a
supernaturall revelation of Gods will’ (p. 198). There is a clear connection
84 Visionary Materialism in Blake
here with the notion of an inaccessible alterity, though interestingly it
is the human other, the prophet, whose claim to spiritual vision cannot
be empirically validated, rather than the possibility of divine revelation
itself: ‘seeing therefore Miracles now cease, we have no sign left,
whereby to acknowledge the pretended Revelations, or Inspirations of any
private man’ (p. 259).
This reluctance to deny the ongoing possibility of revelation also
finds its way into Locke, who, though he defines ‘Reason’ as ‘natural Revelation’, also defines ‘Revelation’ as ‘natural Reason enlarged by a new set of
Discoveries communicated by GOD immediately’ (Essay, §4.9.4). Locke
likewise retains a belief in miracles, for ‘omnipotent Power’ can ‘make
any Instrument work, even contrary to Nature, in Subserviency to his
Ends’; moreover, he goes further than Hobbes, for he does not insist
that miracles have ceased, but simply that they are used sparingly
because ‘if it were not so [. . .] Miracles would lose their Name and Force;
and there could be no Distinction between Natural and Supernatural’.13
It is precisely this expansion of reason which Locke proposes and the
overcoming of the natural/supernatural dichotomy which he resists, that
Blake seems to have incorporated into his own ideas about expanded
vision. No Natural Religion tract [b] opposes the empirical claim, voiced
in tract [a], that man ‘is only a natural organ subject to Sense’ with
the declaration that ‘Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of
perception. he perceives more than sense (tho’ ever so acute) can discover’
(E2). Blake is not rejecting perception as a mode, or even the mode, of
knowledge acquisition, but rather is seeking to redefine perception as
something that is not limited to the sensory ‘organs’ as described by
thinkers such as Locke. Far from refuting the proposition that ‘The
desires & perceptions of man untaught by any thing but organs of sense,
must be limited to objects of sense’ (No Natural Religion [a]; E2), Blake
seems to be admitting such limitation is a very real, and a very undesirable,
possibility. What he does not seem to be suggesting, however, is that the
solution to this problem is the invocation of an abstract and transcendental ideal. The visionary materialism that Blake’s works promote is
tied to a particular conceptualisation of the divine that positions God
within, rather than beyond, the bounds of human experience.
While the Muggletonians likewise seek to bring God within the bounds
of perception, they nevertheless highlight, rather than reject, the limitations on natural knowledge inscribed in enlightenment empiricism
by both Hobbes and Bacon, equating sense perception with Mosaic Law
and religious rituals, which have been superseded by the commission of
the spirit. Muggleton’s affirmation of the limitations imposed on vision
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
85
by reason is accomplished by contrasting his experience of spiritual
vision with that of his philosophical and theological opponents who
‘are ignorant, and blind themselves in the knowledge of the true God’
(True Interpretation, p. vi). By claiming to have an expanded capacity
of vision, Muggleton enables himself to ground his theology in the
personal experience and observation of God. We can justly call Muggleton’s
position ultra-empirical (as opposed to anti-empirical) in so far as he insists,
first, that knowledge of God can only be attained through perception
(albeit of a spiritual substance) and, secondly, that this spiritual perception
can only be initiated via the introduction of divine discourse into
temporal (i.e. everyday) experience. Moreover, as Hill notes, the perception of what we might call supernatural events would, for many
people living in the seventeenth century, not have been divorced from
the world of everyday experience (p. 87). Although Muggleton opposes
reason with faith, and although he seems to suggest that the ‘seed of
reason’ and the ‘seed of faith’ are something akin to what we might call
genetic markers that enable or disable one’s capacity to perceive truth,
he insists that ‘the assurance that a man’s name is not blotted out of the
book of life, is when a man hath the witness in himself that his name is
written in the book of life’ (True Interpretation, p. 8; emphasis added).
This emphasis on the act of witnessing implies an active perception, as
does the underlying metaphor of reading Christ’s name as it is written
on one’s own heart. Muggleton describes two modes by which one can
obtain this ‘witness’: ‘by voice from God, or some secret revelation, or
by a steadfast faith in those messengers whom God doth send’ (pp. 7–8).
While this implies a distinction between the knowledge of the prophets
and that of their followers, both modes depend upon experience and
observation.
This is perhaps self-evident in instances of revelation, where the
prophet perceives the voice of God either as an internal dialogue or as
an ‘audible voice’ that breaks through the boundary between Eternity
and fallen time. As in Blake’s texts, both Muggleton and Reeve suggest
that the entrance of the divine voice into time initiates this opening of
spiritual vision. Muggleton experiences this voice as an internal voice of
faith, which he hears as a dialogue between faith and reason. Reeve, on
the other hand, hears an external ‘Voice of Words’, which was audible
‘to the hearing of the Ear’.14 The case of witnessing by faith is somewhat
more problematic, but Muggleton suggests an empirical component to
the verification of the prophetic message through the use of sensation
as a metaphor of spiritual recognition. He speaks in order ‘that the
reader, the seed of faith, may see the difference between those messengers
86 Visionary Materialism in Blake
that are not sent of God, and [. . .] those that are sent of God’, noting
that ‘some have tasted of both, therefore they can tell best’ (True
Interpretation, p. vi).
In order to appreciate the demonstrative force of such doctrinal
‘tasting’, however, it is useful to return briefly to Hobbes. It is perhaps
fitting that Reeve and Muggleton had their prophetic call to arms in
1652, the year after Leviathan appeared in England as both Hobbes and
Muggleton seek, in different ways, to accomplish the same task, to raise
man from a state of nature. While Hobbes depicts man’s natural state as
a ‘Warre’ that renders his life ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’
(pp. 88–9), Muggleton writes, ‘men being in their state of nature, they
are very dark in their minds concerning the knowledge of the true God,
and the true spiritual worship, which God requires’ (True Interpretation,
p. 39). Where they would seem to differ, however, is in the processes of
improvement they propose: while Hobbes advocates the use of reason
and an observation of the laws of nature, for Muggleton reason is the
seducer which must be supplanted by prophetically inspired faith.
Nevertheless, although the relation between Hobbes and Muggleton
and Reeve is on some levels antithetical, there are overlaps in their
theological positions. We have already seen that they agree roughly
upon the limitations of natural reason, but the crossovers in their ideas
about revelation also warrant further investigation. Despite claiming
that one cannot be assured ‘of the Revelation of another, without a
Revelation particularly to himselfe’, Hobbes nevertheless admits that
‘a man may be induced to believe such Revelation’ and he lists four
ways in which public belief in a private revelation can be obtained:
‘from the Miracles they see him doe, or from seeing the Extraordinary
sanctity of his life, or from seeing the Extraordinary wisedome, or
Extraordinary felicity of his Actions’ (p. 198). Notably, Muggleton and
Reeve deploy strategies very similar to those suggested by Hobbes when
they call upon the faithful to believe, employing the tools of natural
demonstration in their elucidation of the supernatural, providing
accounts of themselves which speak to the miraculous, wise and felicitous aspects of their actions. Although A Divine Looking-Glass declares
that their commission is ‘not accompanied with visible Signs, and
natural Miracles’,15 Acts nevertheless presents detailed accounts of their
ability to deploy the negative equivalent of the miracle, the curse, as an
instrument of persuasion. Thompson comments in passing upon this
alleged supernatural ability and Reay also remarks upon the importance
of the curse within early Muggletonianism. He notes that ‘this power
was not confined to the two prophets’ and that Muggleton considered
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
87
it a sign of weak faith if a follower failed ‘to pass the sentence of damnation
upon an obvious reprobate’. 16 He also suggests that cursing was
an act with social significance: ‘[it] was the weapon of the poor and
oppressed against the rich and powerful, and the Muggletonians must
have derived satisfaction from damning oppressors and social superiors’
(ibid.). In addition to persuading (or otherwise silencing) the recipients
of their curses, Muggleton and Reeve use the fact of the curses themselves
as evidence of their divinely inspired power. In this way, therefore,
Acts depicts the process of cursing in front of witnesses, and of cursing
with effect, to draw the very personal and private act of revelation into
a public space where it can be verified empirically by the community
at large.
The wisdom of the prophets, meanwhile, is demonstrated in the
subsequent chapter of Acts, which provides an account of the difficult
theological problems they have been posed, together with their divinely
inspired solutions. This sense of spiritual wisdom is foregrounded in
True Interpretation, where Muggleton claims that the truth of their
revelation can be verified in their ability to solve the interpretative
quandaries of the biblical text (p. vii). Moreover, in both Acts and True
Interpretation this wisdom is represented as a source of personally verifiable
satisfaction: ‘that minister that is not sent of God, his doctrine doth
neither satisfy himself, nor him that receives him; this most people’s
experience can witness unto’ (True Interpretation, p. vi). To this end,
Muggleton represents his book itself as an instrument of felicity: ‘and
happy will those be in whom it doth remain, and miserable will those
be who despise and reject it’ (p. viii). Happiness thus becomes intertwined
with knowledge and in particular with the ability to perform a felicitous
exegesis that successfully removes contradiction and mystery from the
biblical text. Perhaps surprisingly, Muggleton insists that this exegetical
prowess is not only ‘the best and most profitable gift unto the seed of
faith now-a-days’, but is in fact ‘more profitable to man than the scriptures
themselves’ (p. 22). While Muggleton and Reeve probably did not set
out to satisfy Hobbes’ criteria for determining the validity of private
relation, the proximity of their acts to his list of proofs does point towards
an underlying tradition common to both parties, the rational and the
prophetic.
The conjunction of exegesis, evangelism and the performance of
extraordinary acts also shares a certain affinity with Locke’s ‘reasonable’
theology, which hinges upon three interrelated modes of conceiving
the relation between word and meaning, appearance and essence,
humanity and God. According to Locke, Christ’s appearance on earth
88 Visionary Materialism in Blake
was made necessary because human beings had hitherto failed to
correctly interpret the marks of divinity disseminated throughout the
world of sense perception:
Though the Works of Nature, in every Part of them, sufficiently
evidence a Deity; yet the World made so little Use of their Reason,
that they saw him not [. . .]. Sense and Lust blinded their Minds in
some, and careless Inadvertency in others, and fearful Apprehensions
in most [. . .] gave them up to into the Hands of their Priests, to fill
their Heads with false Notions of the Deity, and their Worship with
foolish Rites, as they pleased: And what Dread or Craft once began,
Devotion soon made sacred, and Religion immutable [. . .]. And in
the Crowd of wrong Notions, and invented Rites, the World had
almost lost the Sight of the one only true God [. . .]. Hence we see
that Reason, speaking ever so clearly to the Wise and Virtuous, had
never Authority enough to prevail on the Multitude. (p. 530)
In typical Lockean fashion, the failure of minds ‘blinded’ by sense, lust,
carelessness and fear leads directly to enslavement as divine ‘Impressions’
are supplanted by priestly impositions. It is no accident that Locke
employs visual metaphors of blindness and sight in his discussions of
erroneous belief and enslavement, for in addition to their religious
connotations these are experiential metaphors which allow a present act
of perception – the very act of reading Locke’s text – to correct the
obfuscated perception of the past. The experience of the present exerts
a redemptive or messianic force onto the failings of the past: ‘the World
had almost lost Sight’, but ‘hence we see’.
We are not all that far from the commission of the spirit. Not only
does this closeness belie the onto-theological grounding of Lockean
empiricism, but it also points to an empirical impulse in anti-rational
sects which stretches beyond the Muggletonians, through the radical
civil war enthusiasts known collectively as the Ranters, and finds its
way into the eighteenth-century theosophy and enthusiasm of, among
others, the Moravians, Emanuel Swedenborg and Richard Brothers. Just
as Blake, in All Religions, seeks not to reject but to expand the bounds of
enlightenment empiricism by grafting the ‘faculty which experiences’
onto the ‘Spirit of Prophecy’ within his conception of the Poetic Genius
(E1), so too Muggleton seeks to provide an expansion of sense that not
only anticipates Blake, but also shares certain structural affinities with
Locke’s definition of revelation as an enlargement of reason. Although
Muggleton clearly prioritises the eye of faith over the eye of reason, this
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
89
preference is grounded in a belief that the latter opens the way for new
spiritual discoveries. Whereas Hobbes confines himself to the observation
of natural substances, the Muggletonians, though not denying the
existence of matter as Berkeley will do, insist that scripture can only be
properly understood by an interpreter who, quite literally, has one eye
cast on the spiritual substance to which the Bible’s natural or material
letters refer. Muggletonian revelation can, in this respect, be considered
as Hobbesian materialism printed in relief, raising to prominence the
supernatural sense that Hobbes prefers to leave in the background.
Casting aspersion on contemporary claims to supernatural sense, the
Hobbesian materialist and Lockean empiricist both shut their eyes on
the ‘real spiritual substance’ that Muggleton calls on the faithful to
witness (True Interpretation, p. 36). This refusal to see involves a certain
self-deception, a sleight of hand. On the one hand, a certain type of
event, the miraculous or prophetic, is treated as highly unlikely or even
downright impossible, but on the other hand, and at the same time, it is
admitted that such events are not only possible, but have historical
precedent. This foreclosure of the possible, of the reappearance of the
messianic within the present age, is precisely the sort of ‘dull round’
that Blake identifies as the problem in enlightenment empiricism and,
moreover, it is a denial of vision that is made on religious grounds, on
the belief in a God whose face cannot be directly perceived by the senses.
In a manner that anticipates Blake’s declaration concerning ‘the
doors of perception’ (The Marriage, 14; E39), Muggleton conceives of the
messianic event arriving into the world of experience through a ‘door’
which provides immediate access to God’s ‘heavenly palace’:
Christ is called a door himself, and he hath the key of David,
who openeth and no man shutteth.
And this is he that opened the door of John’s understanding, and
let him see in a vision the glory of heaven. (True Interpretation, p. 21)
The substantiality of this door is a point Muggleton reinforces repeatedly,
insisting that it ‘may be seen, felt, and understood by the eye of faith, as
the other [the door of an earthly palace] is by the eye of reason’ (ibid.).
The commission of the spirit, which has as its harbingers Muggleton
and Reeve themselves, is a time of unfolding mysteries, of revealing the
secret which was hid, of giving assurance to the believer that his or her
name remains in the book of life (pp. 7–8). Salvation itself is directly
tied to a belief in, and concomitant vision of, the body of God, for none
can believe who do not see. This body, moreover, is corporeal, a human
90 Visionary Materialism in Blake
body capable of injury and suffering, for ‘neither can any thing cleanse
and purge the conscience of man from the guilt of sin, and fear of eternal
death, but the blood of a God’ (p. 3).
Muggleton goes beyond the materialism advocated by Hobbes and
later by Priestley (who, it must be recalled, invokes his materialist
precursor by name), insisting that every spirit or soul, including God,
must be contained within a definite form and ‘the eye of faith doth as
perfectly see God their king sitting upon his throne in the kingdom of
glory above the stars’ (p. 12). Whilst God at creation had a body comprised of ‘a spiritual substance clear as chrystal, and as I may say, swifter
than thought, brighter than the sun’, when he incarnates himself as
Christ he assumes a body of flesh and blood:
And this word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and this was
Christ, which is the word of God, which is God, and is in heaven in
that very same flesh, which the eternal spiritual body became, and
suffer’d death in. (p. 2)
The incarnation entails not only the personalisation and rendering
visible of the absolute other, but the bloody death and suffering at the
heart of the mysterium tremendum entails a familiarisation of the other, a
humanisation that places the deity on the same level of being as every
other at the same time retaining the fullness of divinity, ‘Christ is
God, and Christ he died, therefore God did die’ (p. 14). Though God is
venerated as a king, the true believer, whose expanded vision allows
a vision of the body and belief in the corpse, will join Christ on his
throne, ‘that is, he shall sit with Christ, or be with Christ in the
kingdom of eternal glory’ (p. 9). Redemption is made possible through
a being capable not of giving itself death, but of allowing itself to be put
to death by another:
Neither could God have redeemed mankind to an eternal happiness, but by his becoming flesh.
Neither could any serpent or devil have put God to death, if God
had not took upon him the nature of a man.
For the nature of a man cloathes itself with flesh, blood and bone,
and so is made capable to be put to death by the seed and nature of
reason; which is the serpent, or devil. (p. 13)
The ultimate gift of death is not a suicide. It is not a mercy killing. It is
a murder. And the murder is not laid at the feet of some supernatural
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
91
demon, but of human beings, for ‘there is no devil but men and women’
(p. v), those whose souls have been misled by the false light of reason,
which as we know is a light of abstraction, of spiritual disembodiment.
The blood of the deity, however, brings not terror and trembling in
the face of absolute inscrutability, but ‘peace, joy, life, and salvation
[. . .] and these are better things than the blood of Abel, or the blood of
the saints; which speaketh to the soul of fear, horror, death, and eternal
damnation’ (p. 45).
Just as the materialist Hobbes depicts prophecy as a patently unreliable
form of knowledge acquisition, so the self-declared prophets of the
third commission present the observation of natural or outward forms
as a mode of understanding, interpreting and worshipping God and
scripture that has become outdated. However, this supersession is best
viewed not as a rejection of enlightenment empiricism in toto, but
rather as an alternative reading of this as yet incipient epistemology.
Muggletonian doctrine presents experience as the primary mode of
knowledge acquisition, but its idea of vision entails an expansion of
man’s perceptive capabilities. This occurs in four interrelated ways:
through the empirical demonstration of prophetic power; through
the introduction of divine discourse into the temporal world; through the
description of a spiritual substance open to perception; and through
the vision of God’s body itself, in life and in death. There are undeniably
many antecedents to Blake in Muggletonian doctrine. The expansion of
the bounds of the known, the unfolding of mystery, the rejection of
reason in favour of spiritual experience, these are all Blakean themes
and give voice to ideas he too venerates.
The abyssal eye
Despite the rupturing of the direct line of inheritance that Thompson
envisioned between Blake and the Muggletonians, there are marks of a
shared tradition of openness to alterity, which feeds into what I have
been calling visionary materialism and which descends in part through
their mutual forebear, Jacob Boehme. Although Boehme accords divine
mystery a prominent place in his theosophic system, representing God
as a being ‘whose Ground we must not know’, the primal urge of the
deity is to render itself manifest by entering into a relationship with
itself and thus opening a space for alterity (‘Signatura Rerum’, Works,
IV, p. 17) . Moreover, this inchoate desire, this being that longs to show
itself, is also a longing for vision, for the obtainment of something to
see: ‘an Eye of Eternity, an abyssal Eye’ (ibid.). Boehme attempts to
92 Visionary Materialism in Blake
teach us how to perceive God, whose act of creation is an act of embodiment, a corporealisation which renders the invisible visible and he
equates the onto-theological ground of existence itself, that which
exists ‘in the Nothing’, with the act of infinite perception. Although the
divine power of existence/perception is at first a ‘Mystery’, it is motivated,
quite literally, by a desire for incarnation. This longing represents the
second person of what Boehme emphasises is a triune God: Christ, the
son who is joy or, more accurately, the desire for joyful creation.
In order to ‘discern’ the divine ‘Being in Nature’, Boehme insists that
one must ‘pray to God for the Holy Spirit, to enlighten thee’ (‘Aurora’,
Works, I, p. 28). The perception of the divine depends not upon rational
enlightenment, but rather upon the Enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.
Significantly, Boehme conceptualises this spirit in terms that resemble
Blake’s descriptions of the Poetic Genius. As we have seen, in All Religions
the Poetic Genius is not only the source of ‘the body or outward form of
Man’ and of ‘The Jewish & Christian Testaments’, but it is also the
source of philosophy, prophecy and indeed all acts of discovery (E1).
Similarly, Boehme’s Holy Spirit is the source not only of life, but also of
prophetic and exegetical ability:
Even as the Spirit of Man rules and reigns in the whole Body in all
the Veins, and replenishes the whole Man; even so the Holy Ghost
replenishes the whole Nature, and is the Heart of the good Qualities
of every Thing.
If thou has that Spirit in thee, so that it enlightens, fills, and
replenishes thy Spirit, then thou wilt understand what follows in
this Writing.
But if not, then it will be with thee, as it was with the wise
Heathens, who gazed on the Creation, and would search and sift
it out by their own Reason; and though with their Fictions and
Conceits they came before God’s Countenance or Face, yet they
were not able to see it, but were stark blind in the Knowledge of
God. (Ibid.)
Notably, Boehme conflates knowledge and perception in such a way as
to suggest that the understanding of his text is an act akin to beholding
the divine countenance. Put differently, the text presents its reader with
the face of God, but this can only be perceived by means of a spiritual
and fundamentally irrational light: ‘we do not go upon an historical
heathenish Conjecture, nor only upon the Light of the outward Nature;
both Suns shine to us’ (‘Signatura Rerum’, p. 168).
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
93
As in The Marriage, Boehme’s cosmogony depicts creation as the
product of contrary qualities or elements, such as light and heat.
Although these qualities can be divided into ‘a Good one and an Evil
one’, Boehme tells us that ‘no Creature in the Flesh [. . .] can subsist,
unless it contains the Two Qualities’ (‘Aurora’, p. 23). The initial contrary is between the ‘dark fire’ and the ‘light world’. Heat contains
both of these: the light which is ‘the Heart of Heat’, ‘a Power of Life’,
‘a Source [. . .] of Joy’, and ‘a Fierceness or Wrath which [. . .] springs,
drives, and elevates itself in the Light, and makes the Light moveable’
(pp. 23, 24). Aubrey notes that ‘these two qualities [light and darkness]
cannot be thought of merely as good and evil. The dark qualities are the
source, not only of the wrath, but of all life’ (p. 44). This divine power of
creation exists in three worlds or states: in the source who is the Father, in
which there is light without heat; in the son, who is the ‘cause of joy’;
and in the Holy Spirit, which is the ‘moving Spring or Fountain of
Joy’ (pp. 34, 36).
Raine provides a convincing argument for regarding Boehme’s theosophy as a source of Blake’s doctrine of contraries and she explicitly
connects Boehme with The Marriage, plate 3 (Raine, I, p. 363). In particular, she notes that while the doctrine of contraries was common among
alchemists, Boehme’s teachings most closely anticipate Blake’s in that
he adapts alchemical principles to a system in which the contraries
represent ‘good and evil, heaven and hell’ (I, p. 361). Additionally, she
notes that Boehme, like Blake, refers to the fires of hell as ‘evil or energy’,
suggesting that ‘without this energy there is no life possible’ (ibid., p. 363).
Edward Taylor’s earlier abridged edition of Boehme’s works provides an
additional elucidation of the similarities between Blakean and Behmenist
contraries:
without strife, springs no production; and without contraries, is
no strife.
The two Principles of Light and Darkness cannot be said to have
beginning, but are coeternal; yet one (the Light) swalloweth up the
other as the day doth the night.17
The resemblance in both sense and syntax between the first sentence
of this passage and Blake’s declaration on The Marriage, plate 3 (E34),
that ‘Without Contraries is no progression’ is suggestive as is the association of one contrary with Love and the other with Anger, which
seems to anticipate Blake’s descriptions of the contraries of ‘Love and
Hate’ (ibid.).
94 Visionary Materialism in Blake
The likelihood that Blake had Boehme in mind during the composition
of The Marriage, plate 3, is strengthened by the sardonic reference to
Swedenborg on that plate: ‘And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at
the tomb’ (ibid.). Although in the final ordering of the text, this is the
first time Swedenborg is mentioned, the production history posited by
Viscomi suggests that this plate was produced after plates 21–4,18 in
which Blake explicitly links Swedenborg with Boehme: ‘Any man of
mechanical talents may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen,
produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg’s’
(22; E43). The fact that Blake associates Swedenborg with Boehme at
the earliest stage of production seems significant. Viscomi presents a
convincing argument for believing that Blake intended to print plates
21–4 as an independent pamphlet which would ‘undermine Swedenborg’s
credibility and [. . .] champion Blake and his positions’ (‘The Evolution
of The Marriage’, p. 298). The incorporation of Boehme within this attack
indicates an awareness of Boehme’s doctrines in which the Teutonic
theosopher is depicted as one of several sources recapitulated by the
Swedish writer. As Viscomi notes, the ‘perfunctory mention of Swedenborg
[on plate 3] appears to rely on information already provided, compositionally speaking [by plates 21–4]’ (ibid., p. 285); given that this background information connects Swedenborg with Boehme, it seems
likely that the echoes of Boehme that follow the reference to Swedenborg on plate 3 are not merely coincidental. The only other place where
Swedenborg appears by name is in the ‘Memorable Fancy’ on plates 17–20
(Swedenborg is named on plate 19). As with the naming of Swedenborg
on plate 3, this occurrence also coincides with Blake’s incorporation of
Behmenist imagery – in this case, ‘the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke
of a burning city’ (18; E41).
These incidents indicate that throughout The Marriage, Blake’s attacks
on Swedenborg are defined in part by turning their shared Behmenist
inheritance against him. Blake clearly views himself as the better student
of Boehme and nowhere is this clearer than in the belief in, as Aubrey
notes, their shared sense of a world beyond ‘the moral categories of good
and evil’, for this is ‘a step which had never occurred to Swedenborg’ (p. 43).
Of particular relevance to the present discussion are the ways in which
Boehme seeks to infuse the material world with a vision of spiritual
energy. Aubrey provides a good summary of this Behmenist vision:
what Blake did find in Boehme, and what is absent [. . .] from
Swedenborg, is the alchemical vision of nature as a vast, seething
receptacle for the refinement and spiritualization of matter, an
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
95
alchemical retort no less, and Blake certainly reacts as an alchemist
when he implies that Swedenborg’s writings can be placed in the
same category as ‘Aristotle’s Analytics’. (p. 48)
Boehme provides yet another model of the prophet or seer as a person
of expanded vision, capable of perceiving ‘all the great movements and
counter-movements in creation at work within a single moment’ (Aubrey,
p. 89). Moreover, it is here too that Boehme displays a pre-enlightenment
preference for experience and experiment over abstract reasoning.
Blake’s ‘alchemical retort’, as Aubrey remarks, comes from a tendency
‘for Hermetic philosophers to dismiss Aristotle and the schoolmen with
contempt, supposing that they studied books too much and nature too
little’ (p. 48).
Nevertheless, the presence of Behmenist ideas within The Marriage
in general, and within Blake’s discussion of contraries in particular,
need not exclude the possibility of Priestley’s concomitant influence,
especially given Blake’s position at a juncture where occult theosophy
intersects with empirical philosophy. There is no reason to suppose that
Blake’s idea of the progression of contraries cannot include elements
from both Boehme and Priestley – after all, Blake’s list of contraries
includes both ‘Love and Hate’ and ‘Attraction and Repulsion’. Moreover,
there is good reason to believe that the plates composed in the initial
stage of production carry an implicit reference to Priestley in addition
to the explicit association of Swedenborg with Boehme. Viscomi notes
that the ‘Memorable Fancy’ presented on plates 22–4 continues the
attack on Swedenborg of plates 21–2, ‘in that it sets forth through the
two parties the arguments for and against Swedenborg’s idea of God,
the central issue dividing the two visionaries [i.e. Blake and Swedenborg]’
(‘The Evolution of The Marriage’, p. 299). As Viscomi reports, ‘the devil’,
who presents Blake’s perspective, ‘wins the debate, as is evinced by
the angel’s conversion’ (ibid.). However, as Gleckner points out, the
process prior to conversion – in which the Angel ‘became almost blue
but mastering himself he grew yellow, & at last white pink & smiling’
(23; E43) – reproduces in reverse order Priestley’s description of the
changes in colour observable in steel during tempering.19
Even if Priestley’s influence on The Marriage was more diffuse than
Gleckner suggests, his system of materialism and Boehme’s ideas about
productive contrariety ought not to be considered mutually exclusive
forces within Blake’s intellectual inheritance. Raine notes that Boehme
conceives the unity of God and nature as the relationship between body
and soul, with nature providing the divine body and the Son constituting
96 Visionary Materialism in Blake
the divine heart or soul. This leads her to conclude that ‘we must
beware of supposing that when Blake declares that energy is “from the
Body” he attaches the same meaning to the words as would a materialist’
(I, p. 364). While Raine does not explicitly define what she means by
‘materialist’ and while she does not describe what kind of materialism
we must beware of ascribing to Blake, her comment that ‘the real existing
principle [for Blake] is not matter but life’ seems to suggest a vision of
materialism as that which is preoccupied with lifeless form rather than
living energy (ibid.). However, this conceptualisation of materialism is
at odds with a system such as Priestley’s, with its sense of divine immanence and its supposition that matter is itself constituted by contrary
powers or energies. In its Priestleyan formulation, then, materialism is
not that far removed from Boehme’s conception of the divine contraries,
light and wrath, nor from his emphasis on divine corporeality, a proximity
of which both Blake and Priestley were likely aware. Both anticipate
Blake’s depiction of productive contrariety and both privilege energy
and dynamism over obfuscation and stasis.
Boehme also shares with Priestley (and Hobbes) a belief in the resurrection of the whole man, in both body and soul. Although Boehme
insists that nature ‘shall be changed at the End of this Time’ and
although he declares that ‘Good and Evil shall be separated’ (‘Aurora’,
p. 28), his descriptions of the resurrection stress the continued and Eternal
significance of contraries such as light and heat, love and wrath, body
and soul. Although the light can be viewed as Good and the heat as
Evil, both these natural contraries originate in a single source (p. 31).
Notably, in his elucidation of this apparent paradox, Boehme directs
our gaze towards the human body and, indeed, towards that body in its
lapsarian condition:
Behold, there is a Gall in Man’s Body, which is Poison, and he
cannot live without this Gall; for the Gall makes the Astral Spirits
moveable, joyous, triumphing or laughing, for it is the Source of Joy.
But if it is inflamed or kindled in one of the Elements, then it
spoils the whole Man, for the Wrath in the Astral Spirits comes from
the Gall.
[. . .].
And such a Source has Joy, and from the same Substance as the
Wrath. (Ibid.)
While there is no wrath in God, ‘if God should be angry in Himself,
then the whole Nature would be on fire’ (p. 32), to the fallen mind God
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
97
appears wrathful and vengeful because it has succumbed to the erroneous
division of the eternal world into the categories of Good and Evil:
The divine Light and Love were extinguished in Adam, because he
imagined into the Serpent’s Property, viz. into Evil and Good, so that
[. . .] the Source of Anger was inflamed [. . .] and [. . .] His Body [. . .]
was an Enmity against God. (‘Signatura Rerum’, p. 69)
The cure for this ailment is not from outside the human body and it
does not involve removing the source of wrath, which is necessary for
life itself. Redeemed humanity contains the light of understanding, the
divine fire and the light of love within a body that is still recognisably
human. Even in our ‘heavenly Corporality’, Boehme insists, we will
retain our human form, ‘else we must assume to us another Image or
Shape in the Resurrection, which would be contrary to the first Creation’
(I, p. 45).
In a certain sense, Boehme takes his emphasis on corporeality even
further than Priestley does. While Priestley insists that the materiality of
human beings cannot be extended to God, Boehme, like Muggleton
and Swedenborg after him, conceives God as bearing a corporeal likeness to both men and angels:
BEHOLD! as the Being in God is, so is the Being also in Man and
Angels; and as the Divine Body is, so is also the Angelical and human
Body or Corporeity. (‘Aurora’, p. 51)
Thus, Boehme extends the similitude of God and man to include both
body and essence, ‘Being’ and ‘Corporeity’. Indeed, for Boehme, as for
Muggleton and Reeve, the human body provides the model by which to
explain God’s relationship to the universe:
Take Man for a Similitude or Example, who is made after the Image
or Similitude of God, as it is written.
The Interior, or Hollowness in the Body of Man, is, and signifies the
Deep betwixt the Stars and the Earth.
The whole Body with all its Parts signifies Heaven and Earth.
(‘Aurora’, p. 29)
Blake’s comments on the human aspect of divine embodiment suggest
an affinity with this strand of Behmenist thought, though Boehme’s
commitment to this idea concentrates on allegory and similitude.
98 Visionary Materialism in Blake
This affinity is particularly evident in the early tractates and The Marriage,
where Blake represents the divine as existing within ‘The true Man’ or
‘existing beings or Men’ (All Religions; The Marriage, 16; E2, 40). However, Boehme’s text introduces a distinction between the human and
the divine, which is absent from, or at least de-emphasised in, Blake’s
texts. While the being and body of the human being corresponds
exactly with essence and corporeality of the divine, there remains an
important difference:
Man is a Creature, and not the whole Being, but a Son of the whole
Being, whom the whole Being has generated: And therefore it is fit
that it should be in Subjection to the whole Being, seeing it is the Son
of its Body. (‘Aurora’, p. 51)
By establishing an ontological hierarchy in which human beings are
inherently inferior to God, Boehme introduces the concept of human
‘Subjection’. The subjugation of creation to creator is made explicit in
‘Three Principles’, where Boehme pronounces that ‘God rules all in all
incomprehensibly and imperceptibly to the Creature’ (Works, I, p. 86).
Moreover, although Boehme stresses the significance of divine embodiment, he maintains that God’s manifestation in nature is motivated by
‘a Desire after Virtue and Power’ and he describes the ‘Ground’ of
the ‘Deity’ as that which ‘we must not know’ (‘Signatura Rerum’, p. 17;
emphasis added). Thus, although Boehme posits an essential and corporeal
likeness between the human and the divine and although he promises
to ‘shew [us] the Arcanum of the greatest secret Mystery’ (ibid., p. 17),
he, like Priestley, would seem to limit human understanding to a
perception of effects rather than causes.
Just as the congeniality between Priestley’s materialism and Blake’s
anti-dualism does not imply that The Marriage is a straightforward
reiteration of Priestley’s system, so too the similarities between Blake
and Boehme do not indicate a complete and unquestioning embrace of
Behmenist doctrine. Blake is tempered and shaped by the prophetic and
philosophical utterances of these precursors, but at the same time his
embrace itself tempers and moulds the words and ideas he borrows,
fitting them to new contexts and positions within his own poetic
productions. Blake’s deployment of Behmenist ideas and his reference
to Boehme in The Marriage suggest an ambivalent, if not unduly critical
response. The association of Boehme with Swedenborg is itself somewhat incriminating. Blake does not specify which parts of Swedenborg’s
inheritance are ‘superficial’ and which are ‘sublime’ (22; E43), but he
Right Reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
99
does criticise Swedenborg for conversing only ‘with Angels’ (ibid.). In view
of this, the fact that Blake depicts the ‘infinite Abyss’ as part of an
angelic perception of Eternity, which is superseded by his own ‘pleasant’
vision, may implicate Boehme within Swedenborg’s angelic partisanship.
In any case, Blake seems to imply that the spiritual productivity of
Boehme’s theosophy is finite, unlike the literary and poetic texts of Dante
and Shakespeare: ‘Any man [. ..] may from the writings of Paracelsus or
Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with
Swedenborg’s. and from those of Dante or Shakespear, an infinite number’
(ibid.; emphasis added). If Blake is indeed paying a complement to
Boehme, his positive evaluation of Behmenism is expressed in relation
to his negative assessment of Swedenborg rather than as an objective
declaration of spiritual worth.
At the juncture of several seemingly disjunct traditions – Hobbesian
materialism, Lockean empiricism, Protestant antinomianism, Muggletonian
evangelism and Behmenist theosophy – we can trace an alternative
reading of Blake’s inheritance, one that emphasises points of intersection
between discourses of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘counter-enlightenment’.
This is not to suggest that Blake himself was consciously attempting
to fuse or combine these discourses – though he certainly appears
to have been conscious of carving out a middle ground between, for
example, Boehme and Locke. What we must keep in mind, however, is
that dichotomies such as those between the rational and the irrational,
between empiricism and idealism, oppositions that structure texts such
as No Natural Religion and The Marriage, are far less rigid than has often
been supposed. Indeed, from at least the mid-seventeenth century
through to the early nineteenth century, writers such as Blake, and he is
by no means unique in this respect, are able to situate themselves – not
comfortably, but adamantly – in the midst of such binaries, seeking to
access a divine vision through sensory perception whilst transgressing
the boundaries of Lockean empiricism, working to combine the most
recent discoveries in science with the most arcane theosophical
speculation in order to produce a vision that is both finely tuned and
politically relevant.
4
The Opening Eye
I was in a Vision, Having the Angel of God near me, and saw
Satan walking leisurely into London; his face had a smile, but
under it his looks were sly, crafty, and deceitful. On the right
side of his forehead were seven dark spots; he was dressed in
White and Scarlet Robes.
– Richard Brothers, A Revealed Knowledge of the
Prophecies & Times1
I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak
of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident
insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning:
[.. .]. Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one
new truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falshoods.
And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are
all religious, &conversed not with Devils who all hate religion,
for he was incapable thro’ his conceited notions.
– William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
(21–2; E42–3)
The eruption of a certain mode of orgiastic or demonic consciousness
that accompanies the unfolding mystery, the making public of the
Father’s secret self, involves a return to a certain vision or image of the
body. When Colebrook remarks on the sense, shared by Derrida and
Blake, that ‘there is no ground, totality, community or consensus prior to
figuration’ (p. 26), we can hear an echo of Moravian Christocentricism,
of Christ as ‘the Ground and Foundation of the spiritual Building’.2 The
figure of Christ, of his suffering and his death in the flesh, redeems
religion and morality from the ‘Heathenish Manner’ that motions
100
The Opening Eye 101
towards an invisible God and fails to ‘point out that God in the Face of
Christ’ (ibid.). In this heathenish error we can perhaps perceive the
spectre of Platonism against which Priestley also warns us, though to
different effect,3 as we can in the belief in disembodied souls, of a spirit
as ‘a breath of wind’, which Swedenborg likewise dismisses.4 This return
to form, this becoming flesh of the absolute other, calls us towards a new
understanding of responsibility and obedience to the law, which is not –
as it is when the visor-effect comes into play – that ‘essentially blind
submission’ of which Derrida speaks (Specters, p. 7). From this variant
perspective, ‘the highest Art of Moralizing’ would therefore consist not
in reasoning on the dictates of an invisible other, but in the recognition
of a visible body:
In the Glorifying of the Wounds of Jesus, which got us the Privilege
to be holy before the Eyes of the holy God; and to sympathize with
his spiritual Law, or the Mind of Christ. (An Account, p. 53)
No longer a prison or impediment to vision, the body thus becomes
that which not only transforms our appearance before the eyes of the
other, but also allows us to sympathise with the other’s mind. The
injunction of the law no longer requires obedience based on blind faith,
but an act of understanding: ‘What is faith but truth? where is truth in
its own light but in the understanding?’ (NJM, I, p. 77).
The blood theology of the Moravians provides an important junction
in the movement of the open-mystery, connecting earlier Behmenist
and Kabbalistic teachings and practices directly to Blake and his spiritual
progenitor (and friendly enemy) Swedenborg. Archival evidence suggests
that Blake’s grandparents, as well as the parents of his future business
partner James Parker, may have been the founding members of The
Congregation of the Lamb, the Moravian group that worshipped in Fetter
Lane and it now seems likely that both of Blake’s parents also worshipped
there (Schuchard and Davies, p. 38). Of particular note are letters, uncovered by Schuchard, from Blake’s mother, Catherine, her first husband,
Thomas Armitage, and a John Blake, petitioning for admittance to the
Congregation. ‘I have very littell to say of my self’, Blake’s mother writes:
for I am a pore crature and full of wants but my Dear Saviour will satisfy
them all I should be glad if I could allways lay at the Cross full as I do
know thanks be to him last Friday at the love feast Our Savour was
pleased to make me Suck his wounds and hug the Cross more than
Ever and I trust will more and more till my fraile nature can hould
102 Visionary Materialism in Blake
no more at your request I have rit but I am not worthy of the blessing
it is desird for I do not Love our Dear Savour halfe enough. (Catherine
Armitage [November 1750]; quoted in Schuchard and Davies, p. 40)
The relationship that is here enacted between self and other, believer
and Christ, is striking in its dependence on the highly eroticised figure
of Christ. The saviour, Catherine maintains, will satisfy her ‘wants’ – a term
conflating sexual desire with a sense of spiritual lacking – by making
her engage in the visceral act of sucking ‘his wounds [. . .] till my fraile
nature can hould no more’. Such imagery is in accordance with teachings
of the Moravian leader, Count Zinzendorf, who in 1743 ‘ushered in the
“Sifting Period” in the Moravian congregation’, seeking ‘to counter
their commitment to celibacy with a more joyful attitude to human
and divine sexuality’.5 As Schuchard and Davies note, ‘Zinzendorf’s
daring experiments in poetic imagery’ include ‘obsessively graphic
depictions of Jesus’ battered body, with glorification of his circumcised
penis and vaginal side-wound’ (Schuchard and Davies, II, §33). Moreover,
this emphasis on a guttural sensuality coincides with a glorification of the
human body that contains not only strong traces of antinomianism, but
also an insistence that the genitals of both sexes, which had been rendered
shameful by the fall, were through Christ redeemed and transformed
into a fit place for worship (Schuchard, ‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’, p. 50).
Schuchard and Davies detail several intersections between the eroticism
of the Moravians and Blake’s own thoughts on sexuality and desire,
suggesting a high degree of influence. Of especial relevance to the present
discussion are the ways in which Moravian ideas about the experience
of God anticipate the conjunction of theological, ontological and
epistemological ideas that make up Blake’s own visionary materialism. Although the Moravian connection seems to eclipse Thompson’s
Muggletonian hypothesis, the Fetter Lane Congregation, particularly
during the Sifting Period, represents an important point of continuity,
keeping alive a similar interest in both the body and the blood of God.
‘I say may that blood which me Clense and make me one of those that
can Rejoyce in hiss wounds’, writes John Blake, who Schuchard and
Davies suggest may have been Blake’s uncle or great-uncle, ‘and may his
Death and Suffring be the only thing, the one thing neefull for me, to
make me happy’ (John Blake to Peter Böler; quoted in Schuchard and
Davies, p. 39). Similarly, Thomas Armitage writes to the Congregation:
My Dear Saviour has maid me Love you in Such a degree, as I never
did Experience before to any Set of People; and I believe it is his will
The Opening Eye 103
that I should come amongst you; because he has done it himself, for
I could not bear the Doctrine of his Bloody Corps, till; very lately, till
non but my Dr Saviour could show me; perfectly, & he over came me
so sweetly that I shall never forget [. ..] & my Jesus Show’d me that I had
been seeking something else besides him, nor could I then bear the
thought of hearing anything Else; but of him being Crucified & of
his Bleeding wounds, which I Experienced very Sweet & the only
food for my Soul then; I am but very poor in my Self & weak and find
my Love very cool sometime toward him [. . .] but when my Loveing
Saviour comes again and kindles that Spark, then I feel I can love
him dearly; so he makes me love him. (Thomas Armitage to Brother
West, 14 November 1750; quoted in Schuchard and Davies, p. 40)
Armitage clearly articulates a belief in both divine immanence and
intervention, for Christ moves amongst the brethren and ‘makes’
Armitage love them through his presence in them. Moreover, his
experience of faith, like his wife’s, is sensual. Not only does Christ show
him things – the error of his ways, the crucifixion – but these sights and
sounds are ‘Experienced very Sweet’ and become ‘food for my Soul’.
Armitage, in keeping with the Moravian emphasis on humility, declares
his weakness in the face of God, but there is little to no trace of selftrembling, ‘I know he Loves me with that ever lasting Love, that nothing
shall separate us, as St Paul sais’ (ibid.). Armitage’s sense of his own
weakness, his moral failings, revolves around the question of caritas and
it is not surprising therefore to find him invoking Paul. Borrowing his
widow’s phrase, we might say that he wants love. There is no room for
mystery or secrecy here. Christ knows this want, he can see the love
cooling, even as Thomas can ‘feel’ his saviour’s forgiveness and
unbounded love. There is a certain sense here not of non-reciprocity
exactly, but of an insufficient return. Thomas does not have enough
love to equal the love Christ shows him. He is the lesser friend, lesser
lover, but this is precisely why he needs Christ to complete him.
Discussing the imbrication of friendship and justice in Aristotle, Derrida
remarks that the act of love, the active love, precedes the state of loving
and cannot occur without the lover’s knowledge. On the other hand,
‘one can be loved while remaining ignorant of that very thing – that
one is loved – and in this respect remain as though confined to secrecy’
(Politics, p. 9). This accords well with the experience of the believer who
discovers the love of Christ, who is let into or out of the secret that he
or she has been loved since before time and is therefore enabled to
experience love as an active participant, to have her or his love kindled,
104 Visionary Materialism in Blake
even if it must always fall short of the mark. However, the placement,
in Derrida’s extrapolation of Aristotle, of the ‘Prime Mover’ on the side
of the beloved, the passive recipient who is at the same time ‘pure Act’,
belies not only a certain paradox but also a certain will to secrecy on the
part of the other, of God. One cannot say, for example, in the case of
Thomas Armitage that ‘being loved therefore remains [. . .] an accident’,
nor that ‘Loving will always be preferable to being-loved, as acting is
preferable to suffering, act to potentiality, essence to accident, knowledge
to non-knowledge’ (Politics, pp. 9, 11). Thomas’s very existence, his
essence, depends upon being-loved and his own love is itself enflamed,
initiated and sustained by the knowledge that he is beloved. Moreover,
this knowledge itself, this spur into act, comes about precisely because
the other has made himself visible through a vision of divine and
incommensurable suffering: ‘Therefore, by the Preaching of Christ,
shall and must the Light of the Knowlege [sic] of the Glory of God be
displayed, in the Face of Jesus Christ’ (Account, p. 25).
It is the other within that ‘makes’ Thomas love, but it is only by
distinguishing the other, by recognising his absolute exteriority at the
very moment of interpenetration, of a highly eroticised intercourse,
that his own heart can be jolted into action. Once again, a vision of the
divine body is central to the interiorisation of light, and Schuchard and
Davies note Zinzendorf’s utter rejection of an invisible God as well as
the long hours spent ‘in meditation aimed at visualising the complete
physiology and physiognomy of Christ’ (Schuchard and Davies, II, §40).6
Recalling Connolly’s comments on the prominence of nerves and
veins in eighteenth-century thoughts on sympathy together with her
subsequent suggestion that ‘Blake asserts that sympathy is possible by
inviting his audience to view the interiors of his fleshy mental personifications [through his graphic art]’ (p. 64), the corporeality of Christ
with his open wounds acquires an added significance. It is an act of
sympathising that brings the self an understanding of, and an accordance with, the spiritual law or mind of Christ and this sympathy itself
can only be awoken by the sight or art of suffering and death. The
Moravians, like the Muggletonians (and also like the materialists Hobbes
and Priestley), believe adamantly in the resurrection of the whole Body:
the Resurrection of the Saviour with his intire Body is expressly
alleged in the Scripture as the Fore-runner of ours, Himself being
stiled the First-born from the Dead: It is for His sake, that we rejoice
very much in this glorious Destiny of our Corpse; and, in order to
shew in public our most explicit Faith in that Matter, and the Credit
The Opening Eye 105
his Promises have with us, the Burying places become pleasant
Gardens to our Citizens; and the Visit we pay to the yearly-deposited
Bones of our Fellow-Members, in the very Morning of Easter, is a simple
Act in Consequence thereof. (An Account, p. 100)
The empirical fact of Christ’s death, the vision of his corpse, thus
becomes central to the ‘Credit’ given to the promise of redemption.
There is an economy of sacrifice at work here, but it is not conducted
behind closed doors. Faith is here made explicit and the decomposing
bodies of the deceased themselves mark out the site for its public
display.
‘He conversed with Angels’
‘I have frequently been present at the conversation of angels with
novitiate spirits’, we read in one of Swedenborg’s many ‘memorable
relations’, ‘and once I heard them discoursing on the consummation of
the age and the destruction of the world’ (NJR, I, p. 76). In The Marriage,
as we have seen, Blake’s comments on the apocalypse suggest not an
annihilation of the material world as such, but rather ‘an improvement
of sensual enjoyment’ (14; E39). This may well be something he picks
up from Swedenborg whose angels dismiss the novitiates’ theories of an
apocalypse brought about through an explosion of the sun, eruption
of volcanoes or impact of a comet, pointing out instead that biblical
representations of the Apocalypse are meant to be taken in a spiritual
rather than a natural sense. In particular, the angels set out to demonstrate that the spiritual world is itself as real and substantial as the
natural one:
Ye are now in the spiritual world, and yet ye do not know but that
you are still in the natural world; Here, the heaven where angels are
is over your head, and hell where devils and satans are, is under feet:
Is not the ground whereon we all stand, earth? strike it with your feet
and try. (Ibid., pp. 77–8)
One is perhaps reminded of Dr Johnson who, as the story goes, refuted
Berkeley’s idealism by kicking a stone. Nevertheless, Swedenborg, unlike
Johnson, is concerned with demonstrating the objective existence of
spiritual reality rather than the natural world, and the pragmatic demonstrations of his angels can indeed come across sounding alternately
self-righteous and naïve. That said, his memorable relations represent
106 Visionary Materialism in Blake
a convergence of theosophical elements from the Kabbalah, Boehme
and Moravianism together with a miscellany of other ideas that he
picked up through association with the freemasons. Of particular interest
is his commitment to the idea of spiritual form, which itself would seem
to resemble the Muggletonian idea of the ‘spiritual substance’, and to
the notion that ‘the Deity, or Divine Nature, as constituting heaven, is
also in a Human Form: and that such Human Form is the Divine
Humanity of the Lord’.7
Blake’s extensive annotations of Swedenborg’s Treatise Concerning
Heaven and Hell, The Wisdom of Angels, Concerning Divine Love and Divine
Wisdom and The Wisdom of Angels Concerning the Divine Providence
provide evidence of a detailed dialogue with the mystic, which begins
in friendship and develops into the most fervent opposition. Of particular
import is the impact of empiricism on Swedenborg, himself an erstwhile
student of Locke, and the ways in which his ideas about spiritual form
and the relation between the natural and the spiritual worlds inform
Blake’s own thinking in this area. Despite the fact that Swedenborg
‘only holds a candle in [Boehme’s] sunshine’ (The Marriage, 22; E43), he
did have one thing that set him above his theosophical predecessor: he
at least ‘conversed with’ rather than speculated about ‘Angels’ (ibid.).
And this conversation signalled an empirical interaction with a portion
of the divine, albeit with a portion against which Blake often directed
his own wrath and derision. Swedenborg also represents the most
definite crossover between theosophy and rational empiricism, for in
addition to his mystical speculations he was also an avid scientist and
inventor famous for his anticipation of ‘many subsequent hypotheses
and discoveries (nebular theory, magnetic theory, machine-gun,
aeroplane)’.8 Even within his mystical writings, one finds a great
emphasis on the power of experience and literal observation. Thus,
the full title of Heaven and Hell, ‘A Treatise Concerning Heaven and
Hell, and of the Wonderful Things therein, as Heard and Seen’,
presents the text as a description of personal experience and claims for
itself an empirical authority. However, Swedenborg is careful to point
out that the ability to perceive angels depends upon exercising an
additional faculty of sensation and, echoing Locke directly, he represents ‘the material eye’ as ‘so gross, that it cannot discern the more
minute parts of nature [. . .] much less those things which are [. . .] in
the spiritual world’ (ibid.). But in contrast to Locke – and Priestley as
well – Swedenborg sets himself up as one who has had his spiritual eye
opened and can therefore perceive spiritual objects ‘as if [. . .] with his
bodily eyes’ (§76).
The Opening Eye 107
Swedenborg’s programme is, in certain respects, one of demystification
of the divine realm. Not only does the divine humanity provide a figure
through which to relate to the deity, but Swedenborg provides a vision
of the afterlife that goes beyond describing the body of, for example,
Christ, expanding this to include visions of angelic and satanic bodies
as well. ‘But to come to experience’, Swedenborg writes, ‘That angels
are human forms of men, I have seen a thousand times, and have
conversed with them, as one man with another, sometimes singly,
sometimes with many together’ (Heaven and Hell, §74). These angels
and devils are human beings who have died and assumed their eternal
forms in the spiritual world, but, as the controversial Conjugal Love
makes clear, ‘that world hath been heretofore unknown, and mankind
been in total ignorance that the angels of heaven are men, in a perfect
form, and in like manner infernal spirits, but in an imperfect form’.9
Moreover, a central part of improving humanity’s knowledge of the
divine entails a recognition of the cosmic significance of the sexual act
(Schuchard, ‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’, p. 61), and, as Conjugal Love makes
explicit, intercourse between husband and wife can rightly be expected
to continue into the afterlife:
That there are marriages in heaven, cannot be admitted as an article
of faith with those [. . .] whose idea of a soul or spirit is as of an
attenuated aether or vapour[. . .]. [F]or it would in such case have
been objected, how can soul be joined with soul or vapour with
vapour, as one conjugal partner with another here on earth? [. . .]
[B]ut now, inasmuch as several particulars have been revealed [. . .] it
is possible that the assertion respecting marriages, as having place in
that world, may be established and confirmed, even so as to convince
the reason, by the following positions, I. That man liveth as a man
after death. II. That in this case a male is a male, and a female a female.
III. That every one’s proper love remaineth with him after death. IV.
That expeciall the love of the sex remaineth, and with those who go
to heaven, as is the case with all who become spiritual here on earth,
Conjugal Love remaineth. V. These things fully confirmed by ocular
demonstration. VI. Consequently that there are marriages in the
heavens. VII. That spiritual nuptials are to be understood by the
Lord’s words where he saith, that after the resurrection they neither
marry nor are given in marriage. (Conjugal Love, §27)
The relationship of the self with God is, as the preface makes clear,
interrelated with the relationship with one’s sexual partner, ‘inasmuch
108 Visionary Materialism in Blake
as the blessedness of that love to eternity will depend altogether upon
the degree of purification and regeneration attained to by the sincere
love of God’ (p. iv). In Swedenborg too, therefore, the most perfect relationship with the divine other is made visible in a corporeal manner,
through the interaction of two distinct bodies whose sexual union does
not signal a destruction of individual identities, even if those identities
are for a time merged in a union emblematic of the Godhead.
This sense of the significance of the sexualised body corresponds with
particular modes of radical politics. As Schuchard reports, the promotion
of Swedenborg’s more risqué sexual and alchemical theories, by Augustus
Nordenskjöld and Charles Bernhard Wadström, ‘exacerbated an emerging
liberal–conservative split in the society’ (‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’, p. 65)
and prompted the establishment of an independent church at Great
Eastcheap, which would remain separate from the revolutionary
Masonic Lodges across Europe. William and Catherine Blake attended
the Great Eastcheap Conference held in April 1789 and signed the
manifesto intended to heal the rift. However, the division remained
and was exacerbated when Nordenskjöld attempted to persuade the liberals to join a secret interior order that would promote the more radical
sexual and political aspects of Swedenborgian theosophy (ibid., pp. 65–6).
In addition to pro-revolutionary activities, Swedenborg’s ideas about
conjugal love also intersected with the promotion of abolition via
Nordenskjöld’s proposal to set up a Swedenborgian community in Africa,
‘organized on the central premise of prolonged “Virile Potency”’,10
another issue that receives considerable attention in the New Jerusalem
Magazine (see in particular Volumes 1 and 2). The publication of
Swedenborg’s texts and promotion of his ideas are thus of particular
significance in the genealogy of the unfolding of mystery which we
have been discussing. On the one hand, this was accomplished through
the formation of secret societies associated with freemasonry, though
on the other the ultimate objectives of at least some Swedenborgians
involved the removal of political and religious obscurity and the
universal promotion of republicanism and abolition alongside a set of
theosophical teachings that emphasised spiritual experience over received
tradition, stressed the human manifestation of the deity, and placed
great importance on the visible body as this would be translated into
spiritual form.11
Blake’s knowledge and incorporation of Swedenborg’s ideas is widely
acknowledged and his annotations to Heaven and Hell as well as Divine
Love and Divine Providence are extant. His comments on Heaven and Hell
and Divine Love are generally favourable, but his remarks on Divine
The Opening Eye 109
Providence accuse Swedenborg of contradiction, Predestinarianism, and
‘Lies & Priestcraft’.12 Although Blake and Catherine put their names to
the Eastcheap manifesto, his disillusionment with the church and
increasing antipathy towards Swedenborg himself appears to have
occurred shortly thereafter. In addition to the critical nature of his
annotations to Divine Providence, Viscomi’s re-dating of The Marriage
indicates that by the end of 1790 Blake had completed his overt parody
of Swedenborgian doctrine (‘The Evolution of The Marriage’, pp. 284–5;
Blake and the Idea, pp. 235–40). As Schuchard notes, however, ‘though
[he] scorned the prudish “angels” of the Eastcheap Society, he would
have found ready sympathizers for his illuminated prophecies among
the illuminist “devils” of the Universal Society’ (‘Secret Masonic History’,
p. 46). Nonetheless, though Blake’s work retains aspects of Swedenborgian
doctrine and whilst he certainly continued to sympathise with the
more radical Swedenborgians, many of his attacks are directed towards
the prophet himself. Moreover, Blake was not alone in his attacks on
Swedenborg’s vanity and his concern over an overstatement of the
prophet’s insight. As Worrall points out, similar issues were pointed out
in March 1789, by fellow Swedenborgian W. Brian, whose letter carried
sufficient ‘political resonance [. . .] to be discussed by the Privy Council’
the following December (‘Blake and 1790s Plebeian Radical Culture’,
pp. 197–8). Not only does this indicate a lively debate about the writings
of Swedenborg himself, but it heightens the sense that such debates
carried a strong political charge.
There are several possible explanations for Blake’s seemingly abrupt
change of heart regarding Swedenborg. Thompson argues that the
initial affinity between Blake and Swedenborg is itself problematic as ‘it
is difficult to understand what a poet with an imagination so concrete
could have made of a language which dissolves whatever it touches into
abstractions’ (p. 133). He suggests that Blake’s early embrace of Swedenborg
stems from their shared indebtedness to Boehme, ‘that Blake was reading
into Swedenborg opinions which he already held and which he seemed
to glimpse through hazes which arose probably from similar Behmenist
fires’ (ibid.). However, not only is it problematic to describe the concrete
visions of spiritual experience as ‘abstractions’, but Swedenborg’s
impact is certainly more influential than Thompson allows, for key
Blakean concepts – such as the Poetic Genius, the ‘phantasy’ and the
limitations of natural science – seem to have evolved through Blake’s
engagement with Swedenborg. Far more useful is Thompson’s suggestion
that Blake’s hostility was due in part to the conflicts within the New
Church (p. 167), though it is clear that Blake himself engaged in the
110 Visionary Materialism in Blake
debates surrounding conjugal love. That Blake took such conflict to
heart is suggested in his annotations to Divine Love. Swedenborg’s text
aligns love and understanding with the Behmenist contraries of light
and heat, proposing that ‘if they are both elevated, a Marriage of them
is effected’ (§414). Blake endorses this distinction and incorporates it
into his response to a doctrinal dispute within the New Church: ‘Is it
not false then, that love recieves influx thro the understandg as was
asserted in the society’ (§414; E608). The importance that Blake
attached to the relationship between love and understanding is attested
to by his subsequent comments on section 419, where he draws on
Swedenborg to conclude that ‘[love] was not created impure & is not
naturally so’ and that ‘it does not recieve influx thro the understanding’
(E608). Blake’s concern over the exact relationship between love and
understanding suggests that he finds something of positive significance
in Swedenborg’s reworking of Boehme’s ‘heat’ and ‘light’. In particular,
his dispute with ‘the society’ results from a disagreement about the role
played by understanding, which Blake, following Swedenborg, insists
must be viewed as bearing a contrary, though necessary, relation to
love.13 Moreover, as Schuchard points out, the conflict over divine
influx was itself caught up on conservative anxieties concerning the
erotic aspects of this teaching (‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’, p. 65).
Swedenborg’s ideas about the influx of love are of continued influence
on Blake, even after he leaves the New Church and largely forsakes
the prophet. However, it is important to recognise that in the social
context of 1790, Blake’s accusation that Swedenborg ‘conversed not
with Devils[. . .], for he was incapable thro’ his conceited notions’ (The
Marriage, 22; E43) carries political as well as philosophical undertones,
associating Swedenborg with mental passivity and the rational usurper
who ‘governs the unwilling’ (5; E34). Although Sabri-Tabrizi’s inference
that Blake would have found Swedenborg’s political and religious background repugnant needs to be tempered with an awareness of the
Swede’s ties with Jacobinism and the radical politics of the Ancient
Masonic lodges, his suggestion that Swedenborg’s ‘Heaven’ refers to the
world of churchmen and nobles seems, on the basis of The Marriage at
least, to capture the overall sense of Blake’s objections, though in the
caricatures of Swedenborgian angels Blake may well have in mind
particular individuals within the conservative faction of the New
Church.14 In any case, there is another sense in which Swedenborg’s
theosophy runs counter to Blake’s own ideas about the relationship
between vision and politics. Whereas Blake’s poetry repeatedly emphasises
the connection between spiritual vision and the socio-political context
The Opening Eye 111
in which it occurs, Swedenborg insists that it can only occur when one
‘is withdrawn inwardly’ (Heaven and Hell, §76). Indeed, Urizen, himself
‘A self-contemplating shadow’ (Urizen, 3.21; E71), can be seen to represent the perils of the withdrawal into introspection, as can the ill-fated
exodus of Urizen’s children, who ‘left the pendulous earth: / [. . .] called
it Egypt, & left it’ (ibid., 28.21–2; E83).
Swedenborg draws a sharp distinction between natural light and
spiritual light, arguing that it is the latter which provides the living
force of creation and at times Blake almost sounds as if he endorses this
distinction. When Swedenborg argues that man may comprehend
divine omnipresence by elevating his thoughts into a spiritual light,
Blake writes ‘Observe the distinction here between Natural & Spiritual
as seen by Man’ and he remarks that ‘Man may comprehend. but not
the natural or external man’ (Divine Love, §8, 9; E603). However, Blake’s
endorsement of this dichotomy is not as unambiguous as it may first
appear. If we take ‘Natural & Spiritual’ as the object of the verb ‘seen’
in the first remark, then it appears that Blake is simply directing our
attention to the fact that ‘Man’ sees both nature and spirit. However,
the main verb, ‘Observe’, directs our attention to ‘distinction’ and if we
take this as the object of ‘seen’, then the meaning is rather different, for
what ‘Man’ is seeing is the dichotomy rather than its two poles. Bringing
Blake’s second comment, which speaks of man’s twofold comprehension, to bear on his first, we can suggest that the ‘distinction’ itself will
be perceived differently by the natural and the spiritual. ‘Man may
comprehend’, can be read simply as ‘Man may understand’, but it
might also carry further ideas of bringing the natural and the spiritual
together. The OED lists several relevant usages, including ‘To grasp, take
in, or apprehend with the senses’, which might suggest an expanded
mode of perception capable of perceiving both the spiritual and the
natural; ‘To include in the same category’, which again would emphasise
the notion of effacing the dichotomy; and ‘To enclose or have within it;
to contain; to lie around’, which points towards the inclusion of both
the natural and the spiritual within the human form. Such a reading
implies a threat to the stability of the distinction between the spiritual
and the natural which is central to Swedenborg’s idea of divine light:
‘Without two Suns the one living and the other dead, there can be no
Creation’ (E605).15 Blake’s response to this idea is equivocal: ‘False
philosophy according to the letter. but true according to the spirit’
(E605). While Blake seems to support the gist of Swedenborg’s assertion,
he clearly rejects a literal understanding of the distinction between the
spiritual (living sun) and the natural (dead sun), a move that clearly
112 Visionary Materialism in Blake
anticipates later condemnations of mind–body dualism in The Marriage
and Visions.
In section 164, however, Swedenborg clearly posits the actual existence
of two suns: ‘it follows that the one Sun is living and that the other Sun
is dead, also that the dead Sun itself was created by the living Sun from
the Lord’ (E605). In the left margin, Blake again queries Swedenborgian
dualism, asking ‘how could life create death’ (ibid.). Although Blake is
prepared to accept the dead sun as a symbol of fallen or natural perception,
he insists that it ‘is only a phantasy of evil Man’ (§166; E605) and he
categorically refuses to recognise the existence of anything that does
not actively participate in the process of living creation. Thus, when
Swedenborg declares that ‘the Heat, Light and Atmospheres of the natural
World conduce nothing to this Image of Creation, but only the Heat,
Light and Atmospheres of the Sun of the spiritual World’, Blake concludes,
‘Therefore the Natural Earth & Atmosphere is a Phantasy’ (§315; E607).
This conclusion marks a significant point of contention between Blake
and Swedenborg, for whereas Swedenborg develops a heterogeneous
and hierarchical onto-theological system, Blake’s world-view rejects the
dualism of his predecessor. There are different modes of vision, but only
one true mode of existence, even if this is, as we’ve been suggesting
tentative and dynamic, an experience that comes close to Derrida’s
descriptions of the perhaps. To give credence to the idea of a natural
world distinct from the spiritual is to ascribe a positive ontological
status to an illusion.
This difference between a homogeneous and heterogeneous perspective
has important ramifications for the idea of spiritual vision. For Swedenborg,
the prophet removes himself from the world of human beings and
aligns himself with the world of angels; for Blake, on the other hand,
the prophetic experience occurs on a human level. When Swedenborg
refers to the act of ‘keeping the Understanding some Time in Spiritual Light’,
Blake insists, ‘this Man can do while in the body’ and in response to
Swedenborg’s assertion that men cannot feel spiritual heat and light,
Blake writes, ‘He speaks of Men as meer earthly Men not as receptacles of
spirit, or else he contradicts N 257’ (§40, 181; E604, 605; italics signify
Blake’s underlining). Likewise, where Swedenborg declares that ‘Man,
whilst he is in natural Heat and Light, knoweth nothing of spiritual Heat
and Light’, Blake maintains that ‘This is certainly not to be understood
according to the letter for it is false by all experience’ (ibid.).
Blake expends considerable energy attempting to discredit those
interpretations that present Swedenborg’s ideas about nature and spirit,
body and soul, in a manner unfavourable to his own. In addition to the
The Opening Eye 113
controversy over the relationship between love and understanding, Blake
also alludes to interpreters who, he alleges, misunderstand Swedenborg’s
dualism:
Many perversely understand him. as if man while in the body was
only conversant with natural Substances, because themselves are
mercenary & worldly & have no idea of any but worldly gain.
(§257; E606)
However, there is a sense in which Blake appears to be protesting too
much, such as when Swedenborg insists that there is nothing infinite in
the created world and Blake qualifies his adamant opposition –
‘False
Take it so or the contrary it comes to the same for if a thing
loves it is infinite’ – with the suggestion that ‘Perhaps we only differ in
the meaning of the words Infinite & Eternal’ (§49; E604).16 By 1790,
however, when he was annotating Divine Love, Blake had clearly moved
from an apologetic stance to one of full-blown oppositional critique:
the Swedenborgian angel had become a spectre in need of conjuring and
correcting. Whereas the annotations to Divine Love attempt to efface
any underlying contradictions in its argument, in Divine Providence Blake
seizes on Swedenborg’s inconsistencies as marks of philosophical weakness. Thus, in response to section 329, Blake declares: ‘Read N 185 &
There See how Swedenborg contradicts himself & N 69 / See also 277 &
203’ (E611).
It is difficult to know with certainty what caused Blake’s change of
heart. Perhaps it was related to conflicts in the New Church or perhaps
Blake’s reading of Divine Providence caused him to recognise irreconcilable
differences between himself and Swedenborg. Whatever happened,
happened fast. The rapidity with which Blake revises his assessment of
Swedenborg, between the Easter of 1789 and the commencement of his
work on The Marriage, in what must have been the earlier part of 1790,
suggests that whatever compelled Blake to change his mind happened
both forcefully and suddenly. The fact that this disillusionment was
contemporaneous with the declaration of the National Assembly, the
fall of the Bastille and the ratification of the Rights of Man in France
seems unlikely to be a coincidence. On the contrary, as Erdman notes,
the events in France were accorded a profound significance by Blake
and those around him, sparking ‘a renascence of popular enthusiasm in
England such as had not existed even in the days of Wilkes and Liberty’
(Prophet, p. 151). Despite the radical politics of many Swedenborgians, it
is entirely possible that Blake’s misgivings about certain aspects of
114 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Swedenborg’s thought, together with the exclusivity and inward turn
of his prophetic gaze, were heightened by the Revolution. Somewhat
surprisingly, neither Sabri-Tabrizi nor Thompson, both of whom pay
considerable attention to the relationship between Blake’s thought
and its social context, discuss the impact of the Revolution on his
Swedenborgianism. Erdman, on the other hand, does suggest a connection,
remarking that by 1790 Blake ‘had been drawn by the French Revolution away from the wisdom of angels’ and linking Blake’s affiliation
with ‘devils’ in The Marriage to his sympathies for the revolutionaries
(ibid., pp. 142, 151–2).
Erdman does not extrapolate on this link, but there are two factors
that strengthen this connection. First, in addition to the implicit political
stance involved in Blake’s rejection of angels and heaven in favour of
devils and hell, the likelihood that The Marriage was initially intended
as an anti-Swedenborgian pamphlet reinforces Erdman’s suggestion
that it represents Blake’s contribution to the Revolution Controversy
(pp. 151–2), as a shorter piece could be produced and distributed faster
than a longer work.17 Secondly, Blake’s annotations to Divine Providence
themselves call attention to the political connotations of Swedenborg’s
theosophy and in particular to his seemingly duplicitous depictions of
monarchical government. When Swedenborg speaks of ‘a King who
thinks his Kingdom and all the Men in it are for him, and not he for the
Kingdom and all the Men of which it consists’, Blake notes that ‘He says
at N 201 No King hath such a Government as this for all Kings are
Universal in their Government otherwise they are No Kings’ (§220;
E610). At issue here is Swedenborg’s use of earthly monarchies to
structure his conceptualisation of divine providence. God must,
Swedenborg argues, have absolute control over creation: ‘for if a King
were to allow his Subjects to govern [. . .], he would no longer be a
King [. . .] Such a King cannot be said to hold the Government, much
less universal Government’ (§201; E610). Not only does this reveal the
Predestinarianism which Blake discovers in Swedenborg’s idea of providence, but it also exposes the connection between Swedenborg’s God
and the government of absolute and potentially tyrannous monarchs
on earth. In a revolutionary climate still charged with optimistic republicanism, which Blake shared, such views could not but sound reactionary
and oppressive.
Blake’s ideas about the direction of prophetic vision – with its stress
on a human, embodied and outward-looking experience – are, in
themselves, distinctly different from those of Swedenborg, who
describes a withdrawal from the body and a gaze directed away from
The Opening Eye 115
the world of human experience. This difference itself has profound
repercussions for conceiving of the relationship between prophetic
vision and its socio-political context. Moreover, if Swedenborg’s
vision of the spiritual world, with its class-distinctions and monarchical
structure, is considered in the political context of 1789–90, he and
Blake begin to look very much like political opponents. In particular,
Swedenborg becomes a figure imposing a view of angelic virtue, withdrawal and passive obedience onto the prophet, who for Blake ought
to be associated with energy, liberty and sensual improvement. Not
only does this represent a betrayal of his more radical political beliefs,
but it is in a sense, which Blake may well have recognised, a betrayal
of his followers in the Universal Society, with whom Blake himself
most likely sympathised. Moreover, as Schuchard and Davies suggest
(Schuchard and Davies, II, §73), if Blake’s parents may have known
Swedenborg through their Moravian connections, the more prudish
and self-righteous spectre of Swedenborg being conjured by the
increasingly conservative Hindmarsh may well have borne the marks
of a betrayal closer to home. In Blake’s condemnations of Swedenborg,
there are traces of the animosity that he displays towards Locke, and
these may well have a similar source – the suspicion of hypocrisy.
Although Blake begins by arguing that certain members of the New
Church are misinterpreting the prophet for their own gain, on reading
Divine Providence he may well have become convinced that such
misreadings were the results of contradictions within Swedenborg’s
works themselves. If this were in fact the case, then Blake’s reclassification
of Swedenborg from corporeal friend to spiritual enemy could well be
part of an attempt to consolidate his own political identity in the face
of one whose writings he appears to have once loved too much.
Whilst Swedenborg’s memorable relations do not in themselves read
like abstractions, the division of the natural from the spiritual do tend
in that direction, as it does in the case of Locke. Moreover, although
Swedenborg’s angels do advocate some very Blakean tenets, they display
an undeniable sense of self-righteousness of the sort that we find parodied
on plates 17–20 of The Marriage. These plates describe a ‘Memorable
Fancy’ that presents an ironic account of a prototypical Swedenborgian
moment – a conversation with an angel:
An Angel came to me and said. O pitiable foolish young man! O horrible!
O dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art going in such career.
(17; E41)
116 Visionary Materialism in Blake
This opening paragraph tells us a lot. Already, the Angel is displaying
the traits of a self-closed identity, for his conversational style consists of
a series of exclamatories, and an imperative which attempt to situate
Blake’s identity within his own world-view. Moreover, it is clear that
the Angel’s perspective, his method of organising reality, is derived
from conventional interpretations of religious stories about damnation.
Blake’s reported response, though somewhat snide, nevertheless displays
an openness to alterity and a willingness to engage in dialogue and
mutual contemplation:
I said. perhaps you will be willing to shew me my eternal lot & we
will contemplate together upon it and see whether your lot or mine
is most desirable[.] (Ibid.)
Blake is playing the Angel at his own game and he is playing to win.
The invitation to ‘shew’ suggests that Blake can be convinced through
demonstration by bodily senses, a method of persuasion deployed by
Swedenborg and noted by Blake in Divine Love (§41; E604). However,
Blake reserves the right to interpret the results of this experimental
excursion in his own way; that is, in accordance with desire, for value here
is not dependent upon virtue but on which ‘lot [. . .] is most desirable’.
The notion that the Angel is on the side of reason, established religion
and empirical methodology is suggested by the route he takes to ‘hell’.
First, they pass through ‘a stable’, which within The Marriage can be
connected with the ‘horses of instruction’ from plate 9 and on an intertextual level with Swift’s equine bastions of reason, the Houyhnhnms –
note that the rational messiah falling into hell on plate 5 is represented
as a horse. Next, they go ‘thro’ a church’, symbol of institutionalised
religion, then a ‘mill’, which can symbolise both economic exploitation
and the Newtonian universe, finally and appropriately arriving in ‘a cave’
(17; E41). In this way they arrive at the hell described in Blake’s annotations to Lavater, shut up with corporeal passions inside the head of
caverned man (Aphorisms, §309; E590). Winding their way deeper into
the cavern, they at last arrive at ‘a void boundless as a nether sky’
(ibid.). Here their journey stops. Blake immediately suggests that they
‘commit [themselves] to this void, and see whether providence is here
also’ (17; E41) – that is whether God’s government is in fact universal –
but the Angel refuses, commanding Blake to ‘remain’ and ‘behold thy
lot which will soon appear when the darkness passes away’ (ibid.). It is
only by keeping Blake passive and by deterring his exploration of the
void that the Angel allows the Behmenist ‘Abyss’ to appear. The notion
The Opening Eye 117
that this vision depicts a fixed and stable outcome is central to the
Angel’s argument that this is to be Blake’s eternal lot; however, as Blake
makes clear at the end of this ‘Memorable Fancy’, it is instead one side
of a mutual imposition. The ‘Abyss’ has not been created out of nothing,
but rather is only a portion of the infinite shaped by the Angel’s selfrighteous perspective – a perspective that looks down on the natural
sun from ‘an immense distance’ and beholds it as ‘black but shining’
(18; E41). After the Angel has been suitably horrified by this contemplation
of ‘hell’, he climbs back into the mill, signalling his return to a universe
of circular reasoning. Once the Angel’s sphere of influence has been
removed, Blake is free to enjoy the specimens of genius offered by this
particular hell:
I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon
light hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The
man who never alters his opinion is like standing water & breeds
reptiles of the mind. (19; E42)
The domesticity of this scene would seem to reflect the passivity behind
the Angel’s self-righteous conjuration of hell-fire and the message
conveyed by the harper speaks to the Angel’s own harping, which
prevents him from considering alternate modes of organising experience.
Once Blake has had enough, or perhaps even too much, of this
manifestation of hell, he returns to the Angel and explains that their
experience of the Abyss was in fact ‘owing to [his] metaphysics’ (19; E42).
Blake attempts to convince the Angel of this assertion by undertaking
the same demonstration, this time in reverse. Instead of going down to
find hell, they move upwards, towards the space that in the Angel’s
world-view constitutes heaven. Their first stopping point is the sun,
where Blake dons the appropriate outfit for their visit to heaven, clothing
himself ‘in white’, and picks up ‘Swedenborg’s volumes’, an ironically
appropriate guide to heavenly climes (ibid.). Next, they light on Saturn,
which is significant both within Roman mythology, where Saturn is the
deposed monarch of the Titans, and within enlightenment astronomy
in which the planet (which lost its status as the furthest perceptible
planet with the discovery of Uranus in 1781) represents the transgression
of ‘the ratio of all we have already known’ (No Natural Religion [b]; E2).
Blake propels the Angel beyond the limits of the known, taking him
‘into the void, between saturn & the fixed stars’, where they again
arrive at ‘the stable and the church’ (19; E42). Rather than taking the
Angel to the vault, however, Blake leads him to the altar, a site of
118 Visionary Materialism in Blake
longstanding doctrinal debate over the interpretation of the Eucharist
and hence a space charged by disputes over Christ’s ontological status – an
issue Blake addresses in the next ‘Memorable Fancy’ (22–4; E43) and
one which, as we have seen, is a fundamental aspect of his Moravian
inheritance. Blake then opens the Bible, only to reveal that it is in fact
‘a deep pit’ (ibid.). On the one hand, the representation of the Bible as
a hole can be read as an allusion to eighteenth-century exegetical anxieties
over Mosaic authorship and the historical corruption of the sacred text;
on the other, it suggests that, read within the context of the established
church, the Bible becomes a gateway to Blake’s idea of hell. At the bottom
of the pit, Blake and the Angel seem to find themselves back in everyday
England, gazing upon ‘seven houses of brick’ (ibid.). Upon entering
these, they discover that the inhabitants are not human beings, but
lustful and carnivorous primates.
The monkeys may be viewed as men confined by the twin-chains of
religion and natural philosophy, which prevents them from moving
beyond the circumference of their own existence to fully embrace the
other. Moreover, this phantasy reduces their desire to the self-centred
drive to satisfy animal lusts and appetites:
& all of that species [were] chained by the middle, grinning and
snatching at each other, but witheld by the shortness of their chains:
however I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the
weak were caught by the strong and with a grinning aspect, first
coupled with & then devourd [. . .] and here & there I saw one
savourily picking the flesh off of his own tail[.] (20; E42)
The significance of these beasts within this particular scenario becomes
apparent when the narrative moves into the Mill. Presumably for
demonstrative purposes, Blake has brought along the skeleton of one of
the victims from the house, but within the Mill the body becomes
‘Aristotles Analytics’ (20; E42). Given that the apparent circularity of
Aristotelian logic was widely perceived as a motivating factor in the
development of the empirical method, this transformation from corpse
to system is appropriate in the context of the mill, which as we have
seen emblematises the circularity of both the philosophy of the schoolmen
and the empirical method that sought to replace it. Life inside the
houses is undeniably horrific, with inhabitants living out Hobbes’
conceptualisation of man in a state of nature, but in the mill the violence
suffered by the body is magnified as the victim is reduced to a mental
abstraction, to the phantasy of evil man. There is little room here for
The Opening Eye 119
a post-mortem improvement in sensual experience, let alone for any
sense of a loving relation between the deceased and the Christ.
This vision of the Angel’s eternal lot bears an ironic resemblance to
Swedenborg’s idea of hell, both in its location and in its olfactory
attributes. In Heaven and Hell (§584), Swedenborg emphasises that each
Hell is accessed through its own ‘hole’, similar to the location of the
Angel’s eternal lot at the bottom of a deep pit. Moreover, Blake’s remark
upon the ‘stench [that] terribly annoyed us’ (The Marriage, 20; E42) is
reminiscent of Swedenborg’s description of the noxious vapours that
provide the atmosphere for each Hell (§585). Thus, at the end of this
‘Fancy’ it is the Angel, rather than Blake, whose eternal lot is dreadful
and horrific, comprising an uncanny hybrid of a Swedenborgian hell
and a Hobbesian state of nature. The Angel, of course, does not perceive
the connection between his own metaphysics and this vision of torment.
He complains that ‘thy phantasy has imposed upon me’, which as Blake
points out overlooks the phantasmic status of his own demonstration:
‘I answerd: we impose on one another, & it is but lost time to converse
with you whose works are only Analytics’ (20; E42).
Of course, on an extra-textual level the Angel is right in a way that
cannot be understood from within the narrative, for Blake’s own encoding
of the episode has been done for a purpose. The narrative itself functions
as a parable and thus the Angel has, from the start, been set up as an
example that illustrates the criticism of Swedenborg which Blake makes
on the following plate:
I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves
as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting
from systematic reasoning. (21; E42)
However, by embodying this story in the narrative form of a ‘Fancy’,
the imposition of Blake as author is still of a different order than the
imposition of the Angel, which constructs itself as an eternal truth
validated through sensory demonstration. As it is embodied in a narrative
rather than a rationally demonstrative form, the Fancy openly presents
itself as a text that demands interpretation rather than as a set of
evidences or proofs that is to be taken as truth. As such, it does not
make the totalising claims made by the Urizenic philosopher-priest
who, we may recall, hides his ‘phantasies’ within ‘Sulphureous fluid’
(Urizen, 10.14; E75).
Blake’s text reveals the phantasies implied by the distinction between
nature and spirit and provides instead an example of a marriage, albeit
120 Visionary Materialism in Blake
a stormy one, of contraries in which ‘Opposition is true Friendship’
(The Marriage, 20; E42). Given Blake’s evident partisanship throughout
The Marriage, we might well question his commitment to this ideal of
amicable contrariety. However, the abrupt transition from his dismissal of
his dialogue with the Angel as ‘lost time’ to the declaration of ‘Opposition’
as ‘true Friendship’ may reflect his own sense of a certain ambivalence
regarding his theosophic opponent. Even in his overt attack on
Swedenborg’s writings as ‘a recapitulation of all superficial opinions’,
Blake grants Swedenborg ‘an analysis of the more sublime’ (22; E43).
This back-handed complement may stem from Blake’s own sense that
certain elements of Swedenborg’s thought were not entirely erroneous,
but this proximity to truth in all likelihood would have served to further
enflame Blake’s animosity.
In particular, Blake appears to have found Swedenborg’s discussion of
natural and spiritual ideas amenable to his ideas about the Poetic Genius,
which he first announced (in All Religions) in the same year as the publication of the English translation of Divine Love (1788). Swedenborg describes
the ‘natural idea’ as a conception that is contaminated by notions of space,
of ‘Length, Breadth and Heighth’ (Divine Love, §7). The spiritual idea, on the
other hand, ‘doth not derive any Thing from Space, but it derives every
Thing appertaining to it from State’ which is ‘predicated of Love, of Life,
of Wisdom, of the Affection, [and] of the Joys thence derived’ (ibid.). Thus:
In the spiritual World [. . .] [while] there appear Spaces like the Spaces
upon Earth [. . .] they are not Spaces but Appearances; for they are
not fixed and stationary as in the Earth; they can be lengthened and
contracted, changed and varied; and therefore, because they cannot
be determined by Measure, they cannot in that World be comprehended by any natural Idea. (Ibid.)
In his notes on this passage, Blake renames the spiritual idea, the ‘Poetic
idea’ (E603), which suggests the possibility that the divine can in fact
manifest itself materially through artistic production. Hence, while the
natural idea produces a phantasy that cannot accommodate anything
other than fixed measurements, the fancies produced by poetic ideas
embody divine qualities of love and affection and in so doing bring the
artist into a redemptive relationship with God. This point is brought
home in Blake’s annotation to section 10. Swedenborg writes:
the Lord, although he is in the Heavens with the Angels every where,
nevertheless appears high above them as a Sun: and whereas the
The Opening Eye 121
Reception of Love and Wisdom constitutes Affinity with him, therefore
those Heavens appear nearer to him where the Angels are in a nearer
Affinity from Reception, than where they are in a more remote
Affinity [. . .]. Similar is the Case with Man, in whom and with whom
the Lord is present.
Swedenborg here emphasises the role of love in the appearance of
proximity or distance, which is itself dependent upon the affinity of self
and other. The more love one receives, the closer one appears in relation
to God.
Blake’s response to these lines, ‘He who Loves feels love descend into
him & if he has wisdom may perceive it is from the Poetic Genius which is
the Lord’ (E603), pertains to the reception of love itself. As Schuchard
notes, the reference to wisdom likely points towards the erotic trance
described by Swedenborg (‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’, p. 65), suggesting a
conjunction – one that resurfaces in The Marriage – linking artistic production, divine love and sexual union. More than this, Blake’s annotation
echoes the representations of love and loving that we encounter in the
letters of Blake’s mother and her first husband, in which, as we have
seen, love is depicted as an act of the self that is nonetheless dependent
upon the arrival of love from Christ, the other who is both within and
without. This representation itself is echoed earlier in Divine Love, where
Swedenborg notes that ‘spiritual Heat’ (which is ‘love’) and ‘spiritual Light’
(wisdom) ‘descend also by Influx into Men and affect them, altogether
in Proportion as they become Recipients according to their Love of the
Lord, and their Love towards their Neighbour’ (§5). The capacity to love
is a gift that with no hint of paradox is bestowed upon the one who
loves, though for Swedenborg, unlike for Thomas Armitage, the amount
of love that is given is equal in measure to that which is bestowed.
Blake’s annotation, in what, without claiming definite religious affinity, we
might describe as good Moravian fashion, does away with Swedenborg’s
economic reckoning. ‘He who Loves feels love descend into him.’ There
is no implicature suggesting that love will be withheld (if, for example,
one does not love one’s neighbour sufficiently), but the experience of love
depends upon the act of loving. The apparent paradox is thus retained,
for in order to experience love – and not as an object, but as the active
subject – one must first love. Or, as Blake proclaims elsewhere, ‘Each
thing is its own cause & its own effect’ (Aphorisms, §226; E601).
‘It may be then’, Derrida writes, ‘[. . .] that only the coming of the event
allows, after the event, perhaps, what it will previously have made
possible to be thought [i.e. the conditions of possibility that in retrospect
122 Visionary Materialism in Blake
allow the event to occur]’ (Politics, p. 18). The apparent proximity with
Blake, here, is not coincidental. Derrida is close to Blake both in the
example he uses – the occurrence of primary friendship, which itself
entails active love – and in relating the arrival of the event to the question
of revelation:
a thought (ontological or meta-ontological) of conditions of possibility
and structures of revealability, or of the opening on to truth, may
well appear legitimately and methodologically anterior to gaining
access to all singular events of revelation [. . .]. ‘In fact’, ‘in truth’,
it would be only the event of revelation that would open – like
a breaking-in, making it possible after the event – the field of the
possible in which it appeared to spring forth, and for that matter
actually did so. (Ibid.)
Blake is coming at things from a similar perspective where, via Swedenborg’s
description of affection, he seems to have arrived at a definition of the
Poetic Genius which links the human being with God, the self with the
other, through a relationship constituted by active desire.
Drawing on eighteenth-century anxieties about the degeneration of
language, Swedenborg not only seeks to purge the word ‘Love’ of all
abstraction, but he does this by fusing the psychological concept of the
mental ‘affection’ with the commonplace experience of loving ‘affection’.
He writes:
Though the Word Love is so universally in the Mouths of Men,
scarcely any one knoweth what Love is; whilst he meditates upon it,
inasmuch as he cannot then form to himself any Idea of Thought
concerning it, he says either that it is not any real Thing, or that it is
only something flowing in through the Sight, Hearing, Feeling and
Conversation, and thereby affecting him; he is altogether ignorant
that it is his very Life, not only the common Life of his whole Body,
and the common Life of all his Thoughts, but also the Life of all the
Particulars thereof: A wise Man may perceive this from the following
Queries; If you remove the Affection, which is of Love, can you think
any Thing? And can you do any Thing? Doth it not happen that in
Proportion as the Affection which is of Love groweth cold, the
Thought, Speech and Action grow cold also? And that in Proportion
as it is heated, they also are heated: But this a wise Man perceiveth,
not from a Knowledge that Love is the Life of Man, but from Experience
of this Fact. (Divine Love, §1)
The Opening Eye 123
The OED notes a longstanding usage of ‘affect’ as ‘feeling, desire, or
appetite, as opposed to reason; passion, lust, evil-desire’ and another as ‘the
way in which a thing is physically affected or disposed; especially, the
actual state of the body’. The second usage is particularly evident in Priestley
and Hartley, where ‘affection’ is used as a general term for ‘mental operations’ such as ‘memory, imagination, volition, [and] reasoning’, which,
they argue, affect the physical state of the brain.18 Swedenborg’s usage
conjoins the affective component of thought and its manifestations in
speech and action to a concept of love as a divine emanation. Without
love there could be no affect, no thought or experience of any sort whatsoever; but the knowledge of this fact, the just conception of love in the
mind, can only be perceived through ‘Experience of this Fact’, which, as
we have seen, Swedenborg insists is itself dependent upon the act of loving.
Blake, contrary to Swedenborg, remarks that this can also be perceived
‘from Knowledge but not with the natural part’ (§1; E602), suggesting
perhaps an innate awareness open to the Poetic Genius. However, Blake
anticipates Derrida by suggesting that the thought, the image, must
precede the experience:
Think of a white cloud. as being holy you cannot love it but think of
a holy man within the cloud love springs up in your thought. for to
think of holiness distinct from man is impossible to the affections.
thought alone can make monsters. but the affections cannot[.]
(Divine Love, §11; E603)19
The sort of ‘mental affect’ described by empirical physiologists makes
a monster out of human beings by divorcing love from affection. Thus,
affection is no longer that which induces men and women to move
beyond themselves but rather it becomes self-closed, referring only to
the manner in which the body affects itself through an enclosed system
of nervous fibres. Ironically, Priestley’s attempts to make the soul
materialise by inserting it into the domain of empirical science (i.e. the
perceivable body), reduce the affect to the status of a mere effect, to
a fixed arrangement of spatial relations whose capacity for redemption
is tied to the irrational promise of an inaccessible other. As Blake writes
beside section 14 of Divine Love, ‘Thought without affection makes
a distinction between Love & Wisdom as it does between body & Spirit’
(E603). Thus, the jurisprudent God is rendered distinct from the God of
compassion, and redemption becomes a matter of passive obedience
rather than active engagement. Desire becomes construed as a sin, not
in its fulfilment, but in its failure to fulfil.
124 Visionary Materialism in Blake
The image at the bottom of plate 4 of The Marriage nicely illustrates
this sense of messianic impotence. The figure on the right is surrounded
by the flames of bodily desire, his body echoes the movement of the
flames outwards, and he is reaching towards the woman with the child
on the left, who is likewise moving towards him. But, as Erdman notes,
‘they are kept apart by her clutching of the infant and by a chain on the
man’s right ankle’.20 Although the chain is not present in all copies, the
fact that the figures do not touch suggests that the barrier between
them has not been entirely surpassed. But it is not the fire which is
impeding them. While one of the man’s legs is being carried upwards
by the flame, the other remains embroiled in the dark waters beneath
the fire. The woman, meanwhile, is being impeded because her forward
movement is obstructing, and is obstructed by, the child’s movement
towards the sun behind them. If the woman would release the child to
follow his or her volition and if the man could free himself from the
darkness that opposes the flames, the two would, it seems, meet.
This potential union represents the movement out from one’s own
circumference and into someone else’s. Such interpenetration is intimated
in the depiction of the figures embracing at the bottom of the title page.
Both are naked and appear to be kissing, suggesting sexual intimacy.
The figure on the left, like the man on the bottom of plate 4, is being
lifted outwards with the flames, but he does not appear to be bound
down and both of his feet are firmly positioned in the centre of the fire.
The figure on the right is resting upon a cloud or a billow of smoke and,
though reclining, is also unbound. Although neither the smoke nor the
fire is arranged in a perfect circle, the fire seems to be at its most intense
in the bottom left corner of the plate and the smoke seems densest near
the bottom right. This gives the impression that both the fire and the
smoke are radiating out from their respective centres and intermingling
in the middle of the plate with the flames wrapping themselves around
the smoke. The distinction between the cloud or smoke and the fire, as
well as the difference in their postures, suggests that each figure exists
within its own particular encasing. However, both figures are reaching
out from their respective centres in order to embrace at the point where
the fire and the smoke meet. On one level, this image appears to represent
the potential of interpersonal connection. Not only the interpenetration
of fire and smoke/cloud, but also the act of embrace, the suggestion of
a kiss and the apparent eye contact suggest that the two figures have
managed to reach beyond themselves, whilst still retaining their own
individual identities, as represented by their respective ‘atmospheres’.
Moreover, the five couples ascending in the space above them suggest
The Opening Eye 125
an even more complete and active union. On a more (sublimely) allegorical
level, moreover, this image hints at a marriage of contraries, with the
figure on the left representing an active devil and the figure on the right
a more passive – though, as the reciprocity of the embrace suggests, not
entirely docile or virtuous – angel (see Erdman, Illuminated, p. 98).
Mutual imposition has been replaced by affectionate interaction and
desire has moved from phantasy into enactment.
The rejection of a certain spectre of Swedenborg contains within
itself, as it does in Blake’s mental war with Locke, elements stolen, perhaps
unconsciously, from the opposition. In his discussion of Marx, Derrida
will make much of the twofold sense of ‘conjuration’ as an act that, on
the one hand, evokes or brings forth the ghost, spirit or spectre, but on
the other seeks to ‘expulse the evil spirit’ (Specters, pp. 40–1, 44).
Nowhere is this twofold effect more evident than in The Marriage, on two
plates that we have examined before. On plate 23, prior to his devilish
conversion, the angel, outraged by the devil’s image of worshipping
God as he is incarnated in human beings, changes colour in a manner
that can clearly be connected with Priestley (Gleckner, p. 38), but the
idea that such self-righteous indignation might instigate such alterations
could well come from Swedenborg’s description of ‘Satans’, whose
appearances are tied directly to their successive states of mind:
This Satan [. . .] appeared, at first, with a white living face, afterwards
with a dead pale face, and, lastly, with a black infernal face. [. . .]
[S]uch are the successive states of their minds, who are merely
natural. For [. . .] the inmost principles of their minds, inasmuch as
they are infernal, are represented in their faces by the blackness; the
middle principles, inasmuch as they have falsified truths, by the
dead paleness, but the outermost principles, by the living whiteness;
because, when they are in externals, which takes place when they are
in public assembly, they can think, confirm, understand, and teach
truths. (NJM, I, pp. 43–4)
Blake’s chameleon angel similarly becomes ‘white pink & smiling’
when his mind settles on externals, on public modes of worship and
obedience such as the ten commandments (23; E43). This connection,
moreover, highlights the link between the ‘natural’ reason and the
paucity of spiritual knowledge provided by orthodox religion – a
connection posited by both Blake and Swedenborg. In a similar vein,
the reading proposed above for plate 14, which suggests that the
Blakean apocalypse involves the annihilation of certain onto-theological
126 Visionary Materialism in Blake
presumptions rather than a destruction of the material universe as such,
seems to owe something to Swedenborg’s own description of the ‘the
consummation of the age’ as the destruction not of the material world,
but as a transformation in the way that humanity thinks about the
spiritual world (NJM, I, pp. 76–8). What such incorporation suggests,
particularly when it occurs – as it does here – in combination with the
conjurement of figures such as Priestley and Locke, is not only an
example of the multifarious nature of inheritance, but also the appearance again of the friendly enemy. In the annotations to Heaven and Hell
and Divine Love, Swedenborg appears as a friend, while in the hostile
remarks found in Divine Providence and The Marriage he becomes an
enemy. In both roles, however, he remains a key figure in the evolution
of Blake’s thoughts on the relation between the natural and the spiritual,
on the development of a vision of experience open to alterity. Even
when opposition to the prophet reaches its apex, his ghost walks the
corridors of Blake’s work, haunting it alongside all the others. Visor
lifted, we see him now besmirched, now ‘white pink & smiling’.
Divine vision as political force
From a seer who converses with the dead in the next world, we come to
a prophet who beholds angels and devils walking the streets of this one.
In the conjunction of spiritual vision and radical politics that cannot be
entirely expunged from Swedenborg’s angelic relations, we find a precursor
to the waves of enthusiasm that, as Mee suggests, work to threaten the
status quo of London in the 1790s (Dangerous Enthusiasm, p. 47). In
addition to Priestley, Mee notes that Blake’s prophetic rhetoric belies
a marked similarity to the writings of Richard Brothers, who shared
Blake’s belief in the egalitarian and continual possibility of divine inspiration and who, like Blake, ‘offered to supplement and even replace the
received prophetic canon with [his] own visionary experience’ (p. 20).
Brothers himself attributes political significance to his divine vision and
prophetic mission:
I wrote to the King, Queen, and Minister of state, to inform them
[. . .] that the time was nearly accomplished for some of the Judgments
of God to be made manifest [. . .]: I beseeched them in the most
earnest and respectful language, not to join in the War on any
account whatever, or even encourage it; for the death of Louis the
sixteenth would be impossible to prevent [. . .]; the Revolution in
France, and its consequences, proceeded entirely from the Judgment
The Opening Eye 127
of God [. . .]: therefore all attempts to [. . .] preserve the Monarchy by
force, was opposing what was determined in the Scripture of Truth.
(II, p. 7)
It is little surprise that Brothers came to the attention of the Privy
Council and had his prophecies derided by opponents of the Revolution.
In addition to the pro-revolutionary aspect of Brothers’ prophecy, the
outward direction of his prophetic gaze provides a useful contrast with
the inward vision endorsed by Swedenborg. Whereas Swedenborg
rejects the natural in favour of the spiritual, Brothers imbues natural
events with spiritual significance. Thus, ‘the THUNDER that was heard
in the evening of the third of August 1793’ becomes ‘the voice of the
Angel mentioned in the Nineteenth chapter of the Revelation’;
similarly, ‘The SECOND THUNDER [. . .] on Wednesday evening the
seventh of August, 1793 [. . .] was the voice of the Angel ascending from
the East, having the Seal of the living God’ (A Revealed Knowledge, I,
p. 50). For Brothers, as for Blake, hearing the divine voice in the natural
world does not depend upon rational investigation, but rather upon the
immediate inspiration of God, which permits the prophet to interpret
the natural as divine. Moreover, like the prophecies of Ranters such as
Coppe and Salmon, Brothers’ spiritual visions incorporate earthly situations and locales. During one particular vision, for example, Brothers
perceives ‘Satan walking leisurely in London’, while in another he
watches ‘a large River run through London coloured with human
blood’ (ibid., p. 45). The location of spiritual events within actual
geographical locations not only speaks to their political relevance, but
also effaces the distinction between the human and the divine, positing
an intersection of divine time (i.e. the history and prophecies of the
Bible) and human time.
Brothers’ writing, like that of his seventeenth-century predecessors,
demonstrates an impulse for demystification, for unfolding a mystery
that is rendered no less tremendous as it bespeaks the onset of apocalypse.
In his explication of the prophecies of Daniel, Brothers interprets the
dream Daniel had during the beginning of Belshazzar’s reign as a vision
of the downfall of George III:
The Lion means George the third, the present King of England:
Plucking the wings of the Lion, means taking away the Power of the
King: Made stand on his feet as a man, with a man’s heart; means his
reduction to the condition of other men, and possessing similar
thoughts.
128 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Brothers was by no means alone in his millenarianism. Priestley
likewise remarks that ‘it appears to me highly probable, as I hinted in
my last discourse on this occasion, that the present disturbances in
Europe are the beginning of those very calamitous times [which will
precede the arrival of the kingdom of Christ]’.21 However, although
Priestley anticipates the removal of mystery and ‘the hand of God in
the great scene that is now opening upon us’ (p. 31), he differs from
Brothers in not linking his interpretation of prophecies to a personal
prophetic experience. Providence may well be directing Priestley’s
enquiries behind the scenes, but he does not lay claims to the sort of
visionary experience we find in Brothers. Similarly, Brothers echoes
Priestley, and other exegetes such as Geddes, in his view that the Bible’s
materiality and historicity rendered it subject to corruption:
LENGTH of time, change of Countries and Governments, corruption
of Language, and hasty copies in writing, [.. .] produces a disagreement
in some few parts, and makes it differ from what it originally was in
the time of David[,] [. . .]: some parts of the English translation are
consequently erroneous: but they are so immaterial as not to affect
in the least the truth of its sacred Records, or the tendency of its
Divine instruction. (A Revealed Knowledge, II, p. 3)
However, unlike his less prophetically inclined counterparts, Brothers
attempts to turn these to his advantage, for the possibility of scriptural
error provides the potential for correction, allowing him to present his
own alterations to the biblical text as ‘by the direction and command of
the Lord God’ (A Revealed Knowledge, I, p. 41). Moreover, in a move that
we have encountered above, Brothers insists that his conjunction with
God enables him to provide an authoritative and supersessive exegesis:
I proceed through the Scripture, regularly uncovering, by revealed
Knowledge as I go, its sacred Records WHICH HAVE BEEN PRESERVED
FOR ME, holding each one up for public View [. . .]; that all Men may
behold and examine them, that all men may perceive their Truth,
and admire [. . .], not only what was wrote by Daniel at Babylon,
EXPLAINED IN LONDON, but likewise a similar Communication of
REVEALED KNOWLEDGE. (A Revealed Knowledge, I, p. 2)
Again we find perception, clarity and public examination presented as
the means of confirming revealed truth and divine communication.
Brothers, like Muggleton a century earlier, calls on the experience of his
The Opening Eye 129
audience and their openness to demonstration in order to confirm his
prophetic declarations, Biblical readings and political views.
Such similarities did not go unmarked at the time. Noting Burke’s
portrayal of ‘English partisans of the French Revolution as crazed
enthusiasts out of the same mould as the regicides of the 1640s and
50s’, Mee suggests that this had a significant impact on ideas concerning
prophecy and unorthodox religious views, for ‘it became increasingly
common for loyalists to identify religious heterodoxy with political
radicalism’.22 Not only does this suggest a certain continuity between
the antinomian tendencies of the mid-seventeenth century and the late
eighteenth century, but it also suggests that prophets such as Brothers
were consciously participating in a longstanding association between
radical politics and spiritual vision. The idea that this connection was
made consciously is suggested by Mee himself, who cites as an example
Huntington’s preface to the 1792 reprint of Free Grace by John
Saltmarsh (ibid., p. 47). Given the political undertones of The Marriage
and the combination of prophetic rhetoric and political radicalism in
America and Europe, we can surmise that Blake would have been both
aware of the connection between prophecy and politics and willing to
incorporate this into his own works.
While this important aspect of Blake’s thought has been profitably
explored by scholars such as Thompson, Worrall and Mee, the concerns
of this chapter and of the preceding one have been slightly different.
Along with the political affinities shared, though not without difference,
by many of the writers discussed above, we find a common emphasis on
the primacy of experience, on the importance of expanding or altering
perception and on the conjunction between the divine and the human.
On an individual level, this manifests itself through descriptions of
the connection between human beings and the deity, such as the
Muggletonian ideas of the eye of Faith and the prophetic call, Boehme’s
representations of the body, Moravian blood theology and Swedenborg’s
notion of divine influx. Within the genealogy of divine mystery, of the
mysterium tremendum, of the spilling of divine blood so central to
Muggletonians and Moravians alike, no less than in the overt political
resonance of Brothers’ visions, we can trace the visibilizing of the invisible other, the becoming public of the sacred secret. The influence of
such antecedents are clearly evident in Blake’s own visionary materialism,
in the rejection of the distinction between body and soul, in the
conceptualisation of bodily desire as opening a link with divine energy,
and in a vision of infinite perception that returns the gaze of the other,
beholding the marks of divinity, of futurity, in the present world of
130 Visionary Materialism in Blake
experience. The abyssal eye’s longing for manifestation and the sexually
charged influx of love converge in the Poetic Genius, whose lineage
involves the movement from a purely spiritual idea to the poetic idea,
which itself tends towards embodiment in acts and works. Implicit in the
discussion thus far is a fresh imagining of epistemology and onto-theology,
‘a seismic revolution in the political concept of friendship’ as Derrida
might say (Politics, p. 27), one which drastically alters the nature of
alterity itself and motions towards a vision of humanity beckoning
from just beyond the horizon of all we have already known.
5
The Ark of God
man is the ark of God the mercy seat is above upon the ark
cherubims guard it on either side & in the midst is the holy
law. man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth &
of the water if thou seekest by human policy to guide this ark.
remember Uzzah II Sam l.
– William Blake, Annotations to Aphorisms, §533; E596
And when they came to Nachon’s threshingfloor, Uzzah put
forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the
oxen shook it.
And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God
smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.
– II Samuel 6.6–7
An ark or a phantom, a housing for divinity or a ghost of the earth,
such are the alternative visions that Blake presents for humanity. An
alternative and also a warning, ‘remember Uzzah’, which may well be
directed at Lavater’s own moral inquiries whose human policy risks
transforming man into a phantom:
I have often, too often, been tempted, at the daily relation of new
knaveries, to despise human nature in every individual, till, on
minute anatomy of each trick, I found that the knave was only an
enthusiast or momentary fool. This discovery of momentary folly [. . .]
has thrown a great consolatory light on my inquiries into man’s
moral nature: by this the theorist is enabled to assign to each class and
each individual its own peculiar fit of vice or folly; and, by the same,
he has it in his power to contrast the ludicrous or dismal catalogue
131
132 Visionary Materialism in Blake
with the more pleasing one of sentiment and virtue, more properly
their own. (Aphorisms, §533)
Aphorism 533, Blake remarks, ‘seems to me to want discrimination’.
The appearance of that word ‘want’, which we have seen before in his
mother’s petition to the Congregation of the Lamb, again forms a crux
of lack or need and desire, of the receptacle waiting to be filled. Lavater
himself certainly seems to want discrimination in the second sense, to
desire division and classification. Elsewhere Blake will praise Lavater for
his powers of discernment, but here his severity of judgement has been
misapplied and found lacking. The enthusiast, of whom Blake speaks
sympathetically in Aphorism 605, is not the same as the knave for
‘knaveries are not human nature
knaveries are knaveries’ (ibid.).
Uzzah’s sacrilege, Blake would seem to imply, finds an analogue in
those who would seek to take hold of human nature, to hold it fast
through the anatomisation of a moral code. But with what kind of
death specifically would such presumption be punished? The human
policy outlined by Lavater is in fact not far removed from that mill in
The Marriage that transforms the corpse, which we have identified
with the human being in a state of nature, into ‘Aristotles Analytics’.
Uzzah too died on a threshing floor and he did not rise again. Lavater’s
‘consolatory light’ is, Blake would therefore seem to be suggesting, not
to be mistaken with that interiorised light that appears in the form of
divine love and which occurs, for example, in the letters of Thomas and
Catherine Armitage.
There are two deaths implied in the alternative visions of humanity
that Blake presents, no less than two bodies. The phantom body of
earth and water lacks the divine presence of the body as ark, whose
death rests upon the mercy seat, site of propitiatory sacrifice, which in
Christian iconography involves the putting to death of Christ and the
resurgence of divine love. The second body, then, is that whose mortality
participates in an incommensurate sacrificial exchange and an eschatological promise of rebirth. This body opens itself to Eternity without
for that reason allowing itself to be abstracted from the flesh that gives
it form. It is the phantom that is disembodied, not the ark, whose
ornamentation itself defies the distinction between sarx and soma.
Schuchard remarks upon Blake’s knowledge, which he may have
acquired from Moravian sources, of the Kabbalistic tradition that the
male and female cherubim guarding the ark ‘were entwined in the act
of marital intercourse, thus forming an emblem of God’s joyful marriage
with his female emanation, the Shekhinah (or Jerusalem)’ (‘Why Mrs. Blake
The Ark of God
133
Cried’, p. 48). In the context of a Moravian inheritance, Blake’s mention
of both the cherubim and the mercy seat in response to Lavater’s consolatory moralising is certainly provocative, pointing towards a Holy Law
housed in spiritually infused flesh, towards the divine sanction granted
to the love expressed through the sensual body, rather than to the
moral prohibitions imposed by an unseen deity who guards his secrecy
with jealousy and wrath. In the history of secrecy that we have been
discussing, the impersonal deity that seeks to repress the orgiastic
impulse is the god of Plato and, perhaps not coincidentally, it is the
pagans who are said to have ‘paraded’ the cherubim ‘through the streets
in order to ridicule the Jews’ (ibid.). The theologian who, in aphorisms
applauded by Blake, maintains that ‘the purest religion is Epicurism’
and that ‘He, who adores an impersonal God, has none’ here seems to
dabble in a rational and moralistic paganism that causes him to misperceive human nature (§366, 552; E591, 596). And this too pertains to the
fallout of Uzzah. When David returns to remove the ark to Jerusalem, II
Samuel tells us, he ‘danced before the LORD with all his might’, an act of
moral abandon for which he is despised and reproached by his jealous
wife Michal. There is a contest of wills here, no less than of ethical
codes, between David’s desire to uncover himself and dance in public
before the Lord and Michal’s sense of regal, marital and moral propriety.
The conflict unresolved, ‘Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto
the day of her death’ (II Samuel 6.23).
David’s carnal appetites and morally questionable conduct are widely
remarked upon and, not coincidentally, they correspond with a certain
outburst of orgiastic faith. In that liminal moment of Judeo-Christian
history, when the familial god of the patriarchs is on the verge of
becoming the institutional god of city and state, but before the ark is
removed to the as-yet-unbuilt Temple, the King’s public display of both
his body and his enthusiasm for the Lord defies both personal modesty
and political mystery. David is not the people’s choice of king, an honour
that goes to his predecessor Saul, and his complex character contains
both the magnanimous and the megalomaniacal. But, he is Yahweh’s
choice of ruler – in Blake’s words, he is the ‘great poet’ who fervently
desires and pathetically invokes the Poetic Genius (The Marriage, 12;
E39) – and in his ambiguous figure we find interwoven questions of
human nature, sexuality, bodily existence and, without perhaps taking
things too far, the interiorisation of divine light. Blake’s development of
an alternative conception of what it means to be human, in opposition
to the phantoms that haunt his enlightenment inheritance, similarly
involves him in a number of ambiguities surrounding questions not
134 Visionary Materialism in Blake
only about the relationship between law and desire, but also about the
limitations of sexuality, the dangers of perception, and the extent to
which the self can or should open itself to the interpenetration of the
other.
‘What is Man!’
For Children: The Gates of Paradise addresses the topic of ‘What is Man!’
(E260) through a series of illustrations and captions that present its
audience with various and diverse depictions of the human condition.
While the title indicates the subject under consideration, the gates of
paradise, the vantage from which these gates are being viewed is left
unstated and it is therefore unclear whether the work is presenting us
with an eternal or a natural perspective. On the one hand, as it depicts
man in a variety of states, from the earthen and enclosed to the fiery
and free, it presents a universal perspective, associating it with the eternal.
On the other hand, the final two plates deal with moribund themes and
settings, with ‘Death’s Door’ and a communion with worms, which
seems to imply a pessimism that is distinctly mortal. Thus, the work
presents itself as liminal, as existing on the threshold where, as the
caption of plate 15 declares, ‘Fear & Hope are—Vision’ (E266) and
where, as the accompanying illustration depicts, mourners beside a corpse
may behold a vision of the soul rising.1
As Parisi notes, the caption on the frontispiece, ‘What is Man!’, can
be derived from two distinct biblical sources, Job and Psalms 8, which
convey two opposed representations of human existence: ‘a pessimistic
evaluation of man’s earthly achievements’ and a celebration of ‘man’s
dominant place in creation’.2 Thus, from the outset, the text posits an
ambiguous relation between the human, the earthly and the divine.
The image on this plate is similarly rich in meaning. It depicts an
infant, wrapped in a cocoon atop a leaf, above which a large caterpillar
lies, possibly watching the child or eating a second leaf. Parisi connects
this scene with the traditional use of caterpillar and butterfly as ‘an allegory
of life after death’ and he suggests that it introduces ‘the motif of an
imprisoning shell [. . .] [which] stands over The Gates of Paradise from
beginning to end’ (‘Emblems’, p. 74). Moreover, the image of the caterpillar
would seem to imply the imposition of moral codes in the encapsulation
of the human infant via its association with Blake’s earlier proverb: ‘As
the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest
lays his curse on the fairest joys’ (The Marriage, 9; E37). This link
between the caterpillar and the priest suggests that the infant will be
The Ark of God
135
born under priestly dominion, an idea which emerges concretely on
plate 14, where the unfavourable connection between the human state
and the priestly decree is expressed through the image of Dante’s
Ugolino (Erdman, Illuminated, p. 274) and its caption: ‘Does thy God O
Priest take such vengeance as this?’ (E265). Plate 3, like plate 1, depicts
birth, but this time the image specifically emphasises the organic or
vegetative aspect of human experience with children being plucked
from the earth as if they were root vegetables. The caption, ‘I found him
beneath a Tree’ (E260), suggests that this vegetative image can be
combined with an Edenic motif, with the tree representing the Tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Parisi, ‘Emblems’, p. 77). The idea of the
vegetative or organic body – at least in its passive, mandrake form – seems,
therefore, to be associated from the outset with the dichotomisation of
good and evil and the subsequent imposition of moral codes.
Plates 4–7 clearly associate man with nature, and in particular with
the four elements: water, earth, air and fire. As Erdman suggests, ‘in
naming these four pictures by the four elements, Blake stressed their
earthbound perspective; the human coming through the fire [plate 7]
would be opening a book’ (Illuminated, p. 271). Erdman reads these
plates, and the work as a whole, as the depiction of a journey through
corporeal existence towards the images of death and the grave in the
final two plates. Thus, plate 8 can be read as a turning point on the
earthling’s journey, for ‘the metamorphosis promised in the sunlit leaf
of the Frontispiece is ripe: wings on the infant human, the cocoon shell
breaking’ (ibid.). However, if there is a connection between the cocoon
on plate 1 and the caterpillar-eggs/priestly curses from The Marriage
then this hatching will not have occurred under auspicious omens.
Indeed, although there is more activity in the plates following the
hatching, paradise remains at a distance. Nowhere is this more evident
than on plates 13 and 14, where the cherub is in danger of having his
wings cut and where, as we have seen, the father sits imprisoned with
his children. While Erdman suggests that the aged figure on plate 13
‘cannot perceive [. . .] how little human flight depends on outward
plumage’ (p. 274), no hope of redemption appears to be offered to the
prisoners of priestly vengeance.
For Children depicts human experience as a journey through a world
seemingly poised between the organic and the divine, where prophecy
is continually under threat from forces that conflate nature and religion,
transform caterpillars into priests and leave those born into a vegetative
state subject to mutilation and imprisonment. Throughout the work,
the representation of human existence is characterised by a dialectic
136 Visionary Materialism in Blake
between fear and hope. While this may progress towards redemption,
the vision of this appears to be characterised only by lack. Although on
plate 15 we see a soul rising from the body, not only is it framed in
a mortal context, addressing figures gathered around a deathbed, but
the soul itself appears joined to the foot of its corpse. Erdman argues
that on the final plate, ‘the traveller whom we seek is risen’ (p. 277),
suggesting that redemption can only be represented by an absence or
lack. However, as Parisi suggests, the figure of the traveller throughout the
book is ambiguous as well as unsettling and we cannot be sure whether
his journey has led to redemption or simply to death (pp. 97–100). Such
ambiguity is indeed implied by Erdman’s association of this figure not
only with ‘a human vision of the traditional skeletal, cowled death’
(Illuminated, p. 276), but also with a death that has taken on flesh and
become sibylline.3 Although the heads to the right of the figure are
sinking into the ground and while the figure is sitting within a dark
forest that may lead into a tomb, its lips, nose and eyebrows indicate
flesh rather than bone. If this figure can be equated with Eno, as the
resemblance with Los, plate 1, suggests, then we can read it not as
a depiction of death, but rather as the portrayal of a morbid prophetess,
of a saviour who has become contaminated by the fallen visions she has
beheld.4 The dark trees pressing down on her, the worm coiling about
her body and her static position all suggest that she is tending towards
degeneration. If this is the vision awaiting the traveller who enters
death’s door on plate 17, then he appears to have entered neither a stony
tomb nor a world of liberated energy, but rather an organic cavern that
imprisons even as it brings life out of death. The worm which feeds
upon the bodies of the dead is a far cry from the energetic serpent on
the final plate of Thel, for example. Moreover, the descent into this
macabre landscape confronts us with an admittedly pessimistic recognition of the interconnectedness of apparently unconnected things: ‘I have
said to the Worm: Though art my mother & my sister’ (For Children, 18;
E267). As Damon notes (p. 216), this caption is also taken from Job: ‘I have
said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my
mother, and my sister’ (17.14). While Blake’s plate retains the moribund
themes from this chapter of Job, the omission of ‘corruption’, which Job
elsewhere links with his breath (17.1), is notable. It may suggest an
uneasiness on Blake’s part concerning the association between breath
and divine inspiration, established in Genesis 2.7, or it may indicate
that the sibyl has not succumbed to the despair expressed by Job in the
subsequent verse: ‘And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who
shall see it?’ (17.15).
The Ark of God
137
The sibyl’s acknowledgement of family likeness with the worm, in
a certain sense, sounds promisingly close to the declaration that ‘every
thing that lives is Holy’, which resounds throughout The Marriage (8.10;
E45), Visions (8.10; E51) and America (8.13; E54). However, it also anticipates Urizen’s woeful realisation that ‘life liv’d upon death’ (23.27;
E81). Thus, the emphasis on movement, on the transitive, can be apprehended even in the final line, which stands midway between two
proclamations: one sacred and the other moribund. However, it is
important to realise that these avowals do not necessarily come from
different places. While ‘every thing that lives is Holy’ implicitly refutes
the priestly idea of damnation, so too life’s capacity for living on death
undermines Urizen’s authority, ensuring that ‘no flesh nor spirit could
keep / His iron laws one moment’ (Urizen, 23.25–6; E81). It is notable
that it is not only the flesh, but also the spirit which is beyond legal
restraint and as The Marriage makes clear such lusts and lack of obedience
not only provide opposition to the imposition of moral policies, but
also hold out the promise of redemption.
The first principle
Plate 12 of The Marriage marks a distinction between two modes of
vision, ‘infinite’ and ‘finite organical perception’. This occurs in the
relation of a conversation between Blake, Isaiah and Ezekiel, in which
Isaiah reports:
I saw no God. nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but
my senses discover’d the infinite in every thing, and as I was then
perswaded. & remain confirm’d; that the voice of honest indignation
is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote. (E38)
This passage anticipates the Painite conception of conscience in opposition
to Lockean constructions of moral judgement that, as we have seen,
Blake invokes in his critique of Watson. Notably, as in All Religions and
No Natural Religion, the rejection of ‘organical perception’ is conjoined
not to a rejection of empiricism per se, but rather to a redefinition of
perception as a discovery of the infinite. What the passage does reject
is the idea that God can be perceived as an external object existing
independently from human beings, such as we find in a Platonic idea of
the Good or in Swedenborg’s conception of the deity as the spiritual
sun, as an entity whose separate existence implies a set of relations based
on proximity (i.e. on an onto-theological relation expressed visibly in
138 Visionary Materialism in Blake
terms of spatial dimensions). Isaiah’s conception of divine vision
represents a significant modification of the blood theology we have
encountered in the Moravians, but it retains the refusal to abstract the
deity from the world of flesh. God has not again become invisible, but
the visibility of the infinite that was once localised in Christ is here
extended to include ‘every thing’. As in Boehme, the deity is characterised
by a fundamental longing for manifestation, a desire that becomes
realised in ‘existing beings or Men’ (16; E40) and in the production of
inspired works of art, an idea that Blake, like Paine, acquires from
Lowth who in his translation of Isaiah argues for a direct link between
prophecy and poetry.5
Blake’s conversation with Isaiah and Ezekiel further addresses the
issue of perception with Ezekiel telling Blake that ‘The philosophy of the
east taught the first principles of human perception’ and he continues
by aligning the teachings of Israel with Blake’s own thoughts on the
Poetic Genius (12; E39). The episode with Ezekiel and Isaiah immediately
follows Blake’s account of the process by which the animation of objects
‘with Gods or Geniuses’ by the ‘Ancient Poets’ develops into a system of
priestly imposition (11; E38).6 Thematically Ezekiel’s speech augments
the account of the enslavement of the vulgar from plate 11, by describing
the manner in which the ‘vulgar came to think that all nations would
at last be subject to the jews’ (13; E39). That said, if the production
of the plates occurred in the order Viscomi suggests (‘Swedenborg and
Printmaking’, p. 27), then plates 12–13 were produced before plate 11
and although Blake refers to ‘genius’ throughout the text, it only occurs
on one plate produced before this ‘Memorable Fancy’, on plates 22–4,
where the Devil declares:
The worship of God is. Honouring his gifts in other men each
according to his genius. and loving the greatest men best, those who
envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.
(22–3; E43)
Thematically, this plate, like Ezekiel’s speech, directly ties the idea of
genius with God; however, whereas Ezekiel refers to the ‘Poetic Genius’
in its universal aspect as ‘our God’, the Devil on plates 22–4 particularises
and at the same time universalises divine incarnation.
Ezekiel’s discussion of human perception is the only place in the text
where ‘Genius’ is coupled with the adjective ‘Poetic’ to create the noun
phrase ‘Poetic Genius’, which could suggest that this Fancy is, via Ezekiel,
referring us back to All Religions, where Blake first publicly announces
The Ark of God
139
the existence of ‘an universal Poetic Genius’ (E1). In both All Religions
and The Marriage, Blake presents the Poetic Genius as the universal
faculty that extends human understanding beyond the limits of finite
perception. However, while the earlier text treats the universality of
the Poetic Genius as unproblematic, The Marriage suggests that conceptualising this faculty in the abstract can, potentially, contribute to cultural
and political subjugation, emblematised in the figure of David who,
though he invokes the Poetic Genius, also ‘conquers enemies & governs
kingdoms’ in its name (12–13; E39). This history of imperialism has
more in common with the history described on plate 11 than with the
worship of genius described by the Devil on plates 22–4 and it expresses
an anxiety over the actual potential of the Poetic Genius to liberate. As
the faculty which enables man to discover the infinite, the Poetic Genius
enables Blake to reject the notion of an abstract and invisible God by
incarnating the divine within the everyday experience of existing
beings. But this process only works when the Poetic Genius is particularised and embodied in ‘the voice of honest indignation’ (12; E38). In the
abstract, Blake seems to suggest, it risks becoming an agent of imposition
and subjection.
Perception, liberty and organic light
Blake’s belief in the redemptive potential of vision and his understanding
of its ambiguous relation to liberty and bondage seem to have been
central elements in both his thought and artistic production since the
beginning of his artistic endeavours. In the seasonal poems, with which
Poetical Sketches begins, the visual relationship between the speaker and
each of the seasons reveals much both about the speaker’s hopes and
fears, and about each season’s particular character. Thus, ‘all our longing
eyes are turned / Up to [Spring’s] bright pavillions’, ‘we beheld / With joy,
[Summer’s] ruddy limbs’, and Autumn ‘fled from our sight’, but ‘I dare not
lift mine eyes [toward Winter]; / For he hath rear’d his sceptre o’er the
world’ (‘To Spring’, ll. 6–7; ‘To Summer’, ll. 5–6; ‘To Autumn’, l.18; ‘To
Winter’, l.7; E408–10). In the ‘Song’ which begins ‘How sweet I roam’d’
(E412), the fear of beholding exhibited in ‘To Winter’ becomes clearly
understandable, for the relationship between vision and liberty is
presented in its inverse form with captivating sights leading into captivity
itself. The speaker’s consumption of ‘all the summer’s pride’ leads into
a vision of ‘the prince of love’ (ll. 2–3; E412). Upon beholding the prince,
the speaker effectively hands over his own faculties of sensation to this
higher power, who ‘shew’d me lilies for my hair, / And blushing roses
140 Visionary Materialism in Blake
for my brow’ (ll. 5–6; E413). This effectively removes his ability to determine the manner in which he will experience the world as he becomes
the plaything of the prince, who quickly evolves into, or is revealed to
be, the god Phoebus: ‘He led me through his gardens fair, / Where all his
golden pleasures grow’ (ll. 7–8; E413). The speaker becomes immersed
in a non-reciprocal exchange of desire, for the pleasures like the gardens
belong solely to the prince. In allowing himself to be led in his visions
and his pleasures, the speaker has already lost his liberty, and this loss
becomes physically manifest in the final six lines of the poem:
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing,
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.
(ll. 11–16; E413)
Ultimately, the speaker’s loss of liberty extends to his voice as he is reduced
to a caged songbird possessed by the classical god of music, an image
which may speak to Blake’s own anxieties over the limitations implied
by aesthetic theories and artistic form. The poem does not suggest a way
out of such imprisonment, but it does describe the manner in which this
is effected. In particular, it foregrounds the importance of sensual liberty,
depicting a progression of enslavement in which a captivation of the
senses gradually reduces the self and its modes of expression to objects
of someone else’s desire.
Although the relationship between liberty and perception is an
important element throughout Blake’s poetry, Visions provides what is
perhaps Blake’s most developed and challenging attempt to explore
the complexities involved in attaining, or at least approaching, sensual,
political and religious liberty. While ‘How sweet I roam’d’, with its
‘blushing roses’, ‘prince’ and god of music suggests that humility,
monarchy and religion are interlocking elements in the loss of liberty,
Visions makes these connections explicit. In so doing, it posits a connection between Lockean empiricism and enslavement, at the same time
suggesting that the reclamation of improved sensation alone is not
enough. The sensual self must work towards the construction of a shared
experiential reality before the prophetic impulse can be actualised.
Numerous critics have discussed Oothoon’s function as an emblem
of liberation, and of female liberation in particular. While there is
The Ark of God
141
disagreement about the extent to which she succeeds in liberating herself,
the suggestion that this liberty is intimately connected with her sensuality
is uncontroversial.7 In particular, the episode with Oothoon and the
flower/nymph on plate 1 seems to suggest an awakening and embrace of
sexuality with Oothoon’s plucking of the flower representing a voluntary and perhaps autonomous ‘deflowering’.8 Of particular relevance at
present is the fact that this heightened sensuality is intimately connected
with an ability to perceive the world’s spiritual and natural dimensions as
well as a willingness to engage in dialogue: ‘I see thee now a flower; / Now
a nymph! I dare not pluck thee from thy dewy bed!’ (1.6–7; E46). On one
hand, these lines can be read as declarations of Oothoon’s expanded
vision, which unabashedly proclaim a perception of the world that does
not exclude the magical or mythic aspects (the nymph) of ordinary
objects (the flower). On the other hand, these proclamations also operate
as questions, evoking a reply from the object of perception itself:
The Golden nymph replied; pluck thou my flower
Oothoon the mild
Another flower shall spring, because the soul of sweet delight
Can never pass away.
(1.8–10; E46)
Oothoon’s willingness to declare what she sees, rather than what she
expects to see, leads her into dialogue with a being that can offer her
instruction and, as Otto suggests, this leads to a ‘change of comportment
(from withdrawal to embrace) that alters the appearance of her world’
(p. 24). Nevertheless, although the flower/nymph encourages Oothoon
to pluck it, Oothoon herself seems to already be thinking along these
lines, for she is the one who introduces the idea of plucking in the first
place, though in a negative formulation: ‘I dare not pluck thee.’ Similarly,
in order to receive the flower/nymph’s instruction Oothoon must already
be exercising an expanded capacity for vision and a willingness to
embrace alterity, otherwise she would have neither seen the nymph nor
listened to its instructions.
That said, although her encounter with the flower/nymph has helped
to transform her own sensuality, Oothoon’s personal experience is
intimately bound up with her social experience and the belief systems
articulated by Bromion and Theotormon. Both Bromion and Theotormon
display an awareness of the unknown comparable to Oothoon’s; however,
Theotormon is too self-closed to listen to what Oothoon has to say, asking
‘what is the night or day to one o’erflowed with woe?’ (3.22; E47), while
142 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Bromion externalises the power of infinite perception from the human
breast to the ‘infinite microscope’, reduces joy to ‘riches and ease’, insists
upon a totalising legal system with ‘one law for both the lion and the
ox’, and denies existing beings the capacity to engage in the activities
of Eternity: ‘is there not eternal fire, and eternal chains? / To bind the
phantoms of existence from eternal life?’ (4.16, 21–4; E48).
Within the context of the poem, the limits of her world, Oothoon’s
attempts to move from a self-closed perspective and enter into relationships with others are horrific and non-reciprocal. Bromion violently rapes
her, possessing her in the same way that he possess the ‘soft American
plains’ and ‘the swarthy children of the sun’ (1.20–1; E46). With her
chosen lover, Theotormon, Oothoon has the opposite problem. He
refuses to have any intercourse with her whatsoever, refusing to talk to
her, let alone free her from the chain binding her to Bromion (which
he may have forged himself). The only relationship which she can have
with him is that of a mirror: ‘Theotormon severely smiles. her soul
reflects the smile’ (2.19; E46). Worse still, it is the transformation of
Oothoon from defiled virgin into ‘bleeding prey’ (2.17; E46) that provokes
his smile.
Earlier, in his annotations to Lavater’s Aphorisms, Blake emphasises the
importance of conversation within the approach to divine or spiritual
knowledge:
It is impossible to know God or heavenly things without conjunction
with those who know God & heavenly things. therefore, all who
converse in the spirit, converse with spirits. (p. 225; E600)
Following this comment, Blake at one time included the caveat, ‘&
these are either Good or Evil’ (ibid.), which seems to suggest that a
variety of conversational productions are possible and that not all of
these will produce redemptive effects. Although he later deleted this
qualification, the idea that such spiritual conjunctions could be both
good and bad is reinforced by his comment at the opening of the
passage: ‘Man is bad or good. as he unites himself with bad or good
spirits. tell me with whom you go & Ill tell you what you do’ (ibid.).
Oothoon finds herself bound to those who do not share her prophetic
vision and in the absence of companions with whom to ‘converse in
spirit’, she is unable either to enter into a fully redeemed knowledge of
the divine or to transform her observations into performative utterances capable of reshaping her social reality. Instead, her vision of
liberated sexuality and the transgression of oppressive moral codes
replicates rather than removes the possessiveness that functions as
The Ark of God
143
a constituent feature of Urizenic jealousy. Thus, Oothoon herself redeploys the ‘nets & gins & traps’ of the parson in a fantasy of spreading
‘silken nets and traps of adamant’ to catch ‘girls of mild silver, or of
furious gold’ for Theotormon (5.18, 7.23–4; E49, 50). The image intended
to illustrate her lack of jealousy, ‘Oothoon shall view his dear delight,
nor e’er with jealous cloud / Come in the heaven of generous love’
(7.28–9; E50), itself depends upon the binding of others’ loves and her
imposition of Theotormon’s desire onto the ‘wanton play’ of the girls
bears an unsettling resemblance to the lustful imposition enacted
upon her by Bromion.
Nevertheless, although the acts of male violence and oppression in
the poem limit Oothoon’s experience of love and desire, they also serve
to clarify her perception of the erroneous epistemology that constrains
her: ‘the night is gone that clos’d me in its deadly black’ (2.29; E47). Her
almost impossible celebration of sexual energy, even in the face of
Bromion’s violence and her lover’s subsequent rejection, coincides with
an intellectual boldness that drives her towards the prolific abyss beyond
the known world. ‘They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up’,
she declares:
And they inclos’d my infinite brain into a narrow circle.
And sunk my heart into the Abyss, a red round globe hot burning
Till all from life I was obliterated and erased.
(2.31–4)
But in this spectral existence beyond life, she is not confronted with
the ‘eternal fire, and eternal chains’ described by Bromion (4.23; E48).
Instead she sees the burning eye of Urizen, an act which itself bespeaks
a higher-level of perception. Before sinking into the abyss her cries are
limited to assertions of what she already knows, but after this her
discourse becomes driven by questions: ‘With what sense is it that the
chicken shuns the ravenous hawk?’, ‘Does he who contemns poverty,
and he who turns with abhorrence / From usury: feel the same passion
or are they moved alike?’, and ‘With what sense does the parson claim
the labour of the farmer?’ (3.2, 5.10–11, 17; E47–9). This is not a rejection
of experience as a source of knowledge, but rather an expansion of
sensation, an interrogation of its limits that opens her eyes to the nexus
of modernisation, imperialism and economic exploitation at the core of
the Urizenic system.
Oothoon’s naming of ‘Urizen’ the ‘Creator of men! mistaken Demon of
heaven’ (5.3; E48) demonstrates her ability to consolidate the potentially
144 Visionary Materialism in Blake
abstract system that enslaves her within a definite and perceivable form.
Her description of the sun as ‘like an eye’ provides another example of her
ability to see the same object in multiple ways – in this case, connecting
the sun with the aspect of constant and oppressive surveillance enacted
by figures such as Urizen. As Erdman points out, the illumination of this
scene on the frontispiece presents us with what appears to be ‘a human
face in the sky, with the straggling clusters of leaves that hang from
the roof of the cave as locks of hair’ (Illuminated, p. 125). This seems to
confirm Oothoon’s description of her world, at the same time suggesting
the reader’s own internalisation of the Urizenic system: ‘from the viewers’
perspective, the cave edge and brow of foliage seem the skull socket
and brow or our own eyes’ (ibid., p. 126). Moreover, the perspective of
the image itself, which presents us with the interior side of the cavern’s
walls, further suggests that we as viewers are occupying the same space
as the figures in the text.
Oothoon’s sense that the philosophy of the five senses fails to account
for the social inequities she perceives in the world around her demonstrates an awareness of the interrelationship of social institutions, which
runs across Blake’s texts. Larrissy points out that ‘Blake’s insight would
not be so profound if it were not for his clear sense that human beings
are constrained by ideologies and projections which, as individuals, they
are not responsible for, and which may run counter to their interests
and desires’ (William Blake, p. 4). Echoing him, Williams argues that
‘while it would be too facile to effect a one-to-one translation of Blake’s
text[s] into the text of ideology-critique, I believe that such a group of
words and concepts can be found in Blake’s text as demonstrates his
contemplation and conscious deployment of the series of strategies that
we have seen at work in the texts of ideology critics’ (Ideology and Utopia,
p. 15). Like the speaker in ‘How sweet I roam’d’, Oothoon has come to
acknowledge the reality of her own enslavement. However, her recognition of the significance of this captivity far surpasses that of the speaker
in the earlier poem. Her description of herself as ‘A solitary shadow wailing
on the margin of non-entity’ suggests an awareness that the consequences
of oppression are not limited to the material inequities imposed on its
victims, but actually affect, and indeed effect, the shared experiential
space inhabited by both the oppressor and the oppressed (7.15; E50).
Not only has Oothoon become that ‘phantom of the earth & of the
water’, which we have seen before (Aphorisms, §533; E596), but she
recognises this degradation for the imposition that it is and, even at the
same time as her phantasies are constrained by her own experientially
contingent condition, the extremity of her suffering itself seems to
The Ark of God
145
inform a newfound understanding of the spectral system that delineates
her experience of the world. Notably, this system itself is generated by
an economy of sacrifice – the sacrificing of oneself to another through,
among other things, the practices of slavery, marriage, wage labour
and church tithes. Disturbingly, it is her own willingness to become a
propitiatory offering that unlocks her grief and initiates her public
declamations against Urizen and his system:
Oothoon weeps not: she cannot weep! her tears are locked up;
But she can howl incessant writhing her soft snowy limbs.
And calling Theotormon’s Eagles to prey upon her flesh.
(2.11–13; E46)
It is only by knowingly allowing her flesh to be rent, to be tortured for
the gratification of another, that Oothoon’s grief can be transformed
into something approaching redemptive vision and her incessant howls
can become articulate expressions of social critique. Not only does this
say something about Blake’s sense of the psychological effects of institutionalised trauma, but it also points towards a particular understanding
of the relationship between suffering and prophecy, between distress and
the human experience of the divine. In his earlier comments on the flyleaf
of Divine Love, Blake declares, ‘If God is any thing he is understanding’;
but this conception of understanding, also equated with thought, is
formulated in a rather remarkable manner:
Understanding or Thought is not natural to Man it is acquired by
means of suffering & distress i.e. Experience. Will, Desire, Love, Rage,
Envy, & all other Affections are Natural. but Understanding is
Acquired
But Observe. without these is to be less than Man. Man
could never have received light from heaven without aid of the
affections. (E602)
The end of this paragraph, beginning with ‘Man could never have
received light’, is, as Erdman notes, largely conjectural due to the fact that
it has ‘been badly rubbed or erased’ (E884).9 But the entire passage is
problematic, even if within its lines we might well perceive a certain
modification in the unfolding of mystery, the embodiment of the divine.
It is notable that the affections, which Swedenborg links with the divine
influx, are here linked with what is natural, built into the very structure
of the body. God, however, is equated with the understanding, which
146 Visionary Materialism in Blake
may owe something to Swedenborg’s own alignment of understanding,
faith and truth, but in a Swedenborgian context Blake’s formulation
is counter-intuitive; it is not the intuition, nor even the conscience –
which, as we have seen, Blake elsewhere directly connects with the
divine voice – that is God, but rather God is experience. He is distress and
suffering. The affections can, in a certain sense, be taken to be innate,
natural, for Blake seems to imply that they are not ‘Acquired’, but God,
in contrast, is acquired, constituted by the painful and distressing
interactions of self and other. While The Marriage extends the visibility
of the deity from Christ to all existing beings, on the flyleaf to Divine
Love Blake seems to suggest that God not only acts and is within existing
beings, but within those beings as they themselves are expressed or
produced through interaction with others. The suffering of Christ in
the flesh is thus supplanted by the suffering of the flesh in general and
it is here that the problems with legibility come to the fore as Blake
appears to be suggesting that this flesh itself, its natural body, is necessary
in order to discover God in experience. Without the body’s affections, it
seems, the interiorisation of divine light would itself not be possible:
‘Man could ?never [have received] ?light from heaven ?without [aid of
the] affections’.
Even if we could be sure that these are in fact Blake’s words, their
implication in the context of what has come before remains elusive.
The link between the divine light and the affections is certainly something that Blake could have acquired from Swedenborg, but the latter
clearly links this love that is light with the spiritual as opposed to the
natural. Blake almost seems to be doing the opposite, emphasising
that the affections, the openings to the divine, are located in the (natural)
body. But this is not a straightforward inversion. It is not enough to
say that the body is a receptacle of the spirit, a necessary part in the
communication between heaven and earth. Swedenborg himself seems
to suggest as much. For Blake, the spiritual sun no longer exists beyond
the natural sun; there is no world beyond the shadow-puppets dancing
across the walls of corporeal existence. In equating the existence of God
with experience, Blake expands the mysterium tremendum beyond all
reasonable bounds. The crucifixion, the suffering and death of God, no
longer motions towards a stable onto-theological ground that exists on
the other side of death, but rather to the unpredictable fate of each and
every life. The full implications of Blake’s half-expunged remarks would
thus seem to read in the blood of a god an entirely new conception of
divinity. God suffers and allows himself to be put to death not in order to
compensate for the sins of humanity (indeed the doctrine of Atonement,
The Ark of God
147
the economy of sacrifice, is something that, in Milton and Jerusalem, Blake
will consistently associate with the perversions associated with moral
law), but rather because it is only in the understanding of such suffering,
in the thought born of and borne by experience, that he exists at all.
But perhaps this is taking things too far, reading too much into a
fragmentary, and quite possibly spurious, spur-of-the-moment remark.
What can be said, with reasonable impunity, is that while it is experience
that allows us to acquire God in the form of understanding, it is the
affections, which are themselves caught up in acts of sympathy, that allow
us to transform ‘suffering & distress’ into the reception of divine light.
Perception can lead us into knowledge, but that knowledge can only attain
its redemptive potential if the senses are informed by the affections.
It is Oothoon’s willingness to engage in a quasi-sexual encounter
with the flower/nymph that allows her to transform her subsequent
suffering at the hands of Bromion and Theotormon into something
approaching redemptive perception and knowledge. But, somewhat distressingly, the unfolding of Visions would seem to suggest that it is
through the horror of suffering, of physical and psychic disfigurement,
that insight into the heart of the deity can be achieved. The mysterium
tremendum implied by the mercy seat in Blake’s figure of man as the
ark of God here takes on overtones both of sexual exploitation and a
Promethean politics – and here it pays to recall Blake’s redefinition in the
annotations to Watson, of prophecy as socially informed foresight
(Annotations to Watson, p. 14; E6170). The crucifixion is thus translated
from the suffering and death in the flesh of a lone God into the trials
and tribulations of all flesh enfettered by moral impositions of every
other who, like Christ, is imbued with the gift of the divine which
manifests itself experientially through torment.
The sense that Oothoon gleans invaluable insight through her horrific
experience tends to support Makdisi’s claim that Urizenic modernisation,
which can ‘be understood as the purest form of imperialism’ enacted in
both the metropolitan centre and the colonial peripheries (162), itself
provides the tools of its own annihilation:
The Universal Empire works by crushing its victims in its tyrannic
wheels, by enslaving women and children in Mills, by chaining men
in ships ‘clos’d up,’ by pillaging and looting the peoples of three
continents [. . .]. But it is precisely in the darkest and most terrifying
visions of this cruel system that Blake sees hope. By chaining the
‘nations’ and peoples of humankind together, according to his
vision, the Universal Empire has united them. [. . .]. [A]ccording to
148 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Blake it is only at the very height of Empire that the possibility for
destroying it can be imagined.10
The success of universal redemption and global emancipation, therefore,
hinges not on the ability to return to an imagined state of pre-modern
innocence but rather on humanity’s capacity to transform the weapons
of oppression into the tools of liberation. On an intellectual level, this
means transforming the mill of science through the recognition of its
poetic or prophetic potential. On an economic level, meanwhile, this
entails redirecting the energies of industrial manufactories so as to produce
works that promote rather than restrict human freedom.
By the time that he engraved Visions, Blake had already participated,
though at some remove, in a project that sought to incorporate the most
recent discoveries in the natural sciences with a politically responsible
and morally revolutionary, social and historical commentary. Erasmus
Darwin’s The Botanic Garden, published in two parts as The Loves of the
Plants (1789) and The Economy of Vegetation (1791) provided an overview
of natural history and the natural sciences, incorporated a wealth of
knowledge and inventions surrounding the lunar society, of which Darwin
was a member, and aimed to disseminate knowledge to a wide audience
through the medium of poetry. Whilst Blake would have no doubt been
uneasy about Darwin’s faith in the emancipatory powers of trade and
industry, the emphasis on abolition and glorification of sexuality in the
two books would have appealed to his sensibility and there is considerable
evidence that he incorporated a number of Darwin’s ideas in his own
artistic productions.11 Blake’s own involvement with the project
included the provision of six engravings, two after Fuseli and four more
depicting Wedgwood’s copy of the Portland Vase. Much note has
already been taken of Blake’s adaptation of Fuseli’s The Fertilization of
Egypt, but his engravings of the vase are themselves worthy of further
attention.12 Though there is insufficient time at present to discuss these
at length, Darwin’s remark that the vase depicts ‘what in antient
times engaged the attention of philosophers, poets, and heroes [. . .]
the Eleusinian mysteries’ and his subsequent commentary, which attempts
to decipher emblems of mortality and immortality, makes this work in
itself significant within the discussion of the unfolding of divine
mystery.13 At present, however, the impact of Darwin on Blake’s ideas
about the combination of philosophy and poetry in prophetic vision
generally, and in regard to Oothoon specifically, merits further
attention.
Oothoon’s initial confusion over the ontological status of the flower/
nymph, ‘Art thou a flower! art thou a nymph!’ (Visions, 1.6; E46), is, as
The Ark of God
149
Worrall notes, ‘a confusion of sight’ (‘Blake and Darwin’, p. 405). But, as
Oothoon’s reminiscences later in the text demonstrate, this confusion
is historically relative, arising from the philosophical and religious
world-views that, until the plucking of the marigold, have structured
her sensual experience.
In his discussion of the poem’s legend, ‘The Eye sees more than the
Heart knows’ (ii; E45), Worrall argues that the idea of the superiority of
sight over knowledge is compounded with ‘a further level of meaning
embodied in the confrontation between Oothoon and the Marygold’
(‘Blake and Darwin’, p. 404). Reading the legend in the context of
Oothoon’s statement, ‘thus I turn my face to where my whole soul
seeks’ (1.13; E46), Worrall notes:
Although the Eye is subject to light, it is in danger of remaining as
passive as the Sunflower, or as Oothoon in her indecision. The Heart,
however, is not subject to light (or to the visual confusions at first
suffered by Oothoon) but is enclosed in the darkness of the breast;
it must be given a visionary ‘glow’ while the Eye must clarify its
perception with the light of ‘knowing’ that ‘the soul of sweet
delight / Can never pass away’. (pp. 404–5)
As we have seen this ‘knowing’ itself depends upon the ability to perceive
the flower as nymph and the willingness to listen to what the nymph
has to say. Thus, the heart, which Blake connects with both honesty
and the affections, and the eye must work together to generate both
understanding and enhanced perception.
Worrall’s comments on Visions occur within a larger examination of
the relation between Blake’s texts and scientific ideas represented in
Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden and he presents a convincing case for
regarding Botanic Garden as a text that was highly influential on Blake’s
own artistic productions in the years 1791–95. Notably, Worrall suggests that ‘the most remarkable example of Blake’s “Darwinizing” with
relation to botany concerns the Argument plate of Visions’ (p. 401).
Drawing attention to Darwin’s discussion of the light discharged by
certain flowers, such as the marigold, he suggests that Visions, plate iii,
‘illustrates not the sun rising behind a marygold (there is no disc
visible) but steady flashes of light emitted from the marygold itself’
(p. 402). The fact that ‘the etched lines of radiation seem to dart from
the heads of the two flowers pictured and from the heads (one above
the other) of the human form of the flower and Oothoon’ participates
in the idea that, having placed the flower ‘to glow between [her] breasts’
(1.12; E46), Oothoon ‘possesses her own inner source of radiation’
150 Visionary Materialism in Blake
(pp. 402, 404). Blake’s decision to make the flower a marigold is therefore significant because it allows him to combine a scientifically verified
phenomenon with ideas about prophetic or spiritual vision.
The incorporation of scientific ideas about botany within his depiction
of such vision would seem to undermine the opposition Blake draws
between organic and infinite perception in the preceding illuminated
books (particularly The Marriage and No Natural Religion). However, the
dichotomisation of nature and spirit along with the concomitant representation of the latter as the only origin of divine light belongs more to
Swedenborg than to Blake as it participates in the idea of prophecy as
a withdrawal from the human world. I have already suggested that,
through Oothoon, Blake presents a more socially engaged mode of
prophecy appropriate to the turbulent political context of the 1790s. In
view of this, the integration of observations from a poetically embodied
science with the idea of prophetic light can be seen to work towards an
effacement of the division between nature and spirit as well as between
body and soul. But there is another sense in which Darwin’s discussion
of the marigold is particularly apt within Blake’s prophetic endeavour.
Rather than reinforcing a fixed and stable body of knowledge, the
phenomenon of the flashing flowers signifies the first stages of a progression from the known to the unknown in that it represents something
‘Darwin was unable to explain’ (Worrall, ‘Blake and Darwin’, p. 402).
The importance of the unexplained and of hypotheses or theories
that have yet to be scientifically verified is something to which Darwin
himself calls attention in the ‘Apology’ prefixed to Botanic Garden:
It may be proper here to apologize for many of the subsequent
conjectures [. . .] as not being supported by accurate investigation or
conclusive experiments. Extravagant theories however [. . .] are not
without their use; as they encourage the execution of laborious
experiments, or the investigation of ingenius deductions [. . .]. And
since natural objects are allied to each other by many affinities, every
kind of theoretic distribution of them adds to our knowledge by
developing some of their analogies. (p. vii)
This passage calls to mind Blake’s own proverb that ‘Every thing
possible to be believ’d is an image of truth’ (The Marriage, 8; E37), suggesting an affinity between Blake’s emphasis on imaginative science
and Darwin’s representation of scientific method. By incorporating
‘conjectures’ and ‘extravagant theories’ into his text, Darwin manages
to avoid the circularity which Blake represents as one of the potential
The Ark of God
151
dangers of enlightenment science. Although it was suspected that
electricity had something to do with the marigold’s emission of light,
Darwin draws attention to the flashing flowers as a ‘curious subject
[which] deserves further investigation’ (p. 137n). Here too we find a point
of connection between Blake’s text and Darwin’s, for the representation
of the glowing flower as a nymph could have been suggested by the
latter’s poetic description of electricity as ‘Nymphs’ who ‘with sweet
smile each opening flower invite, / and on its damask eyelids pour the
light’ (p. 47, ll. 471–2). This passage is not describing the emission of
light from flowers, but rather the effects of electricity on germination;
however, this in itself has a broad parallel with Blake, for it suggests
that the same sort of energy that is potentially responsible for the flower’s
glow is intricately connected with the life of the organism itself. To a certain extent, therefore, we can read Oothoon’s experience of the glowing
marigold as a representation of the first instance when she encounters,
expresses and surpasses the limits of scientific knowledge. Initially, she
perceives the flower and incorporates it into a world-view in which she
dares not pluck it; but, rather than simply imposing her ideas and fears
onto the flower, she engages with it imaginatively and ultimately this
reshapes her understanding of ideas such as defilement and morality
by bringing her into contact with the light of life that Blake, like
Swedenborg, associates with divine (and highly eroticised) love.
The fact that Blake drew upon ideas and imagery from a text which
claims as its ‘design’ the attempt ‘to inlist [sic] Imagination under the
banner of Science’ is significant (Botanic Garden, p. v). While we might
expect Blake to react against Darwin’s attempt to ‘lead’ the ‘votaries’ of
imagination ‘from the looser analogies, which dress out the imagery of
poetry, to the stricter ones, which form the ratiocination of philosophy’
(ibid.), there are elements in Darwin’s project that would have appealed
to Blake. The potential value of Darwin’s project as described in the
proem stems from its capacity to retrace the history of abstraction
described on plate 11 of The Marriage. To the extent that his poetry
succeeds in restoring the trees and flowers to ‘their original animality’,
Darwin can be considered akin to the ‘ancient Poets’, who ‘animated all
sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses’ (The Marriage, 11; E38). That
said, Darwin’s account of the transmutation of Gods and Goddesses
into inanimate life forms differs from Blake’s in that it presupposes the
prior and seemingly independent existence of such divine persons:
Whereas P. OVIDIUS NASO , a great Necromancer in the famous Court
of AUGUSTUS CAESAR, did by art poetic transmute Men, Women, and
152 Visionary Materialism in Blake
even Gods and Goddesses, into Trees and Flowers; I have undertaken
by similar art to restore some of them to their original animality,
after having remained prisoners so long in their respective vegetable
mansions. (p. v)14
For Blake this semblance is itself the result of the attempt ‘to realize or
abstract the mental deities from their objects’ (ibid.). Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
under this view, occurs relatively late, for he is drawing upon a
well-established mythological system. Nevertheless, while Ovid’s poetry
describes the transmutation of the animate into the inanimate, Darwin’s
text effectively reverses that process, humanising the natural world, which
in a Blakean context functions as a restoration of not only liberty, but
also fertility: ‘Where man is not nature is barren’ (The Marriage, 10; E38).
Through a combination of text and image, Visions presents us with an
examination of the relationship between perception and bondage as
it occurs on both physical and mental levels. Moreover, it implicates
its audience within a socio-political context that frustrates the redemptive
potential of both vision and the embrace of alterity. From her initial
encounter with the flower/nymph to the end of the poem, Oothoon
demonstrates her ability to perceive an alternative world that is inaccessible to Bromion and Theotormon. While she retains the ability to see
herself as ‘the crafty slave of selfish holiness’, she also perceives her
capacity to be ‘Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears’
(6.20, 22; E50). Similarly, she is able to perceive, name and denounce
the ‘Father of Jealousy’ (7.12; E50), the figurehead of the oppressive web
that binds her. Nevertheless, her injunctions to ‘Arise and drink your
bliss’ (8.10; E51) fail to enact a substantial change in either her social
experience or her ontological perspective and her attempts to enter into
a dialogue with Theotormon fail.
Oothoon’s failure represents the refusal of both Theotormon and
Bromion to engage with her in dialogue, thus frustrating her attempts
to communicate her sense of a redeemed world. However, the illumination of the final plate opposes the pessimistic outcome of the
narrative, by depicting Oothoon enwrapped in flames, flying with arms
outstretched, eyes and mouth open. Below her sit three huddled figures
who seem to represent three of the daughters of Albion who ‘hear
her woes, & eccho back her sighs’ (8.13; E51). Notably, Oothoon is
not looking down at them, but out of the text, almost as if she is
looking at, and addressing, the audience rather than the characters in
the poem. This posture is significant, suggesting that she is imploring us
to move beyond the cavern in which the frontispiece situates us. We
The Ark of God
153
seem to be enjoined to embrace Oothoon in her vision of corporeal
delight while at the same time, via the frontispiece, we are presented
with a vision of the body as that which binds and is bound.
The bounding line
Blake’s ambivalence over the human body participates in an overall
concern with form that also manifests itself in his consciousness of the
limits imposed by artistic media themselves. Larrissy notes Blake’s anxiety
over the acts of ‘binding’ and ‘possession’, which appear to be inherent
in fallen human nature and necessary for creation or generation in the
fallen world. Not surprisingly, Larrissy’s discussion of Blake’s ‘binding’
pays particular attention to Europe, which depicts binding in Urizen’s
majestic wielding of his compass, in the narrative itself which shows
how this limiting figure sets himself up as God and ‘in the prefatory
lines, where “Blake” discourses with a fairy’ (William Blake, p. 91).
Remarking upon the Fairy’s description of the caverned man’s refusal to
pass out of himself ‘what time he please’ because ‘stolen joys are sweet,
& bread eaten in secret pleasant’, Larrissy notes that ‘humanity appears
to be attracted by “bound” sexuality, rather than by the freedom which
[. . .] would bring about a change in human nature’:
[This] involved him in yet another characteristic ambivalence about
form: in this case the form taken by human sexuality. Could it be
that what was delightful about human love was intimately bound up
with what was exclusive and potentially destructive in it? (Ibid.)
The possessiveness and secrecy implicit in the eating of stolen bread
could well be Blake’s comment on the perverted pleasure derived
through transgression of prohibitions, a pleasure which itself depends
upon the moral code that opens the possibility of this sort of violation.
However, Blake’s decision to make ‘bread’ representative of erotic pleasure
implies the sort of sexual communion found in his Swedenborgian and
Moravian inheritance. Indeed, the sexual practices of the inner circle at
Fetter Lane were kept secret from the wider congregation and public at
large, as a matter of political expediency if nothing else.15 But within
the circle itself, such practices would have been public knowledge, just
as the private delights of conjugal love are known to the individuals
involved. Secrecy thus becomes a question of proximity, and those
whose eyes are opened to the sanctity of the sexual act are able to enter
fully into the secret. Moreover, there is a sense in which the potential
154 Visionary Materialism in Blake
possessiveness of sexual love preserves identity even as that is given
over to a larger feeling of communion with the other. The temporary
loss of self experienced during the union does not entail a loss of bodily
integrity and thus, in a view of the self that does not divide the mental
from the corporeal, personal identity is preserved. The drive to assimilate
the other into the self, which Derrida following Nietzsche associates
with the possession of private property,16 can, from another vantage, be
compared to the possession of the prophet by the divine voice – a loss
of identity that is, without paradox, central to the constitution of the
prophetic identity itself. If God as divine influx is the understanding or
thought that enters the self from without, this entrance as we have seen
is facilitated by the very affections, desires and will without which an
individual ceases to be human. Sexual possessiveness, the drive to bring
the other into oneself, is the very impulse that opens the self to alterity,
that renders it hospitable towards the other. The sweet taste of stolen
bread ought not, therefore, to be confused with ‘the places of religion’
descried by Oothoon, where ‘the youth shut up from / The lustful joy.
shall forget to generate. & create an amorous image / In the shadows of
his curtains and in the folds of his silent pillow’ (Visions, 7.5–8; E50).
The concern over sexual possessiveness forms part of what Larrissy
argues is an anxiety about form and structure in general. Although
structure and literary conventions are necessary to poetic creation, they
can have the potential not only to limit, but also to deaden the imagination. In his discussion of Thel’s complaint that there is ‘a little curtain
of flesh on the bed of our desire’ (6.20; E6), Larrissy suggests that the
limiting function shared by the hymen (sexual desire) and literary form
(artistic desire) means that ‘in Blake’s anxious and ambivalent classification
of barriers, the hymen takes its place alongside “bound”, “veil”, “outline”,
“circumference”, “garment” and, of course, Urizen’s “horizon”’ (William
Blake, p. 126). Viscomi also notes the conflation between sexual and
artistic energies. He argues that, in The Marriage, Blake’s personification
of ‘“Eternal Hell” [. . .] as a naked woman lustfully and shamelessly
enwrapped in flames (plate 3) links creative fires to the sensual and
physical’ (‘Swedenborg and Printmaking’, p. 37). Moreover, he points
out that ‘Blake’s entering hell is entering the creative state, which for
an artist must manifest itself materially, in his physical body and artwork’
(p. 38). Like Larrissy, Viscomi notes the importance Blake accords to the
‘bounding line’ as a concept that is translated from the medium of
drawing into his ideas of both engraving and painting. He remarks
that ‘though the firm outline was added last, it was fundamental and
foundational, theoretically manifesting Blake’s first and most inspired
The Ark of God
155
thought’ and he describes ‘drawing’ as ‘both an act of discovery and
the art of fixing and building upon what was found, without losing [. . .]
the original image and impulse’ (Blake and the Idea, pp. 36–9, 43).
Although Blake’s method of engraving directly onto the copper plate
seems to have provided a way of marrying spontaneous discovery
with the imposition of artistic fixity, the tension between a line that is
expressive and one which is limiting appears central to his ideas concerning both the relationship between the artist and his or her medium
and that which exists between the self and the other. As Larrissy notes,
with reference to the Descriptive Catalogue, the bounding line can represent
both the firm outline imposed by the artist and the means of asserting
individual identity (William Blake, p. 84).
The idea that the relation between artist and medium is intimately
connected with the relation between self and other is similarly
implied in Essick’s discussion of the relationship between language
and speech in Blake’s poetic composition. Speaking of the necessity of
employing an arbitrary or fallen language system, Essick argues that
Blake’s own methods of composition work to overcome, rather than
emphasise or reinforce, the boundary between meaning and semiotic
form:
In rapid or ecstatic speech, we enter unselfconsciously into the
medium and do not sense a gap between thoughts and the words
that seem to issue ‘from out the Portals’ of our brains [. . .]. Thus spoken
language, more than any other semiotic medium, generates and
almost seems to achieve that illusive and perhaps illusory ideal, the
Adamic sign. Blake carried [. . .] this same marriage of conception and
execution, into acts of writing that he felt to be motivated even if the
signs he uses were arbitrary. [. . .]. His muse is a personification of the
medium as lived experience. (Blake and Language, p. 185)
Essick’s mention of ‘the Portals’ refers to his earlier discussion of the
opening to Milton where Blake’s invocation of the muses describes a
process of oral/aural communication that is concomitant with the act
of graphic production (p. 183).17 Earlier in the same chapter, Essick
explicitly connects Blake’s account of poetic inspiration with the incorporation of alterity within the self. Citing the invocations to various
‘muses’ in Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, Europe, Urizen, Los and
Milton, he notes that Blake often represents his poetry as the product of
an alterior source. Moreover, he argues that these invocations are not
merely the result of ‘literary conventions’. Citing two letters to Thomas
156 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Butts (in which Blake refers to the composition of a poem, probably
Jerusalem, as being by dictation and describes his own role as nothing more
than secretarial),18 Essick notes: ‘all these comments posit an otherness as
origin, distinct from but in contact with the productive self’ (pp. 160–1).
Below, I will suggest that this embrace of alterity in the process of artistic
embodiment is meaningfully connected to the idea of the bounding
line as well as to Blake’s understanding of the self open to redemption,
particularly as this relates to the closeted self described by Locke. First,
however, we must inquire into the development of the bounding line
itself. Although Larrissy argues that ‘the idea of the “bounded” represents
an acute paradox’ across Blake’s work (William Blake, p. 84), Viscomi
suggests that ‘Blake’s opposition to indistinct forms’ may not have been
‘in full effect’ in Blake’s earlier texts (Blake and the Idea, p. 40). Larrissy
and Viscomi are of course discussing slightly different issues, for while
Blake’s emphasis on the bounding line is part of his larger anxieties about
the potential limitations of form, artistic and otherwise, this anxiousness
may precede the solidification of Blake’s ideas about graphic outline.
What we can say with certainty is that clarity figures as an essential
part of Blake’s conception of the sublime, which itself is both a mode of
perception, ‘it is inspiration and vision’, and ‘the gift of God’ (Descriptive
Catalogue, p. 45; E544).
With these representations of the sublime as both the artist’s ‘vision’
and a divine ‘gift’, we seem to have arrived at another example of
Blake’s conceptualisation of art as the joint production of self and other.
According to this view, ‘the Writings of the Prophets’ contain ‘various
sublime & Divine Images as seen in the Worlds of Vision’ (Vision of the
Last Judgement, p. 69; E555). However, these ‘worlds’ are not ‘other’ in
the sense that they are transcendent or otherwise divorced from the
world of the artist, for Blake insists that the source of the sublime is
to be found in everyday experience. Thus, in a letter to Cumberland
written in December 1795, Blake provides a set of instructions on engraving and printing, so that Cumberland might ‘shew [. . .] that Peace &
Plenty & Domestic Happiness is the Source of Sublime Art & prove
to the Abstract Philosophers—that Enjoyment & not Abstinence is the
food of Intellect’ (E700). This suggests a conception of the Sublime as
the product of both perceptive genius and an active life, that is, the
product of visionary perceptions that exceed the world as defined by the
philosophy of the five senses.
Not insignificantly, Blake mentions Locke by name earlier in the letter,
in a passage which relates his own ideas about invention and execution
to Lockean epistemology:
The Ark of God
157
the Genius that produces. these Designs can execute them in any
manner. notwithstanding the pretended Philosophy which teaches
that Execution is the power of One & Invention of Another—Locke
says it i[s the] same faculty that Invents Judges, & I say he who can
Invent can Execute. (E699)
The union of invention and judgement, which Blake attributes to
Locke, would seem to speak to Locke’s epistemological division of ideas
into the simple and the complex.
As noted above, Locke maintains that the simple ideas of sensation
and reflection (itself a type of inward-looking perception) provide the
foundation for all human knowledge; invention, in this model, occupies a
secondary role that consists not in the creation but in the acts of
compounding and dividing the original objects of sense:
it is not in the Power of the most exalted Wit [. . .] to invent or frame
one new simple Idea in the mind [. . .]. The Dominion of Man in this
little World of his own Understanding, being [. . .] as it is in the great
World of visible things; wherein his Power, however managed by Art
and Skill, reaches no farther, than to compound and divide the
Materials, that are made to his Hand; but can do nothing towards
the making the least Particle of new Matter. (Essay, §2.2.2)
In comparison, the judgement is involved in organising simple ideas
into more complex modes which appear to alter our senses themselves.
The example Locke provides is the perception of a globe of uniform
colour which presents an image of ‘a flat Circle variously shadow’d,
with several degrees of Light and Brightness coming to our Eyes’
(§2.9.8). This image, Locke argues, is the simple idea imprinted on our
minds. However, our judgement, influenced by ‘habitual custom’, leads
us to perceive the object as a convex object of uniform colour (ibid.).
This second perception is often mistaken for the original perception,
but Locke insists that it is not the product of sense, but of judgement.
Locke takes pains to insist that judgement, like invention, cannot alter
the simple ideas of sense, but can only compound them into more
complex ideas (thus the flat and variously shaded circle is compounded
into the complex idea of a uniformly coloured globe). Not only does
this model restrict the creative and perceptive capacities of the human
mind, but it also imposes the limits of the natural world on perception
and judgement. The materials of invention become the analogues of
material atoms (which are themselves conceptualised as ‘particles’
158 Visionary Materialism in Blake
rather than powers) and the judgement becomes subject to ideas of
‘Space, Figure, and Motion’ (§2.9.9).
Locke’s discussions of invention and judgement provide a precursor
to the natural understanding criticised by Swedenborg and, following
him, Blake. Although Blake’s ideas about prophecy efface the dichotomy
which Swedenborg draws between nature and spirit, his continual
privileging of infinite perception over the philosophy of five senses
suggests that he retained Swedenborg’s suspicion of natural ideas, which
are ‘derived from Space and Time’ and which Blake identifies with the
‘fallacies of darkness’ that ‘cast a bound about the infinite’ (Divine Love,
§69; E604). That said, there are occasions when Locke appears to broach
such bounds in a manner that seems congenial to Blake. Although
invention is confined to a workspace constituted by pre-existing atomic
ideas, Locke seems to suggest that it is, in a certain sense, capable of
producing newness: ‘he that first invented Printing, or Etching, had an
Idea of it in his Mind, before it ever existed’ (§2.22.9). The example
Locke chooses seems likely to have caught Blake’s eye and it is not
unreasonable to expect that he may have had it in mind while composing
a letter concerned with techniques of engraving and printing.
Nevertheless, the fact that Blake’s advice on printing and engraving
is proffered for the sake of ‘Enjoyment’ rather than ‘Abstinence’ attests
to a significant difference in the manner in which he and Locke conceive
the relations among judgement, execution and desire. Blake’s description
of ‘Enjoyment’ as the ‘food of Intellect’ participates in the conflation
of desire and creative energy evident in texts such as The Marriage. In
contrast, Locke advocates a disengagement from one’s desire and,
indeed, he makes the capacity to suspend our desires a constituent
feature of free will: ‘For during this suspension of any desire, before the
will be determined to action, [. . .] we have opportunity to examine,
view, and judge, of the good or evil of what we are going to do’ (§2.21.47).
Thus, Locke not only promotes a disengagement from the very energy
which Blake identifies with artistic genius, but this suspension of desire
is itself undertaken with a view to opening a space in which the
judgement can make a moral assessment of the situation. Locke’s notion
of judgement thereby constrains action within a dichotomous moral
code, the consideration of ‘good or evil’ consequences, and this runs
contrary to the mode of prophetic production exemplified by Isaiah,
who, we may recall, ‘cared not for consequences but wrote’ (The Marriage,
12; E38).
It is perhaps unsurprising that when Locke considers the type of
‘rapid or ecstatic speech’ that Essick connects with Blake’s marriage
The Ark of God
159
of conception and execution, it is construed disapprovingly. Speaking
of the error of enthusiasts, Locke declares:
whatever groundless Opinion comes to settle it self strongly upon
their Fancies, is an Illumination from the Spirit of GOD, and presently
of divine Authority: And whatsoever odd Action they find in
themselves a strong Inclination to do, that impulse is concluded to
be a call or direction from Heaven, and must be obeyed; ’tis a Commission from above, and they cannot err in executing it. (§4.19.6)
Blake, on the other hand, argues that if one purges superstition of
hypocrisy, ‘then superstition will be honest feeling & God who loves
all honest men. will lead [them] the poor enthusiast in the paths of
holiness’ (Aphorisms, §605; E598). Although these remarks predate
Blake’s reference to Locke in his letter to Cumberland by approximately
seven years, the association of impulse with honesty appears in The
Marriage and All Religions,19 both of which were printed or reprinted in
the same year as Blake wrote this letter (1795).
As we have seen, Lockean empiricism seems content to examine man
as he exists within his closet, while Blake’s visionary materialism is
constantly and relentlessly attempting to break down the barrier
between self and other. Moreover, the distancing of the self from its
environment implied by Locke’s epistemology is paralleled by his
contempt for enthusiasm and his emphasis on a rational disengagement
from desire. Nevertheless, the fact that, as Glausser points out, Locke
was willing to put himself at immense personal risk for the causes he
believed in (pp. 92–105), suggests not only that there is a place within
his world-view for the self’s active engagement with its environment,
but also that he believed such interaction could actually effect positive
change. While this might seem at odds with the development and
deployment of the punctual self throughout the Essay, his emphasis
on disengagement and his reification of both mind and other result
from a very Blakean concern over humanity’s tendency to slide into
mental bondage and thence into physical enslavement. In particular,
Locke seems to have an acute sense that his injunction for human
beings to ‘think and know for themselves’ (Essay, §1.4.23) was continually
threatened by the ease with which wrong principles could permeate the
mind and establish themselves under the guise of universal truths. His
depiction of received opinion as ‘borrowed-Wealth’, which ‘like Fairymoney, though it were Gold in the hand from which he received it, will
be but Leaves and Dust when it comes to use’ (ibid.), is deceptively
160 Visionary Materialism in Blake
dismissive. Locke’s concern is to redefine knowledge as that which each
man must discover for himself:
we may as rationally hope to see with other Mens Eyes, as to know
by other Mens Understandings. So much as we our selves consider
and comprehend of Truth and Reason, so much we possess of real
and true Knowledge. The floating of other Mens Opinions in our
brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen
to be true. (Ibid.)
However, the ethereal quality of these opinions does not detract from
their destructive capacity. The majority of humanity, Locke tells us,
‘misimploy their power of Assent, by lazily enslaving their Minds, to
the Dictates and Dominion of others’ (§1.4.22).
In his Thoughts Concerning Education, first published within a year of
the first edition of Essay, Locke would appear to continue along this
theme, remarking that ‘of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten
are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education’.20 The
paralleling of good and evil with useful and not useful already contains
embedded within itself not only an incipient programme for social
reform, but, as part of this, the deployment of morality as part of the
ideological state apparatus that can be perceived both in Vincent’s
Discourse and, from a critical standpoint, in works such as Blake’s ‘The
Chimney Sweeper’.21 Nevertheless, despite the apparent concordance
between the importance Locke places on education in Concerning Education
and his rejection of innateness, the other one-tenth of humanity cannot
be dismissed too quickly. When he comes to discuss those extraordinary
individuals whose inborn virtues are all but impervious to alteration
from without, he seems to invoke premises allegedly dismissed in
the Essay:
I confess, there are some men’s constitutions of body and mind so
vigorous, and well fram’d by nature, that they need not much
assistance from others: but by the strength of their natural genius,
they are, from their cradles, carried towards what is excellent; and by
the privilege of their happy constitutions, are able to do wonders.
(Concerning Education, §1)
This confession, made at the very opening of the text, stands in stark
opposition to what Locke says elsewhere and further supports the above
reading of caverned man as an epistemological and ontological response
The Ark of God
161
to a political anxiety over the susceptibility of the self to infiltration by
the other.
The vigorous ‘natural genius’ is written out of the Essay in favour of
an epistemology that, according to Locke, can be most profitably applied
to humanity as a whole, but here too there are discrepancies between the
two texts, for education, Locke argues, ought to take account of individual
propensity for ‘God has stamped certain characters upon mens [sic] minds,
which like their shapes, may perhaps be a little mended, but can hardly
be totally altered’ (Concerning Education, §66). In the Essay, then, Locke
would seem to deny the very propensities, the characters stamped on every
mind, which he himself acknowledges and which for Blake represent the
latent source of redemption, the messianic impulse in every individual.
Locke in this respect clearly behaves in the manner of a Blakean
hypocrite, apparently deceiving himself – for the Essay is itself shot
through with the sense of its author’s sincere rational belief – and then
going on to deceive others. The consequences of this duplicity are farreaching, leaving the self almost entirely dependent on its environment
and reducing personal identity to the sum total of the objects of memory.
Such thinking paves the way for yet more deterministic representations
of the body, such as we find in the materialistic psychology developed
by Hartley and Priestley. The idea that the repetition of a particular set
of ideas, communicated from beyond the self, actually affects the manner
in which the brain functions suggests that indoctrination in and of
itself can alter the physical make-up of the body and thereby alter
irreparably the constitution of the mind. Blake’s image of the tree of
mystery taking root inside the brain conveys much the same idea.
However, Blake takes Locke’s project of intellectual demolition one
stage further and refuses to accept uncritically the idea that rational
thought is somehow immune to infection. Indeed, once one accepts the
possibility that an outside opinion can infiltrate the brain such as to
alter the way we think and perceive, to then turn around and make
rational thought the only possible route to liberty would seem to be
self-defeating. Williams presents a convincing argument that the conflation of fall and creation in Urizen ‘means that one has no recourse to
an idea that is not already contaminated with the condition of fallenness’
(p. 17). Our examination of Blake’s annotations to Swedenborg’s Divine
Love helps to fill out this reading by suggesting that natural thought is
always already contaminated by the rigid spatial and temporal relationships communicated through shrunken senses and narrowed perceptions.
The fiction of a material body that lacks the strength to resist corruption
leaves the self subject to the external imposition of a moral system that
162 Visionary Materialism in Blake
supplants each individual’s inborn sense of virtue, taken in the older
Latinate sense of the word, with the moral dictates of an abstract God.
In an all-encompassing irony, Lockean attempts to preserve the autonomy
of the self are transformed in Urizen into the exact opposite. Viewed in
this context, Blake’s emphasis on clarity of thought and vision can be
considered as a remedy to the ‘dark net of infection’ that contaminates
spiritual or poetic thought with the natural idea, allowing the individual
to see through the ‘streaky slime’ and perceive the ‘woven hipocrisy’
(Urizen, 25.30, 33, 32; E82).
Outlining the vessels of Eternity
But Blake’s critique of caverned man goes further than this, undercutting
the very secrecy that constructions of the enlightened self tend to conceal.
The self that steps outside itself to reflect on its sense perceptions and
mental operations, that ‘radical subjectivity’ which makes possible
‘radical objectivity’ (see p. 29, Chapter 1 and Taylor, pp. 173–6), is precisely the entity threatened by what we might describe as the ideological
affect, the imposition of external modes of behaviour and belief that
seek to shape both the mind and the body. Blake’s apparent sense that
the entirety of creation has been contaminated would seem to suggest
a concept of ideology that reaches to the very core of each and every
identity. However, such a conception itself depends upon a historically
specific inward turn that presupposes a secret self for whom autonomy
and impermeability represent an ideal state to which the possibility of
personal freedom is indissolubly bound.
In his discussion of the interiorisation of divine light within the
Christian self, Derrida notes that the removal of secrecy itself involves a
fundamental increase in secrecy:
as soon as there is no longer any secret hidden from God or from the
spiritual light that passes through every space, then a recess of spiritual
subjectivity and of absolute interiority is constituted allowing secrecy
to be formed within it. Subtracted from space, this incommensurable
inside of the soul or the conscience, this inside without any outside
carries with it both the end and the origin of the secret. Plus de secret.
For if there were no absolutely heterogeneous interiority separate
from objectivity, if there were no inside that could not be objectified,
there would be no secrecy either. (Gift, p. 101; emphasis in original)
In the alternative tradition feeding into what I have been calling Blake’s
visionary materialism, however, there is, as we have seen, a tendency
The Ark of God
163
to open even the most secret recesses of the self. Absolute interiority
in this tradition corresponds with a sense of the self’s thoroughgoing
permeation by the other, a loving and erotically charged intercourse with
the divine that occurs even when the self remains unaware. The process
of redemption thus entails an awakening of the self’s awareness of itself
and a public proclamation, and indeed celebration, of the knowledge
that divine love, the force of creation itself, has penetrated to the furthest
recesses of the soul.
This is not entirely removed from what Derrida himself says elsewhere concerning the relationship between friendship and thought of/
for the other:
there is thought for man only to the extent that it is thought of the
other – and thought to the other qua thought of the mortal. Following
the same logic, there is thought, there is thinking being – if, at least,
thought must be the thought of the other – only in friendship. (Politics,
p. 224; emphasis in original)
Whilst Derrida will contrast, temporally at least, mortal thought with
divine thought, in the alternative tradition of the mysterium tremendum
that we have been tracing it is precisely the death of God that allows for
the removal of secrecy and, in so doing, effects an onto-theological shift
that closes the gap between the human and the divine.
The opening of the self’s innermost space to alterity is precisely what
allows for the entrance of newness, of inventions such as engraving (to
use Locke’s example) into human experience. Moreover, while the fall
depicted in Urizen is not fortunate, it is in a certain sense necessary, or
more accurately its possibility is a constituent feature of Blakean Eternity.
The other as absolutely other, the enemy with whom the self must
actively engage both internally and externally, is a figure that cannot be
removed without foreclosing the opening to alterity altogether. If, as
Blake suggests in the preface to Milton, the remedy for corporeal war is
mental war, then Urizen’s withdrawal and the violence this wreaks on
the Eternal community is in itself a necessary act of self-differentiation,
though his secrecy and attempts to subdue and annihilate alterity
represent a perversion of this drive to preserve identity, a task that must
therefore be taken up by Los. Discussing the ‘supplementary ruse’ by
which two allegedly opposed models of friendship – the ‘private-invisibleillegible-apolitical’ and the ‘manifest-public-testimonial-political’ – are
implicated one within the other, Derrida remarks on the third party
that interrupts the dialogue between the self and the other within,
between ‘I’ and ‘me’:
164 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Does not my relation to the singularity of the other qua other, in
effect, involve the law? Having come as a third party but always
from the singularity of the other, does not the law command me to
recognize the transcendent alterity of the other who can never be
anything but the heterogeneous and singular, hence resistant to the
very generality of the law? (Politics, p. 277)
Through readings of Nietzsche and Kant, Derrida is here bringing the
immense weight of Western philosophical thought concerning law to bear
on the relation between self and other, a relation moreover that disrupts
the distinctions between private and public, political and universal. Much
more could be said on the way that this tradition intersects with the
political and ethical aspects of Locke’s thought and Blake’s. At present,
however, there are two points of convergence that warrant further consideration. The first is the relation between unity and variety, which will be
discussed below. Of equal pertinence is the notion of a transcendent
alterity, of the eye of God, that preserves identity by preventing the
absolute assimilation of the other by the self, that does not confuse the
splitting of the self into ‘I’ and ‘me’ with the interpenetration of self and
other. This transcendence itself becomes embedded in experience, rendered non-abstract, in the opening of the present to whatever marks of
newness the future, as an encounter with the absolute other, might bring.
The aspect of law as the injunction of a transcendent other is, as we have
seen, something that Blake continuously and vigorously resists. The holy
law is contained within the ark, within the flesh of redeemed humanity,
each member of which returns the gaze of the divine other, rendering it
not mysterious and not transcendent. In this sense, visionary materialism
comes close to the opposition that Deleuze perceives in Spinoza between
‘knowledge and morality, between the relation of command and obedience
and the relation of the known and knowledge’ (p. 24). For Spinoza, Deleuze
remarks, ‘Ethics, which is to say, a typology of immanent modes of existence, replaces Morality, which always refers existence to transcendent
values’ (p. 23). The holy law is that inward virtue which, as we will see,
Blake identifies with the stamina, the constitution of every individual
which Locke not only acknowledges, but also proceeds to deny in a
move that from a certain standpoint is akin to Peter’s denial of Christ.
‘Law, whether moral or social, does not provide us with any knowledge’,
Deleuze writes:
[. . .]. At worst, it prevents the formation of knowledge (the law of the
tyrant). At best, it prepares for knowledge and makes it possible (the
The Ark of God
165
law of Abraham or of Christ). Between these two extremes, it takes the
place of knowledge in those who, because of their mode of existence,
are incapable of knowledge (the law of Moses). [. . .]. The tragedy of
theology and its harmfulness are not just speculative [. . .]; they are
owing to the practical confusion which theology instills [sic] in us
between these two orders that differ in nature. [. . .]. In this [. . .] there
is a confusion that compromises the whole of ontology; the history
of a long error whereby the command is mistaken for something to be
understood, obedience for knowledge itself, and Being for a Fiat.
(Ibid.; emphasis in original)
The history of just this sort of error is told in the books of Urizen, Ahania
and Los, and, in the annotations to Lavater and Swedenborg, Blake
argues that knowledge, acquired through the understanding as outlined
above, must supersede all forms of institutional law (political, religious
and, notably, philosophical). That said, Blake would seem to suggest
that knowledge itself is secondary to the holy law that makes possible
all acts of knowing – the law of Christ which, as The Marriage stresses
repeatedly, is the energy of the body, the affections condemned by
moralists and rationalists alike.
Blake and Spinoza both seek to distinguish between two different
aspects of being – the principles of existence and the injunction to obey –
that are often yoked together under the general heading of ‘law’.
Moreover, as Deleuze notes, for Spinoza such perception is empirical:
[Spinoza refers] to the third eye, which enables one to see life beyond
all false appearances, passions, and deaths. The virtues—humility,
poverty, chastity, frugality—are required for this kind of vision, no
longer as virtues that mutilate life, but as powers that penetrate it
and become one with it. (p. 14)
Though Blake’s concept of virtue differs markedly from Spinoza’s, this
expansion of vision which facilitates the distinction between the moral
law of death and the holy law of life can be clearly related to the importance he places on distinguishing truth from falsehood and recognising
hypocrisy or self-deception in all of its guises. Blake defines hell as
being ‘shut up in the possession of corporeal desires’, but whilst these
‘shortly weary the man for all life is holy’ (§309; E590), it is the enclosure
or restraint, which prevents the active perception of the infinite in
every thing, that constitutes the hellish experience. This idea of hell is
itself indebted to Swedenborg’s conception of hell as an expression of
166 Visionary Materialism in Blake
the extent to which the individual rejects the love of the deity (Divine
Love, §10). But Blake modifies Swedenborg significantly. When the latter
notes that ‘the Negation of God constitutes Hell, and in the Christian
World the Negation of the Lord’s Divinity’, Blake glosses this as ‘the
Negation of the Poetic Genius’, removing hell entirely from the domain
of morality and reconfiguring it as a failure of perception, a denial of
the first principle of perception, which, as we have seen, is also the
source of all form – intellectual and corporeal.
When Lavater asserts that ‘Who begins with severity, in judging of
another, ends commonly with falsehood’ (Aphorisms, §36), Blake
declares this ‘false’ and proclaims that ‘Severity of judgment is a great
virtue’ (ibid.; E585). Such judgement is intimately connected with
perception, with the ‘copiousness of glance’ that Blake identifies in
Lavater and which, for Blake, represents the self’s appropriation of the
divine gaze (Aphorisms, §94; E587). Lavater himself explicitly connects
the penetrative gaze with one’s ontological state in a passage that Blake
declares ‘A vision of the Eternal Now’: ‘Whatever is visible is the vessel
or veil of the invisible past, present, future—as man penetrates to this
more, or perceives it less, he raises or depresses his dignity of being’
(Aphorisms, §407; E592). In this sense, the visible seems to represent a
barrier not dissimilar to the hymen, which, as Larrissy notes, ‘may seem
both “bearer” and “barrier”’ (William Blake, p. 125). Although Lavater
may or may not have had barriers such as the hymen in mind – his talk
of penetration is suggestive but not conclusive – he does attribute this
double sense to the visible, which is both ‘vessel’ and ‘veil’; that is, the
visible both communicates and conceals.
As Blake would have been well aware, the ability to receive the communication of the visible, to penetrate the veil as it were, is, for Lavater,
intimately connected with the study of physiognomy. In Essays on
Physiognomy, which Blake helped to engrave, Lavater defines ‘physiognomy’ as the study of the relations between the body’s surface, its
‘physionomy’, and its content or essence:
Human Physionomy is, as I would have it understood—the exterior,
the surface of Man [. . .]. Physiognomy would accordingly be, the
Science of discovering the relation between the exterior and the
interior—between the visible surface and the invisible spirit which
it covers—between the animated, perceptible matter, and the
imperceptible principle which impresses this character of life upon
it—between the apparent effect, and the concealed cause which
produces it.22
The Ark of God
167
In this sense, physiognomy works to overcome the limitations imposed
by the empirical tradition as it is passed down from Locke to Priestley,
which posits a world of knowable effects and unknowable causes. If one
learns the relation between ‘visible surface’ and ‘invisible spirit’, then
the visible passes from a limiting veil into a communicative vessel.
This twofold aspect of the body has, I would contend, important implications for our understanding of Blake’s thoughts about outline. Lavater
himself refers to ‘physionomy’ as ‘the surface and the outline of [man’s
corporeal] organisation’ (ibid., p. 15) and we know that Blake had an
interest in physiognomy (Bentley, Blake Books, p. 694) and was already
applying this concept in his annotations to Lavater’s Aphorisms in 1788.
Similarly, the printing of All Religions, with its echoes of Aphorisms,
suggests that Blake had Lavater’s ideas in mind for at least part of 1795,
the year in which he posted his instructions on engraving to Cumberland.
Moreover, both the printing of the tractate and the correspondence with
Cumberland relate to Blake’s ongoing concerns regarding the communicative potential of the bounding line. The derivation of the ‘outward
form of Man’ from ‘the Poetic Genius’, described in All Religions (E1), suggests a physiognomic or expressive relationship between body and genius.
The letter to Cumberland similarly relates, though somewhat more
obliquely, to Blake’s ideas about outline by virtue of its connection to
Cumberland’s own Thoughts on Outline. The letter’s advice on engraving
and printing forms part of a longstanding process of instruction and
assistance for which Cumberland publicly thanks Blake in his appendix:
one thing may be asserted of this work, which can be said of few others
that have passed the hands of an engraver, which is, that Mr. Blake
has condescended to take upon him the laborious office of making
them, I may say, fac-similes of my originals: a compliment, from a man
of his extraordinary genius and abilities, the highest, I believe, I shall
ever receive:—and I am indebted to his generous partiality for the
instruction which encouraged me to execute a great part of the plates
myself; enabling me thereby to reduce considerably the price of the
book.23
Cumberland’s glowing reference to Blake indicates that the latter played
a significant role in the book’s development, while Blake’s enthusiastic
response to the copy Cumberland sent him in 1796 indicates that the
sense of gratitude and affinity was mutual.24
Indeed, there is much that Blake would have agreed with in
Cumberland’s book, which was intended to correct the deficiencies of
168 Visionary Materialism in Blake
modern art and taste occasioned by, among other things, the ‘seductive
example of that elegant Artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds’ (Outline, p. 30). While
he notes that ‘mathematically speaking, there is no such thing as Outline’,
he insists that ‘there can be no art without it, and that no man deserves
to be called an Artist, who is defective in this best rudiment’ (pp. 8, 15).
Cumberland’s discussion of outline shares an affinity with Blake’s
emphasis on the importance of the bounding line, for although he
distinguishes between outline and boundary, he maintains that the latter
depends upon the former:
notwithstanding, I see figure without Outline, I cannot describe it on
paper, unless I begin with that process; and hence arises the beauty
of shadows, and the pleasure they afford us, possessing a design
bounded, yet without any Outline. (p. 15)
Art that incorporates ‘perfect outline’ ought to be fostered, Cumberland
maintains, so as to encourage ‘the productions of sensitive genius’ and
teach the public ‘to pierce with the LYNX ’S eyes through the chaos of
images, with which they are annually glutted to satiety’ (p. 5). Again,
we find the notion of a penetrative gaze capable of moving from chaos to
clarity. This loose resemblance between Cumberland’s image and
Lavater’s, probably, is a coincidence. However, the stress Blake places on
clarity as a component of the sublime would seem to imply a connection
between art’s capacity to express the Eternal and the perfection of its
outline. Cumberland describes the perfect outline as ‘fine, firm, flowing,
and faint’ and he relates it to modes of expression, for ‘a course, thick,
and irregular Outline, is, like a coarse mode of expression’ (p. 19).
This attribution of an expressive function to outline in the graphic
arts is by no means peculiar. Indeed, in 1794 William Robson devoted
an entire book to the topic, Grammigraphia; or the Grammar of Drawing.
Significantly, Robson suggests that the ability to draw depends upon
lengthy study devoted to seeing the world differently:
For while enlightened visible objects visit the Eyes of all, they produce
sensations, according to the intelligence within, as different, as is the
information conveyed in a language known, from what is communicated in one not understood. Without intellectual knowledge, the
light admitted within cannot dispel the obscurity: and no more
pleasure is derived from this wonderful representation, than the
looking-glass is sensible of, which receives [. . .] without delight or
information.25
The Ark of God
169
Recalling Cumberland’s suggestion that galleries devoted to the art
of outline will improve the public’s vision to lynx-like proportions,
the productions of an artist of ‘extraordinary genius and abilities’ such
as ‘Mr. Blake’ can be expected to produce in their audience the most
penetrative of gazes.
This sounds rather like the claims Blake himself makes regarding the
redemptive capacities of his art in texts such as The Marriage. Returning
to Blake’s own hopes for Cumberland’s book (that it will ‘prove to the
Abstract Philosophers—that Enjoyment & not Abstinence is the food of
Intellect’), we find Blake’s desires realised both in the emphasis on the
necessity of ‘Outline, or the nature of boundary [. . .] even where no
actual line exists’ and in the Cumberland’s attempts to distinguish the
‘obscene inventions of that great genius, Hogarth’ from ‘the naked
figures of [Antiquity’s] great Artists’ (pp. 26, 44). The emphasis on outline
as the foundation of art, even in the face of its rejection by mathematics,
presents form rather than abstraction as the production of genius.
Similarly, the contrast between a prelapsarian appreciation of naked
splendour and the attempts by ‘lewd hypocrisy’ to conceal or ‘fig-leaf’
the sexual organs is drawn with a view to replacing modern affectations
of delicacy with an elevation of ‘the human form divine’ (pp. 44, 45).
Cumberland’s use of this Blakean term, which first appears in two
poems that between them contrast innocent and experienced modes of
apprehending humanity,26 suggests that Blake may have been of some
influence in this instance. Moreover, there appears to be a definite
parallel between Blake’s declaration that ‘the genitals [are] Beauty’ (The
Marriage, 10; E37) and Cumberland’s declaration that the women of
Britain must be taught that ‘true modesty disdains not to examine, with
a steady eye, the masculine parts’ (Outline, p. 45).
Thoughts on Outline provides us with an expression of two ideas central
to Blake’s thoughts on both art and humanity: the need for a firm,
though not coarse or overly thick, outline and an approach to nudity
and ‘playful’ sexuality that hearkens back to an uncorrupted aesthetic
sense.27 Both of these ideas relate back to Blake’s thoughts on the relation
between the redemptive self and the closeted or caverned self of Locke.
Blake, like Locke, seems to feel a need to draw a firm distinction
between the individual and his or her environment. This is necessary
not only for the preservation of identity and variety, but also due to
the preponderance of evil spirits eager to impose their natural ideas
and sense of enclosure. Paradoxically, the sort of outline implied by
Cumberland, and to a lesser extent by Robson, places the subject in a firm
boundary that nevertheless suggests motion rather than containment,
170 Visionary Materialism in Blake
expression rather than isolation, and innocent desire rather than lewd
hypocrisy. Thus, the true draughtsman is able to produce and perceive
the bounding line as an expression of energetic identity rather than as
an impediment to interaction and conversation. Therefore, in drawing,
both executed and perceived, the barrier is allowed to become the
bearer and the expression of identity is united with the differentiation
of one self from another:
How do we distinguish one face or countenance from another, but
by the bounding line and its infinite inflexions. [. . .]. What is it that
distinguishes honesty from knavery, but the hard and wirey line of
rectitude and certainty in the actions and intentions. Leave out this
l[i]ne and you leave out life itself[.] (Descriptive Catalogue, pp. 64–5;
E550)
6
The Sublime Act
For Blake’s Isaiah, God had simply been an immanence, an
incorporeal indignation; but Gibreel’s vision of the Supreme
Being was not abstract in the least. He saw, sitting on the bed,
a man of about the same age as himself, of medium height,
fairly heavily built, with salt-and-pepper beard cropped close to
the line of the jaw. What struck him most was that the apparition
was balding, seemed to suffer from dandruff and wore glasses.
This was not the Almighty he had expected.
– Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses1
Blake’s ideas about energy, dynamism and opposition are predicated on
a belief in divine immanence, which he seems to have inherited from
his radical Protestant heritage but which also finds precedence in
Spinozean ethics that equate substance with the immanence of God
whose existence underpins all individual essences (1.D1–6). The inseparable correlative to his critique of the natural idea is his belief in the
actuality of the poetic idea, which, via Swedenborg, comes to be associated
with love and desire. However, it is in Lavater’s Aphorisms, which, as
Viscomi suggests, served as a model for All Religions (Blake and the Idea,
p. 195), that Blake encounters a succinct description of the relation between
essence and external form as it manifests itself in unity and variety.
Aphorisms opens with a command to ‘KNOW, in the first place, that
mankind agree in essence, as they do in their limbs and senses’ (1). The
second aphorism stresses individuality, but the assertion of difference is
framed within an overarching implication of similitude: ‘Mankind differ as much in essence as they do in form, limbs, and senses—and only
so, and not more’ (2; emphasis added). Blake describes these first two
aphorisms as ‘true Christian philosophy far above all abstraction’
171
172 Visionary Materialism in Blake
(E584), and their influence is clearly felt in the early tractates. Although
All Religions provides a more detailed description of difference, as the
title suggests ‘All’ ultimately find their source in ‘One’ and the recognition
of ‘infinite variety’ is conjoined with the realisation that ‘all men are
alike’ (E1). His use of the definite article in statements such as ‘the
Poetic Genius is the true Man’ and ‘The true Man is the source’ (ibid.;
E1, 2) imposes a finitude on individual difference by locating its origin
in the variable reception of the same. Similarly, the declaration that ‘all
Religions & as all similars have one source’ (E2) underpins the celebration
of infinite variety with the idea of an essential unity.
When Lavater discusses the peculiarities of great figures, such as
Luther, Calvin, Cromwell, Henry IV, Fenelon, Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire,
Rafael and Milton as the ‘Exuberance’ or ‘Leven’ which ‘raises each
character, and makes it that which it shall be’, this instigates a lengthy
commentary from Blake in which he endorses Lavater’s idea that the
greatness of character inheres in its exuberance, but rejects the description of such exuberance as ‘oppressive’ (Aphorisms, §532). Moreover, in
detailing his own thoughts on the matter, Blake moves seamlessly from
considerations of the artistic to thoughts on the physiognomic:
Variety does not necessarily suppose deformity, for a rose & a lilly.
are various. & both beautiful
Beauty is exuberant but not of ugliness but of beauty & if ugliness is
adjoined to beauty it is not the exuberance of beauty. so if Rafael is
hard & dry it is not his genius but an accident acquired for how can
Substance & Accident be predicated of the same Essence! I cannot
concieve
But the substance gives tincture to the accident & makes it
physiognomic
Aphorism 47. speaks of the heterogeneous, which all extravagance
is. but exuberance not. (E595–6)
Blake here reverses the order that Spinoza assigns to substance and
divine essence in his definition of God as ‘a substance consisting of
an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and
infinite essence’, and his description of ‘the essence of man’ as ‘constituted
by certain modifications of God’s attributes’ (Ethics, 1.D6, 2.P10.Dem.).
In reversing the primacy of substance and essence, Blake implies a redefinition of substance as the manifestation of essence – as the ascription of a
visible quality, a ‘tincture’, to the essence, thereby transforming it from
an internal and hidden secret into a public expression of identity.
The Sublime Act
173
At the end of Lavater’s text, Blake defines ‘Accident’ as ‘the omission
of act in self & the hindering of act in another’ and he declares that ‘To
hinder another [. . .] is a restraint on action both in ourselves & in the
person hinderd’ (pp. 226–7; E601). Moreover, in suggesting that ‘accident’
can be ‘acquired’ Blake seems to include it in the world of experience, of
the distress and suffering that lead to divine understanding. But the
passivity and restraint of the accident, the experience of the world
constituted by the phantasmic relations of time and space, represents
a perversion of the self’s relation to alterity, transforming the holy law
taught by Christ into the codified imposition of morality. ‘The greatest
of characters’, Lavater writes:
[. . .] was he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects
through one grand immutable medium, [. . .] proof against illusion
and time, [. . .] and invariably traced through all the fluctuation of
things. (§16)
Blake names this character ‘Christ’ (ibid.; E584), associating the castingoff of accident with the initiation of prophetic vision. However, the
description of the substance as that which ‘gives tincture to the accident
& makes it physiognomic’ implies not simply a connection with Eternity,
but in particular with divine energy and motion. In the artistic context
suggested by Blake’s reference to Rafael, the term ‘tincture’ carries the
sense of colour or pigment, but through its conjunction with the ‘physiognomic’ it also communicates the idea of the infusion of particular
qualities that relate the outward form to the inward essence. This, as
Blake would have no doubt known, is the sense in which Boehme uses
the term: ‘Men, Beasts, and Fowls, have the Tincture in them, for in the
Beginning they were an Extraction [taken] from the Quality of the Stars
and Elements by the Fiat’ (‘The Three Principles’, Works, I, p. 85). As the
association with ‘the Stars’ suggests, the Tincture represents a portion of
the divine fire, ‘for it is fiery; and the Tincture kindles the Body, with
the Matrix of the Water, so that they are always boiling, [rising] and
seething’ (ibid.). Given his knowledge of Boehme, it seems likely that,
when he links essence, substance and tincture, Blake is infusing his
discussion of artistic and human forms with the idea of a divine fire or
energy. Thus, in giving tincture to the accident, the substance effectively
redeems the self’s relationship with the other, transforming arbitrary
imposition into a conflict or convergence of distinct and eternal identities.
This idea of substance differs markedly from Locke’s, for it is no longer
an imperceptible substratum that the mind supposes to exist by virtue
174 Visionary Materialism in Blake
of the coincidence of a number of accidents (Essay, §2.23.2), but rather
an enactment of identity that properly understood removes accident
altogether.
This redefinition of substance is paralleled by a re-evaluation of
essence. While Lavater defines the ‘essence of humanity’ as an ‘inward
sense of consequence—of all that is pertinent’ (Aphorisms, §47), for
Blake the pertinent is the contrary of the exuberant and he accuses
Lavater of making ‘every thing originate in its accident’ and of making
‘the vicious propensity <not only> a leading feature of the man but the
Stamina on which all his virtues grow’ (p. 226; E601). Blake is perfectly
prepared to admit that man is capable of evil as well as good, but he
insists that the good or the active must not be confused with the bad, for
‘thus 2 contraries would. spring from one essence which is impossible’
(ibid.). ‘The or[i]gin of this mistake’, Blake insists, ‘in Lavater & his
contemporaries, is, They suppose that Womans Love is Sin. in consequence all the Loves & Graces with them are Sin’ (p. 227, E601). Lavater
exalts his catalogue of sin for its ability to correct his tendency ‘to
despise human nature in every individual’, but in Blake’s view this
rationalisation of moral judgement merely disguises the problem: ‘Vice
[. . .] is a Negative—It does not signify what the laws of Kings & Priests
have calld Vice we who are philosophers ought not to call the Staminal
Virtues of Humanity by the same name that we call the omissions of
intellect springing from poverty’ (E601).
Blake’s use of the terms ‘stamina’ and ‘staminal’ in this context is not
insignificant. Lavater himself refers to the ‘stamina’ or ‘ingredients of
character’ in a passage Blake declares ‘Most Excellent’ (§623; E599).
However, the idea of the ‘stamina’ contains, as both would have been
aware, a longstanding history in both botany and behmenist physiognomy. Proctor and Catieau’s Modern Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
provides two definition of the stamina:
[1.] In botany, those fine threads or capillaments growing up within
the flowers or tulips, lilies and most other plants, round the style or
pistil.
[2.] In the natural body, [. . .] those simple original parts, which
existed first in the embryo, or even in the seed, and by whose
distinction, augmentation, and accretion, by additional juices, the
animal body at its utmost bulk, is supposed to be formed.2
Thus, the stamina operates as an organic principle of organisation that
exists in the organism from conception and outlines the form in which
The Sublime Act
175
subsequent growth will occur. When Blake associates the stamina with
‘Virtue’ in his concluding remarks to Aphorisms, he renders this principle active, for ‘Virtue’ is itself defined as ‘all Act [<from Individual
propensity>]’ (p. 226; E601). Thus, both the ability to act and the shape
such action will take is staminal in the sense that it proceeds according
to the shape of one’s essence, the mark of the divine infused into the
body at the time of conception.
Boehme’s notion of the ‘Signature’ or ‘Form of Life’ performs the
same conceptual function as the ‘stamina’ in Lavater and Blake. ‘The
Form of Life’, Boehme tells us, ‘is figured in the Time of the Fiat at
the conception’ and the signature, the mark of that fiat, is that which,
like the ‘substance’ described by Blake, renders outward form and act
physiognomic:
Man in his Speech, Will, and Behaviour, also with the Form of the
Members which he has, and must use to that Signature, his inward
Form is noted in the Form of his Face; and thus also is a Beast, an
Herb, and the Trees; every Thing as it is inwardly [in its innate Virtue
and Quality] so it is outwardly signed. (‘Signatura Rerum’, Works, IV,
pp. 10, 11–12; bracketed text in original)
The ‘Signature’ or ‘inward Form’ is not the same as the essence.
Although it ‘stands in the Essence’, it is ‘no Spirit, but the Receptacle,
Container, or Cabinet of the Spirit’ (ibid., p. 10). In this way, the signature
anticipates Blake’s conceptualisation of the mind as the receptacle of
divine influx, which he discusses in relation to Swedenborg’s notion of
divine love. An examination of the Behmenist context out of which
this idea proceeds not only contributes to an understanding of the
manner in which the receptacle renders the form physiognomic, but
also helps to elucidate Blake’s ideas about the transformation of evil
into good. Because ‘Man’ as the ‘complete Image of God’ has ‘all the
Forms of all the three Worlds [light, fire and love] lying in him’, and
because the fall transforms the fire into wrath thereby introducing what
fallen man perceives as evil, the signature is capable of receiving input
from both good and evil essences:
a good Man corrupts among evil Company, and [. . .] a good Herb
cannot sufficiently shew its real genuine Virtue in a bad Soil; for in
the good Man the hidden evil Instrument is awakened, and in the
Herb a contrary Essence is received from the Earth; so that often the
Good is changed into an Evil, and the Evil into a Good. (pp. 10–11)
176 Visionary Materialism in Blake
Within each individual one of the three worlds is predominant – their
ordering ‘is placed in him at his Incarnation’ and this is ‘marked externally in its outward Form, Signature, or Figure’ (pp. 10, 11). However, in
conversation this order ‘may be broken’ and the self’s predominant
aspect may find its ‘Power, Right, and Authority’ usurped by the dominant
aspect of the other (p. 10). This usurpation, which can make an evil
man repent or cause a good man to turn evil, is made possible by the
affective power Boehme attributes to speech. The spoken word is itself
an embodiment of the speaker’s spirit, which via the medium of ‘Sound
or Speech’, enters the form of the hearer and ‘awakens’ within his bodily
form a corresponding internal form (p. 9). Thus, the speaker’s form,
embodied in his word, and the hearer’s form ‘mutually assimulate [sic]
together in one Form, and then there is [. . .] one Spirit, and also one
Understanding’ (ibid.). If the speaker’s form, which can be conceived
‘either in Good or Evil’, is strong enough to overpower the predominant
form in the hearer, then the hearer will be reshaped in accordance with
the form of the speaker (ibid.).
Blake seems to be drawing on this idea of the affective power of
speech in his remarks at the end of Aphorisms, where he describes the
redemptive potential of conversing ‘in spirit’ and ‘with spirits’.3 Similarly,
his notion that man contains a good part and an evil part (§489; E594)
seems indebted to Boehme’s idea that the same form contains competing
aspects or tendencies. However, Blake modifies Boehme’s model, translating the three worlds into the two contraries and thereby rendering
man as twofold rather than threefold. Similarly, he places more emphasis
on following the active impulse produced by the essence than in distinguishing between good and evil. Thus, he declares that ‘Every mans
<leading> propensity ought to be calld his leading Virtue & his good
Angel’ (p. 226; E601), and that ‘Active Evil is better than Passive
Good’ (§409; E592). In his texts from the 1780s and ’90s, the function
of Boehme’s ‘signature’ is incorporated into the Poetic Genius, which
operates as the nexus linking the universal essence that drives creation
with the individual identities that it creates. Although this essence is
the source of outward form, the process of creation is not unidirectional,
for God does not merely create the world as an entity distinct from
himself but rather he ‘becomes as we are’ (No Natural Religion [b]; E3).
This act of becoming occurs as an embodiment of the universal within
the particular in which the essence is shaped by identity. The universal
genius becomes possessed by each individual manifestation, as is indicated
by Blake’s use of the possessive pronoun: ‘the forms of all things are
derived from their Genius’ (All Religions; E1; emphasis added). Thus, the
The Sublime Act
177
traits of the individual are transferred onto the universal impetus of
creation, effecting a mediation between the universal and the personal.
The human being is the place where substance redeems the accidental,
where the prolific meets the devouring and where exuberance verges on
extravagance. Desire compels men and women to seek what they lack
in those around them, by encouraging them to participate actively in
the formation of loving relationships: ‘It is the God in all that is our
companion & friend, for our God himself says, you are my brother my
sister & my mother’ (Aphorisms, §630; E599). Borrowing Otto’s term, we
can describe the experience of God as an individual’s ‘comportment’
towards alterity:
This [comportment] does not usher in a world of pure and unmediated
presence, nor [. . .] does it suggest that we are able to grasp the other
or his/her intentions once and for all. Nevertheless, it does open
within the world of the self the possibility of engagement and therefore
the possibility of transformation and of exodus. (p. 26)
As Lavater points out, the medium which enables this opening is the
relationship itself:
As the medium of self-enjoyment, as the objects of love—so the
value, the character, and the manner of existence in man—as his
thou, so his I—penetrate the one and you know the other’. (§5)
Such comportment depends upon a particular mode of self-knowledge
which is self-aware but not vain: ‘Who forgets, and does not forget
himself, in the joy of giving, and of accepting is sublime’ (§162).
‘The most sublime act is to set another before you’, Blake writes in
The Marriage (7; E36). There is perhaps a twofold aspect to this act.
Along with the act of preferment, of giving deference to the other,
arises a certain question of visibility. On the one hand, setting the
other, any other, before me would mean placing her or him in front of
myself publicly, in the sight of every other. But, on the other hand,
setting the other before me implies placing the other in front of me,
bringing her or him into my own line of sight, opening my eyes and
receiving the gifts of alterity – for in beholding the other, the self runs
the risk of becoming what it beholds, it subjects itself to infiltration to
the potential of interpenetration, of love: Lavater writes ‘He submits to
be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in
a fit of passion’ and Blake remarks ‘such a one I dare love’ (§608; E588).
178 Visionary Materialism in Blake
The sight of passion kindles that love within the self which Blake
describes as the influx of the divine, that love which he will elsewhere
remind Lavater ‘is life’ (§376; E591). But is there not also a sense in
which the passion of the other involves an act of substitution, for in
placing another before us, do we not submit that other to public
scrutiny and censor? Putting another before me could in this sense be
interpreted as letting my political ally, my brother, my friend, no less
than my enemy, speak and suffer on my behalf, even to the point of
death. The stakes of such substitution rise exponentially at times of
political crisis when, in the name of preserving the security of the
national and/or international community, the borders separating self
from other, friend from enemy, are bolstered and rigorously policed
amidst fears of infiltration or agitation from within. Substitution
here becomes caught up in a particular manifestation of the economy
of sacrifice, the creation and expulsion, detention or execution of the
scapegoat who becomes the public face of the invisible enemy within.
In the rhetoric and politics of terror and anti-terror that threaten to
engulf our own world, today, in the conjuration of a spectral war on
terror, waged openly and in secret, against an enemy both public and
unseen, we can perhaps perceive another incarnation of the Reign of
Terror and the waves of antijacobin trials and riots that swept through
England in the 1790s.
Blake himself, in the annotations to Watson, links the persecution of
republicans such as Paine to the execution of Christ the ‘unbeliever’.
And, as the gospel accounts make clear, the crucifixion itself involves
a certain politics of substitution, not only in the question of whether
the body of Barabbas will be handed over in exchange for that of Christ,
but also in the public presentation of Christ as the visible symbol of
imperial politics, of the exchange of power between the governed and
their governors. Ecce Homo! ‘Behold the man!’, Pilate declares, setting
Christ before the multitude: ‘Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your
king? The chief priests answered, we have no king but Caesar’ ( John
19.5, 15). Christ is here substituted for a king that no longer exists,
becoming the public face of unseen insurrection, the invisible threat
against the body of the state and of Caesar: ‘If thou let this man go,
thou art not Caesar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh
against Caesar’ ( John 19.12). Again we are confronted by the spectre of
friendship and enmity, for in order to befriend Caesar, Pilate must crucify
a man who by his own admission is without fault. And more, in Luke
the handing over of Christ to Herod is an act of reconciliation: ‘And the
same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they
The Sublime Act
179
were at enmity between themselves’ (23.12). Christ here becomes a
scapegoat in the oldest sense of the word, a sacrifice that restores harmony
to the community by erasing the enmity between Pilate and Herod. But
we must not overlook the other act of scapegoating in the text, the
blaming of the Jews for the political execution of an insurrectionist and
unbeliever. Beyond Pilate’s repeated attempts to transfer responsibility
for the act onto the multitude, the gospel accounts themselves work to
solidify the boundaries of a new Christian brotherhood in opposition to
the Jewish enemy. Blake himself may not have escaped this contagion
of anti-Semitism, but nor did he overlook the common fault embedded
in the history adopted by both parties: ‘That the Jews assumed a right
<Exclusively> to the benefits of God. will be a lasting witness against
them. & the same will it be [of ] against Christians’ (Annotations to
Watson, p. 8; E615).
As we have seen, the crucifixion also comes to represent not only the
persecution of the other, but the unconditional gift of love, given in
passion, that is extended to all humanity. The death of one, whom The
Marriage tells us we ‘ought to love [. . .] in the greatest degree’ (23; E43),
disrupts the idealisation and idolation of self-sufficiency that the
Enlightenment inherits from the philosophers of antiquity. ‘A logic of
the gift thus withholds friendship from its philosophical interpretation’,
Derrida writes:
Imparting to it a new twist, at once both gentle and violent, this
logic reorientates friendship, deflecting it towards what it should have
been – what it immemorially will have been. This logic calls friendship back to non-reciprocity, to dissymemetry or to disproportion, to
the impossibility of a return to offered or received hospitality; in
short, it calls friendship back to the irreducible precedence of the
other. (Politics, p. 63)
Christ as the example par excellence of the divine other shatters the
foundations of caverned man, of the Lockean self from which we ourselves today continue to inherit. And this ontological, epistemological
and theological shift – which Derrida shortly after quoting Blake on
Hayley describes as ‘a seismic revolution in the political concept of
friendship’ (Politics, p. 27) – occurs on two fronts. First, in the gift of its
own death offered by the divine other, the self enters into a relationship
constituted by lack or absence, by the certain knowledge that the
other’s gift of love can never be fully returned. But, this sense of lack is
interrelated with the kindling of desire, with the opening of the self to
180 Visionary Materialism in Blake
receive the love of the other, the perception of which depends upon the
self’s own active loving. Moreover, as we have seen in Chapters 3 and 4,
such love involves both the interiorisation and the reciprocity of the
penetrative gaze.
To the materialist or transcendentalist the bounding line of identity
represents a limit, and it is what is inside or outside that line that really
matters; but for the visionary materialist this same line represents
contact rather than seclusion. It is the point where self and other come
together and if perception were extended throughout that line, rather
than being limited to points where it breaks, then perception would be
infinite. If we ask with Blake ‘What is man?’, the answer seems to be the
manifestation of divine essence and unity through identity and variety.
If we proceed to inquire into how sameness can manifest itself through
difference, Blake tells us, ‘from one Essence may proceed many Identities
as from one Affection may proceed. many thoughts’ (Divine Love, §27;
E604). When Theotormon demands of Oothoon, ‘Tell me what is a
thought? & of what substance is it made?’ (Visions, 3.23; E47), he has
missed the point, mistaking the acts of understanding for a metaphysical
adhesive that provides a stable and fixed support for the accidents of
perception. Substance, as Blake describes it in the annotations to Lavater,
is not an underlying stratum, but rather a process of engagement and
expression.
‘Human nature is the image of God’, Blake tells us and to deny this
nature, to supplant it with an ethics of abstraction is not superstition,
but self-deception, the forgiveness of which depends on sincere repentance (§554; E597). In response to Lavater’s warning to ‘Expect the secret
resentment of him whom your forgiveness has impressed with a sense
of his inferiority’, Blake replies: ‘If you expect his resentment you do
not forgive him now [. . .] forgiveness of enemies can only come upon
their repentance’ (§401; E592). For Blake enmity has its source in deception of both self and other. All of Blake’s enemies are hypocrites in this
sense of the word and without a genuine change of heart they cannot
participate in the exchange love, however unequal, between self and
other. ‘The superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities’,
Lavater writes, but Blake deletes ‘superstitious’ replacing it with ‘hypocrite’ and remarks that ‘A man must first decieve himself before he is
<thus> Superstitious & so he is a hypocrite’ (§342; E591). The hypocrite’s
fundamental error is in misrepresenting his own desires, his god, as an
inferior being, such as the natural phantasm or a conception of God
abstracted from humanity, and this necessarily has an adverse affect on
his or her relationship with others. Thus, in seeking ‘hypocrite modesty’,
The Sublime Act
181
Theotormon becomes ‘a sick mans dream’ and he transforms Oothoon
into ‘the crafty slave of selfish holiness’ (Visions, 6.17, 19–20; E50). The
phantasy precedes the imposition and Blake has no time for impostors,
for those who seek to preserve a secret self, because the perception of God
in every thing depends upon the accurate perception of identity. This
then is the limit of a certain ethics of love, of the embrace of the other,
and when Lavater comments on ‘a manner of forgiving so divine, that
you are ready to embrace the offender for having called it forth’, Blake
remarks, ‘this I cannot conceive’ (§400; E592).
Divine forgiveness in Blake’s conception involves an active response
to the particularisation of genius which, as we have seen, is represented
in All Religions as inhering in human weakness, a point which grounds
Blake’s unification of cause and effect: ‘God is in the lowest effects as
well as in the highest causes for he is become a worm that he may nourish
the weak’ (Aphorisms, §630; E599). The influx of divine affection is
required in order to fill a lack or absence and thus creation can be represented as the dialectic between form and content or, put differently,
between substance (i.e. the manifestation of divine essence) and accident
(i.e. the phantasmic relations of time and space). This is not the same
as saying that Blake is presenting us with a vision of unpresentability
because such presence is not to be imagined as existing somewhere else,
for the very idea of distance is produced by the phantasy of space-time.
Lavater writes ‘Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of
God, who sees him not in man’, and Blake signals his approval by
underscoring the last ten words (§408; E592).
Incarnations and inheritance
The impact and continued relevance of Blake’s works on subsequent
generations of readers and writers is becoming increasingly recognised.4
His complex response to a variety of factors – such as the development
of new technologies; the increasing effectiveness of the scientific
method and the concomitant growth of its authority; changes in
economic theory, policy and practice; as well as changing systems of
government and social conditions – provides a wealth of material for
researchers seeking to place contemporary debates over gender, race,
imperialism and ideology within a historical context.5 The focus of this
study has been slightly different. Nevertheless, the investigation of
Blake’s ideas and anxieties about liberty, epistemology and the relationship between self and other has continued relevance in the increasingly
global relations of contemporary society. In particular, Blake’s struggle
182 Visionary Materialism in Blake
to create a mode of perception capable of sustaining hope and love – of
promoting the embrace of alterity – in the midst of fear seems as relevant at the opening of the twenty-first century as in the final decades of
the eighteenth.
It has not been the purpose of this study to argue that Blake’s works
provide solutions to the travails of modern individuals and societies.
That said, the predicaments, conflicts and anxieties that occupied Blake
are not entirely dissimilar to our own. This connection is especially
poignant in his attempts to provide a vision of spiritual and material
progress within a world where spiritual ideas are ossified into religious
impositions, where the interpretation of sacred texts generates cultural
imperialism and holy war, and where the endeavour for liberty must
exist within bounds delineated by the necessaries of existence. Thus, it
is, perhaps, unsurprising to find Blake among the literary precursors
whom Rushdie acknowledges at the end of the Satanic Verses, a text
which itself presents a sustained interrogation of religious ideas and
authority.
The contrast between the sense of God as an immanence, attributed
to Blake, and the rather more mundane old man perceived by the delusional Gibreel provides a particularly apt entrance into summary discussions of Blake’s ideas concerning divine form. Rushdie seems to suggest
that while the conceptualisation of the deity as a power or feeling
implies a movement towards abstraction, there is something startling or
unexpected in the depiction of God as a man. How are we to recognise
the sublime countenance of God within a body that is not only ordinary,
but subject to the effects of time, as well as aesthetic imperfections such
as dandruff? What steps must be taken to locate divine glory in the
figure, to give Rushdie’s example, of ‘a myopic scrivener’ (p. 319)? Such
questions result from difficulties inherent in the concept of incarnation;
that is, the issues arising from the embodiment of divinity within a
body of flesh subject to weakness, suffering and death.
The distinction between the divine immanence and the depiction of
the very fallible God seen by Gibreel represents a contrast between the
vision expressed by Blake’s Isaiah and the hallucination of Rushdie’s
fictional character (Gibreel), who, as a result of mental illness, sees himself as the exclusive agent of divine inspiration and vengeance. In fact,
the tension between, on the one hand, the egalitarian impulse to universalise God and to open the experience of divinity to all and, on the
other hand, the desire to personalise and to particularise this experience
is evident in The Marriage itself. On one side are Isaiah and Ezekiel,
whose concept of the supreme and exclusive source leads to cultural
The Sublime Act
183
subjugation: ‘all nations believe the jews code and worship the jews
god, and what greater subjection can be’ (13; E39). On the other is the
devil in the final ‘Memorable Fancy’ (22–4; E43–4), who insists that
God exists only in the particular form of individual human genius.
Ultimately, the devil’s perspective seems to be endowed with the
greater persuasive force. While his arguments manage to transform the
Swedenborgian Angel into the narrator’s ‘particular friend’ (24; E44),
Isaiah and Ezekiel revert to an extreme asceticism that is at odds with
the text’s overall extollation of desire and enjoyment:
I [. . .] asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three
years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian.
I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right
& left side? he answerd the desire of raising other men into a perception
of the infinite. (13; E39)
We can surmise that Blake would himself have endorsed Isaiah’s
description of prophetic activity and Ezekiel’s desire for infinite perception. However, the association of Isaiah’s actions with the cynicism of
Diogenes and the absence of an explanation as to how Ezekiel’s unusual
and, one might say, ridiculous practice of eating dung will raise men’s
perceptions suggest that while the two prophets provide examples of
genius incarnate, their peculiarity is somewhat barren. Isaiah’s ascetic
renunciation of clothing and footwear would seem to participate in
‘The self enjoyings of self denial’ decried so passionately in Visions (7.9;
E50); similarly, Ezekiel’s acts associate him with consumption – and
indeed with the devouring of excrement – rather than production,
while the fact that he ‘lay so long’ connotes a passive rather than an
active response to genius. Conversely, the oppositional dialogue initiated by the Devil in the final ‘Fancy’ is imbued with a transformative
power that provides a companion for the narrator, presumably Blake,
and thus facilitates the act of diabolical exegesis and the production of
‘The Bible of Hell’ (24; E44).
The generation of ‘infernal or diabolical sense’ and the production of
a satanic text are not unrelated to the twin problems of conceiving
immanence without abstraction and retaining a sense of messianic
purpose without sliding into the angelic arrogance for which Blake
criticises Swedenborg. Williams argues:
This final Fancy brings friendship to the point of almost complete
identification, Angel become [sic] Devil, the triad closed with the
184 Visionary Materialism in Blake
collapsing of narrator and Angel/Devil in the person of a ‘we’ whose
reading procedures are undifferentiated. (p. 217)
From this perspective, which Williams himself labels ‘postmodern’, the
redemptive productions expressed in this Fancy contradict the subsequent maxim that ‘One Law for the Lion & the Ox is Oppression’ (24;
E44; quoted in Williams, p. 217). Thus, The Marriage appears to end
with a contradiction and, more damagingly, with the promise of a
totalising discourse that demonstrates the negative attributes for which
Blake criticises both Swedenborg and Locke: self-closure and imposition.
Williams presents a sustained, insightful and, for the most part, convincing reading of Blake’s poetry. However, there are several points
which need to be raised regarding his reading of this particular Fancy.
First, while Blake’s texts seem particularly open to the readings favoured
by postmodern criticism, depictions of Blake as a postmodernist or even
as a precursor to this type of thought run the risk of failing to account
for the underlying spiritual basis of his thought. In all fairness,
Williams’ argument is as much a Blakean critique of postmodernism as
it is a postmodernist reading of Blake. Nevertheless, his suggestion that
spiritual unity operates as a totalising force overlooks the fundamental
role Blake attributes to variety in the generation of identity. Similarly,
the idea that such identity is ‘constructed’ (Williams, p. 219) stands at
odds with Blake’s own emphasis on the organic growth of the individual and the physiognomic idea of form, in which the internal essence
manifests itself in the external outline. Moreover, Blake’s idea of
redemptive exegesis, like his thoughts on the messianic potential of
dialogue, is premised on the notion of an interaction between self and
other. This point is underscored by Larrissy, who notes that ‘the “firm
perswasion” of the honest prophet is not characterized by the univocal,
but by the polyphonic, and by the overcoming of barriers between
genres and senses’ (‘Printing and Repetition’, p. 64).
Throughout Blake’s early work, we find a recurrent emphasis on
embodiment, on the primacy of experience, on dialogue and on the
need for prophecy to direct its gaze outwards to the world of social
relations. Moreover, while he appears more than willing to embroil
himself in doctrinal disputes, his partisanship does not render his
vision exclusive. Thus, in a text such as Visions, where Lockean empiricism is attacked as an implement of priests and kings, the idea of divine
light is integrated with phenomena related by Darwin in his enlistment
of poetry under the banner of science. In keeping with his emphasis on
engaging with, rather than turning away from, alterity, Blake is fully
The Sublime Act
185
prepared to utilise the imagery and ideas propagated by both the newly
emergent sciences and the occult traditions of Boehme and Swedenborg.
His doctrine of contraries carries the marks of both Priestley and
Boehme and his ‘Tree of Mystery’ is emblematic of his concern over the
imposition of natural/religious phantasies, at the same time expressing
Lockean anxieties over the imbibing of wrong opinions. Similarly, his
ideas about the relation between freedom and boundaries incorporate
botanical ideas about the stamina, the physiognomical ideas of Lavater,
Swedenborg’s ideas about divine influx, as well as an almost neoclassical
emphasis on the importance of outline.
Blake’s emphasis on clarity of vision proceeds from an overarching
empirical impulse that seeks to expunge obscurity in art, philosophy,
religion and politics in favour of a visionary materialism capable of
perceiving unity within variety, infinity within particularity and, ultimately, divine essence within human bodies. The grafting of the ‘poetic
idea’, described in the annotations to Divine Love, onto the concept of
artistic genius would seem to imply an association between textual
creation and redemptive desire and the annotations to Aphorisms also
anticipate the idea that the corporeal creations of the Poetic Genius can
be related to textual production. When Lavater remarks that ‘A GOD,
an ANIMAL, a PLANT, are not companions of man’ (§630), Blake’s initial
response is to question the assumption that God exists as a separate
entity: ‘It is the God in all that is our companion & friend [. . .]. Whoso
dwelleth in love dwelleth in God & God in him’ (§630; E599). He then
conceptualises this ‘dwelling in love’ in terms of the logos: ‘our Lord is
the word of God & every thing on earth is the word of God & in its
essence is God’ (ibid.).
Conceptualising the thing as the word reconfigures the relationship
between form and essence, scripting creation as the unfolding of divine
discourse. In this way, the embodiment of unity in variety is the very
process which prevents the universe from slipping into chaos by allowing it to be read as a coherent text. Moreover, the relationship between
substance and accident can be understood in terms of the communication of meaning, in which the accidental qualities acquired by the form
(i.e. its set of spatio-temporal relationships) serve as points of reference
that position the substance within the unfolding of creation as a whole.
Thus, the form is now fully realised as physiognomic, for the accident
has been tinctured by the semantic essence of Eternity. These ideas
about genius, creation and redemption are materially embodied in the
practice of illuminated printing. Since the unfolding of creation through
time can be conceived in terms of textual production, Blake is able to
186 Visionary Materialism in Blake
claim a redemptive potential for his own productions of genius. ‘Printing
in the infernal method’ will indeed facilitate the removal of ‘the cherub
with his flaming sword’ because the creation of an illuminated book is
the same kind of act as the production of a universe (The Marriage, 14;
E39). The ascription of a messianic capacity to the process of printing is
not unique to Blake. On a political level, the printing press allows for
a rapid and widespread dissemination of political ideas, which was as
significant in the 1790s as it had been in the mid-seventeenth century.
On a more spiritual or religious level, not only did printing allow for
relatively inexpensive productions of sacred texts (orthodox and unorthodox alike), but also there is a sense in which many of the errors in
the biblical text could have been avoided had the sacred authors been
able to use print technology rather than being forced to rely on scribes.
Thus, Brothers attributes scriptural decay to ‘hasty copies in writing,
before the more exact method of Printing’ (A Revealed Knowledge, II, iii).
On one hand, the implication of fixity and repetition seems at odds
with Blake’s emphasis on dynamism and newness. However, as Larrissy
points out, the idea of repetition is of central importance to Blake’s
ideas about the redemptive potential of art:
For Blake, printing as repetition is explicitly linked to questions
about influence, originality and the redemption of time. For while
we are bound to repeat in the world of time, the difference between
a time that can open into Eternity and a time that cannot conceive
of such an opening is the most important difference that can be
perceived. The former is a repetition that is always new, the latter
the repetition of weariness and despair. (‘Printing and Repetition’,
pp. 68–9)
Larrissy’s remarks concerning repetition point us towards another
permutation of this relation in which similitude opens into difference.
Blake expresses his ideas about repetition most strongly in later works
such as the Descriptive Catalogue where he declares: ‘we see the same
characters repeated again and again, in animals, vegetables, minerals,
and in men’ (p. 9; E532). However, the reference to the repetition of
‘the same dull round over again’, in No Natural Religion [b] (E3), suggests
he was already considering such ideas as early as 1788. While this text
speaks to the notion of a negative iteration resulting from the divorce of
‘Philosophy’ from ‘Prophetic Character’ (ibid.), Blake would have
encountered a positive description of the role played by repetition in
the products of genius in Lavater: ‘True genius repeats itself for ever,
The Sublime Act
187
and never repeats itself—one ever varied sense beams novelty on all,
and speaks the same’ (Aphorisms, §138).
Although Blake does not explicitly refer to the idea of a repetition
capable of opening time to Eternity prior to the Descriptive Catalogue,
this reference is itself couched in the same language as the annotations
to Aphorisms: ‘nothing new occurs in identical existence; Accident
ever varies, Substance can never suffer change nor decay’ (Descriptive
Catalogue, pp. 9–10; E532). Blake’s association of accident with the
fluctuations of time and of substance with divine essence suggest a
temporal aspect to the relation between variety and unity. Notably, the
dialectic between variance and unity is embodied in the process of
illuminated printing itself. Viscomi argues that ‘variety does seem to
have been deliberately introduced into the printing itself, since formats
and even tactile surface varied with each printing session’ (Blake and the
Idea, p. 166). However, he also notes that ‘impressions from the same
printing session were printed the same’ and that ‘copies of an edition
vary one from the other because it was almost impossible to avoid
variance, given the mode of production’, which was ‘relatively large by
cottage industry standards’ (pp. 166, 167). This suggests that while
Blake was perfectly prepared to admit variety amongst copies produced
during the same printing session and to introduce differences from one
printing session to the next, the uniqueness of each copy results in
part from the process of printing multiple copies rather than producing
a single work of art. In this context, Blake’s comments in the Descriptive
Catalogue, which suggest that variance is the product of ‘accident’
rather than the ‘substance’ of vision, can be seen as a summation of the
effects produced by the method of printmaking he had been employing
since 1788, the year in which these terms first appeared (in the annotations to Aphorisms).
Of particular interest to discussions of printing and repetition are
Blake’s remarks on miracles, which achieve fullest expression in his
attempts to bring Paine into the prophetic fold:
Is it a greater miracle to feed five thousand men with five loaves than
to overthrow all the armies of Europe with a small pamphlet. look
over the events of your own life & if you do not find that you have
both done such miracles & lived by such you do not see as I do True
I cannot do a miracle thro experiment & to domineer over & prove
to others my superior power as neither could Christ But I can & do
work such as both astonish & comfort me & mine How can Paine the
worker of miracles ever doubt Christs in the above sense of the word
188 Visionary Materialism in Blake
miracle But how can Watson ever believe the above sense of a miracle
who considers it as an arbitrary act of the agent upon an unbelieving
patient. whereas the Gospel says that Christ could not do a miracle
because of Unbelief[.] (Annotations to Watson’s Apology, pp. 12–13;
E617)
Blake’s rejection of the miracle as ‘an arbitrary act’, together with the
stress he places upon the role of belief, suggests a connection between
the miraculous and the ‘firm perswasion’ described in The Marriage (12–13;
E38–9). The reference to Paine’s pamphlet, meanwhile, explicitly links
the capability to work miracles with the power of the printing press for
it is the iterability of the pamphlet that grants it its political force.
How then are we to go about perceiving the divine image in human
form? On one level, Blake suggests that divine embodiment is displayed
through the practice of bringing astonishment and comfort to friends
and family, ‘me & mine’. Returning to The Marriage, we find that the
‘comforter’ is ‘desire’ (6; E35), the sexual energy that compels us to
enter into relationships and the sense of indignation that drives us to
an active engagement with our environment. Discussing Blake’s ideas
about corporeality, Ferber suggests that ‘perhaps in this age, though
we see it wrongly as a Body, our circumference and the circumference
of others generate energy through mutual interpenetration’ (p. 89). This
takes us some way towards conceiving Blake’s ideas about relationship,
interaction and form. But the image of the circumference is somewhat
misleading, for not only is it necessary for human beings to perceive the
world in relation to themselves, ‘Man can have no idea of any thing
greater than Man as a cup cannot contain more than its capaciousness’
(Divine Love, §11; E603), but the human body is itself a manifestation of
divine form: ‘God is a man not because he is so percievd by man but
because he is the creator of man’ (ibid.). When perceived clearly, that
body itself displays the very qualities Blake looked for in art: ‘The
head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet
Proportion’ (The Marriage, 10; E37). Notably, it is the transposition of
artistic values onto the human body that allows the latter to be viewed
in a redemptive light. This notion that the visual arts facilitate
redemption is closely tied to the idea that artistic study and practice
serve to improve our sense of vision, a belief expressed not only in
Blake’s texts but also in Cumberland’s Thoughts on Outline and Robson’s
Grammigraphia.
Blake’s remarks on Lavater’s Aphorisms make two contributions to the
understanding of his thoughts on art, redemption and form. First, the
The Sublime Act
189
very existence of such extensive annotations indicate a belief that
textual bodies are themselves capable of initiating and engaging in
dialogue. In not only heeding, but going beyond Lavater’s injunction
to ‘interline such of these aphorisms as affected you agreeably in reading,
and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness’ (§643; E583), Blake
responds to the text in a manner not all that different from the manner
in which he might respond to Lavater himself. This sense that Blake
sees himself as establishing a relationship with Lavater through the text
is indicated not only by his enclosure of Lavater’s name and his own
within a heart (E583), but also in his comments at the end of the text:
‘I write from the warmth of my heart. & cannot resist the impulse I feel
to rectify what I think false in a book I love so much’ (p. 224; E600).
This suggests not only that inspired productions can enable individuals
to converse in spirit in spite of physical absence, but also that such
conversation must take the form of an active and principled engagement
with the other. Secondly, Blake’s comments speak to the importance of
the penetrative gaze. The Christ is one who can perceive and interpret
the divine essence or staminal virtues that drive growth and provide the
substance of bodily and artistic form. The cry, ‘Love! Love! Love! happy
happy Love!’ (Visions, 7.16; E50), is itself not enough. One must be able
to appreciate the subtle relationship between the imperfections arising
from accident and the divine energy emanating from essence: ‘For let it
be rememberd that creation is. God descending according to the weakness of man’ (§630; E599). Blake’s adamant condemnation of ‘Sneerers’,
‘crawlers’ and ‘hypocrite[s]’ throughout his comments on Lavater
(§59, 61, 292; E585, 590), and the vehemence with which he attacks
philosophical opponents such as Locke, is offset by his sense that it
is weakness that keeps identities from becoming identical. This distinction
between divine essence and human identity is central to Blake’s ideas
about incarnation:
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[.] (Divine Love,
§27; E604)
It is the interplay between substance and accident, variety and unity,
that allows for the expression of personal genius. ‘Improvement makes
strait roads’, Blake tells us, ‘but the crooked roads without Improvement
are roads of Genius’ (The Marriage, 10; E38). It is the lusts and appetites
of the human body, which from an angelic or Urizenic perspective are
190 Visionary Materialism in Blake
marks of frailty and imperfection, that give shape to human identity
and facilitates both the interiorisation and the public expression of that
light which is love, by inducing us to seek something beyond the ‘shadows
of [our] curtains’ (Visions, 7.7; E50). Returning to Rushdie, we hear the
God of Gibreel’s delusion inquiring of his unlikely archangel:
Did we pluck you from the skies so that you could boff and spat with
some (no doubt remarkable) flatfoot blonde? (p. 319)
We can only imagine what Blake’s answer might be.
Notes
Introduction: Blake and his traditions
1. William Blake, ‘Annotations to Aphorisms’, p. 226; E596. John Casper Lavater,
Aphorisms on Man, trans. J.H. Fuseli (London: J. Johnson, 1788). I have
consulted this edition, though not the copy owned by Blake. All citations of
Lavater’s text will be referred to by aphorism number rather than page
number. The same holds true for citations of Blake’s annotations of particular aphorisms when his remarks refer to a particular aphorism except in
instances where Blake’s comments appear on a blank page and following
Erdman, I will refer to these by page number. Unless otherwise noted, all
quotations from Blake’s work are taken from David V. Erdman, The
Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, rev. edn (London: Doubleday, 1988),
hereafter ‘E’.
2. Edward Larrissy, William Blake (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), p. 36.
3. Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947),
p. 8; John Beer, Blake’s Humanism (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1968), p. 16; Michael Ferber, The Social Vision of William Blake
(Guildford: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 136–8; Tristanne Connolly,
William Blake and the Body (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 30–1,
42, 62.
4. S.H. Clark, ‘Blake’s Milton as Empiricist Epic: “Weaving the Woof of Locke” ’,
SiR, 36 (1997), pp. 457–82; Steve Clark, ‘ “Labouring at the Resolute Anvil”:
Blake’s Response to Locke’, in Blake in the Nineties, ed. Steve Clark and David
Worrall (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 133–52; and Wayne Glausser, Locke
and Blake: A Conversation Across the Eighteenth Century (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 1998).
5. Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1968); Desiree Hirst, Hidden Riches: Traditional Symbolism from the
Renaissance to Blake (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964).
6. Jon Mee, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in
the 1790s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); E.P. Thompson, Witness Against the
Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994).
7. Keri Davies, ‘William Blake’s Mother: A New Identification’, Blake: An Illustrated
Quarterly, 33 (1999), pp. 36–50; Marsha Keith Schuchard and Keri Davies,
‘Recovering the Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s Family’, Blake: An
Illustrated Quarterly, 38 (2004), pp. 36–43.
8. Steve Clark and David Worrall, eds, Blake in the Nineties (London: Macmillan,
1999); and Historicizing Blake (London: Macmillan, 1994).
9. Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Chichester: Princeton University
Press, 1993), p. 289. Although in the appendix to this text, Viscomi lists 1794
and 1795 as the first printing of No Natural Religion and All Religions respectively, he dates their composition to 1788 (pp. 187–97).
191
192 Notes
10. S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary, rev. edn (London: University Press of
New England, 1988), p. 243.
11. David Worrall, ‘William Blake and Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden’, Bulletin
of the New York Public Library, 78 (1975), pp. 397–417.
1 Experiences of empiricism
1. ‘Blake and the Mills of Induction’, Blake Newsletter: An Illustrated Quarterly, 10
(1977), pp. 109–12 (p. 111).
2. James Hindmarsh, A New Dictionary of Correspondences, Representation, &c. or
the Spiritual Significations of Words, Sentences, &c. As Used in the Sacred Scriptures
([London]: Robert Hindmarsh, 1794), p. 239.
3. Jean H. Hagstrum, ‘William Blake Rejects the Enlightenment’, in Critical
Essays on William Blake, ed. Hazard Adams (Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1991),
pp. 67–78 (p. 69).
4. For Locke’s significance within a larger history of ideas, see Charles Taylor,
Sources of the Self, pp. 164–77; Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen
Blamey (London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 125–7; Ian Hacking,
‘Memory Sciences, Memory Politics’, Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma
and Memory (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 67–87 (pp. 80–1).
5. For the connection between Blake and Hume, I am indebted to White, who
notes that both Blake and Hume were concerned ‘that the new logic [of
empiricism], like the old, triumphed by means of circular reasoning’ (p. 110).
6. The authorship of the English ‘translation’ of Aphorisms is itself a matter of
debate as the translator, Blake’s friend Fuseli, took certain creative liberties
with the text. Blake may well have been aware of Fuseli’s inventiveness,
though, as one who ‘cannot concieve the Divinity of the [. . .] Bible to consist
either in who they were written by or at what time’ (Annotations to Watson,
p. 22; E618), Blake is likely to have regarded this as of little consequence. In
any case, Blake addresses Lavater by name throughout his annotations,
and following his lead I too will refer to Lavater as the work’s author. For
a detailed discussion of this matter, see Carol Louise Hall, Blake and Fuseli:
A Study in the Transmission of Ideas (London and New York: Garland
Publishing, 1985) and R.J. Shroyer’s introduction to the Scholar’s facsimile
of Blake’s copy of Aphorisms (Delmar, New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles &
Reprints, 1980).
7. Erdman links these comments with Johnson’s imprisonment as part of his
larger argument concerning Blake’s fears about persecution for publication
(Blake: Prophet Against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977;
repr. London: Dover, 1991), pp. 301–2). While Erdman’s suggestion that the
withdrawal of The French Revolution entailed the ‘withdrawal from any
audience beyond a few uncritical or even uncomprehending friends’ has
been challenged by subsequent scholars, the suggestion that he was deeply
affected by the persecutions of the 1790s seems undeniable (Prophet, p. 153).
For recent re-evaluations of Blake’s potential audience, see David Worrall,
‘Blake and 1790s Plebeian Radical Culture’, in Blake in the Nineties, ed. Steve
Clark and David Worrall (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 194–211.
8. The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London: Verso, 1997), p. 72.
Notes
193
9. The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (London: University of Chicago Press,
1995), p. 41.
10. Peter Otto, Constructive Vision and Visionary Deconstruction: Los, Eternity, and
the Productions of Time in the Later Poetry of William Blake (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991), pp. 4–19.
11. These topics have been discussed at length by Morris Eaves, William Blake’s
Theory of Art (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 152–3;
Robert N. Essick, William Blake and the Language of Adam (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989), pp. 189–94; Edward Larrissy, ‘Spectral Imposition and Visionary
Imposition: Printing and Repetition in Blake’, in Blake in the Nineties,
ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 61–77
(pp. 63–4, 68–9); Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea, pp. 42–4.
12. Nicholas M. Williams, Ideology and Utopia in the Poetry of William Blake
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 5.
13. For a detailed discussion of these issues, together with evidence of late
eighteenth-century criticisms of Locke see Ferber, pp. 14–24.
14. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New
International, trans. Peggy Kamuf, intro. Bernd Magnus and Stephen Cullenberg
(London: Routledge, 1994), p. 136.
15. Much has already been written on Blake’s concept of the spectre, and the
following studies provide detailed discussions of the topic: Steve Vine,
Blake’s Poetry: Spectral Visions (London: Macmillan, 1993); Lorraine Clark,
Blake, Kierkegaard, and the Spectre of Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Nelson Hilton, Literal Imagination: Blake’s Vision of Words
(Berkeley: California University Press, 1983), pp. 147–72. To my knowledge,
little has been written to date comparing Blake’s spectre with that encountered
in Specters of Marx, but see Colebrook below.
16. Claire Colebrook provides an informative and useful discussion of Blake,
Derrida and the (Derridean) spectre, which discusses the conjuration and
counter-conjuration characteristic of enlightenment and post-enlightenment
thought (‘The New Jerusalem and the New International’, Parallax, 7 (2001),
pp. 17–28). Colebrook’s discussion differs in focus from the one presented
here, though her readings converge with mine in a number of significant
ways, as noted below.
17. Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, ed.
and intro. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, repr. (New York: Schocken
Books, 1969), pp. 253–64 (p. 256).
18. G.E. Bentley Jr., Blake Books (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 692.
19. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975), §2.1.3–4.
20. Thomas R. Frosch, The Awakening of Albion: The Renovation of the Body in the
Poetry of William Blake (London: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 26–7, 31.
21. Joseph Viscomi, ‘In the Caves of Heaven and Hell: Swedenborg and Printmaking in Blake’s Marriage’, in Blake in the Nineties, ed. Steve Clark and David
Worrall (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 27–60 (p. 44).
22. As instructed by aphorism 643, Blake has underlined the aphorisms that
have ‘affected [him] agreeably, and set a mark to such as left a sense of
uneasiness’ (E583). Following Erdman, Blake’s underlining here, and
throughout the marginalia, is indicated by the use of italics.
194 Notes
23. Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (London: Penguin,
1996), 3.P53.Dem. References to this text are to book number, proposition
or definition number and either demonstration, corollary, scholium, or
explanation.
24. Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco:
City Light Books, 1988), p. 18.
25. Mary Lynn Johnson, ‘Blake, Democritus, and the “Fluxions of the Atom”:
Some Contexts for Materialist Critiques’, in Historicizing Blake, ed. Steve
Clark and David Worrall (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 105–24.
26. Morton D. Paley, Energy and the Imagination: A Study of the Development of
Blake’s Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 8–9.
27. See also: Peter A. Schock, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Blake’s Myth of
Satan and its Cultural Matrix’, ELH, 60 (1993), pp. 441–70 (pp. 443, 457–8);
John Beer, ‘Influence and Independence in Blake’, in Interpreting Blake, ed.
Michael Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 196–261
(p. 223).
28. For a detailed discussion of the difficulties in linking Priestley with Inflammable
Gas, see Erdman, Prophet, p. 93n.
29. Rodney M. Baine and Mary R. Baine, ‘Blake’s Inflammable Gas’, Blake
Newsletter, 10 (1976), pp. 51–2 (p. 51); William Nicholson, An Introduction to
Natural Philosophy, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London: J. Johnson, 1787), I, pp. 13–17.
30. Joseph Priestley, Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (London: J. Johnson,
1777), p. 49.
31. A History of the Corruptions of Christianity (London: British and Foreign
Unitarian Association, 1871), p. 4.
32. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press [1751] 1991), p. 309; see also Priestley, Corruptions, p. 54.
33. Glausser remarks that Blake ‘can embrace Paine’s politics more easily than
his religion’ (p. 8). Similarly, Worrall notes that whereas Visions demonstrates
Painite ideals of liberalism and anti-colonialism, texts such as Urizen, All
Religions and No Natural Religion demonstrate a disillusionment with Paine
(David Worrall, ‘Alternative Europes: Blake and London Print Subcultures’,
Blake, Nation and Empire (Tate Gallery Conference, 8–9 December 2000)).
2 The tree of mystery
1. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James T. Boulton, rev. edn (London: Basil Blackwell,
1987), 2.3, pp. 58–9.
2. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Conor Cruise
O’Brien (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968; repr. 1987), p. 171; John C. Whale,
‘Literal and Symbolic Representations: Burke, Paine and the French Revolution’,
History of European Ideas, 16 (1993), pp. 343–9.
3. Fairbanks suggests, during his apprenticeship to Basire, Blake would have
encountered a testament to Burke’s aristocratic lineage in the form of the
monument to the ‘Countess Dowager of Clanrickard’, the inscription on
which ‘identifies [her] as the wife of “MICHAELL, [. . .] the Head of the
Antient and Noble Family of the BURKES” ’ (A. Harris Fairbanks, ‘Blake,
Notes
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
195
Burke, and the Clanrickard Monument’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 31
(1997), pp. 76–81 (p. 76)).
Susanna Jordan, ‘Burke’s Pain: The Authority of the Invisible in Burke’s
Philosophical Enquiry’, Romanticism and Empirical Method (Conference
Paper, Queen Mary College, University of London, 2–3 March 2001),
March 3.
Emanuel Swedenborg, The Wisdom of Angels, Concerning Divine Love and
Divine Wisdom, trans. [N. Tucker] (London: W. Chalklen, 1788). I have
consulted Blake’s copy of this text. References are to section numbers, not
pages, for this text as well as for Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, Divine
Providence, and Conjugal Love.
Cf. Colebrook, pp. 20–1, 25–6.
Thompson links Volney directly to The Marriage, plate 11, suggesting that
Blake could have come across extracts in Johnson’s Analytical Review, published in January 1792 (p. 201); however, given Viscomi’s re-dating of the
text to 1790 (Blake and the Idea, pp. 235–40), Blake’s text precedes the English
translations of Ruins.
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (New York: Prometheus Books, 1984),
p. 181; Common Sense and Other Political Writings, ed. Nelson F. Adkins
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), p. 4.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. T.J.B. Spencer (London: Penguin, 1980),
1.3.78–80.
Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind, ed. Joseph Priestley, 2nd edn (London:
J. Johnson, 1790). All references to Hartley refer to this edition.
Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 3 vols
(London: [n. pub.], 1744; repr. J. Johnson, 1791).
For an informative discussion of Cowper and Blake, together with reproductions
of the engravings from Cowper’s text, see Connolly, pp. 46–58.
Harald A. Kittel, ‘The Book of Urizen and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, in Interpreting Blake, ed. Michael Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1978), pp. 111–44 (p. 120).
David Worrall, ‘Introduction: Blake’s Urizen Books’, in William Blake: The
Urizen Books (Italy: Princeton University Press/William Blake Trust, 1995),
pp. 10, 12.
Such effects are, to be sure, anathemas to the democratic spirit of Priestley’s
work and Locke’s. However, the ease with which combinations of religious
humility and theories of moral education could be co-opted by conservative
forces is aptly attested to by the preponderance of anti-levelling tracts
published throughout the 1790s. A prime example of such pamphlets, as
Erdman notes (Prophet, p. 274), is William Vincent’s A Discourse, Addressed to
the People of Great-Britain (London: [Hookham and Carpenter], 1792).
Vincent, the Dean of Westminster, seeks to justify the existence of an impoverished class and promotes education as a form of charity that will teach the
poor ‘their duty’ and thereby allow the wealthy to secure both their earthly
possessions and their spiritual rewards. Through education, the poor will be
deterred from vice and ‘robbery might be removed from our streets, and
plunder from our houses’, whilst the robbers and thieves will have their
soul’s saved, certainly ‘the most acceptable service you can render to God’
(p. 17).
196 Notes
3 Right reason and ‘Sense Supernaturall’
1. Lodowick Muggleton, A True Interpretation of all the Chief Texts [. . .] of the
Revelation of St. John (London: the author, 1665; repr. [London(?)]: [n. pub.],
1746), p. v.
2. The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (London: Yale University
Press, 2001), p. 463.
3. ‘Signatura Rerum’, in The Works of Jacob Behmen, The Teutonic Theosopher, ed.
G. Ward and T. Langcake, trans. J. Sparrow, J. Ellistone, and H. Blunden
4 vols (London: M. Richardson, 1764–81); all quotations from Boehme’s works
come from this edition, unless otherwise stated. In addition to consulting
this addition, I have also made use of Jacob Boehme, The Signature of all
Things; of the Supersensual Life; of Heaven and Hell; Discourse Between Two Souls
(London: M. Richardson, 1764–81; repr. [London]: Kessinger, 2004), which
reprints volumes from the Ward and Langcake edition. The pagination
between these collections is consistent.
4. Bryan Aubrey, Watchmen of Eternity: Blake’s Debt to Jacob Boehme (London:
University Press of America, 1986), pp. 51–2.
5. Marsha Keith Schuchard, ‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried: Swedenborg, Blake and the
Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision’, Esoterica, 2 (2000), <http://www.esoteric.
msu.edu>, pp. 45–93 (p. 47). For connections between Blake’s family and the
Moravians, see Keri Davies ‘William Blake’s Mother: A New Identification’
and also Marsha Keith Schuchard and Keri Davies, ‘Recovering the Lost
Moravian History of William Blake’s Family’.
6. Laurence Clarkson, ‘A Single Eye’, in A Collection of Ranter Writings from the
17th Century, ed. Nigel Smith (London: Junction, 1983), pp. 161–75 (p. 162,
ll. 17–19). All quotations from Clarkson, Coppe and Salmon are from this
edition.
7. Albiezer Coppe, ‘Some Sweet Sips, of Some Spiritual Wine’, A Collection of
Ranter Writings, pp. 42–72 (p. 60); Joseph Salmon, ‘Heights in Depths and
Depths in Heights’, A Collection of Ranter Writings, pp. 203–23 (p. 219).
8. ’A Rout, A Rout’, in A Collection of Ranter Writings from the 17th Century, ed.
Nigel Smith (London: Junction, 1983), pp. 189–200 (p. 195).
9. ’A Fiery Flying Roll’, A Collection of Ranter Writings, pp. 80–97 (p. 87).
10. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the
English Revolution (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 93.
11. The Gift, translators note, p. 96.
12. The Two Bookes of Sr Francis Bacon, of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning,
Divine and Humane (Oxford: Thomas Huggins, 1633), pp. 10–11.
13. ’The Reasonableness of Christianity’, The Works of John Locke, 3rd edn, 3 vols
(London: Arthur Bettesworth et al., 1727), pp. 473–541 (pp. 508–9).
14. Lodowick Muggleton, The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit (London:
[n. pub.], 1699), pp. 25, 39.
15. John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton, A Divine Looking-Glass: Or the Third
and Last Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 3rd edn (London: [n. pub.], 1656;
[London(?)]: [n. pub.], repr. 1719), p. 4.
16. Thompson, p. 65; Barry Reay, ‘The Muggletonians: An Introductory Survey’,
in The World of the Muggletonians, ed. Christopher Hill, Barry Reay and
William Lamont (London: Temple Smith, 1983), pp. 23–63 (p. 29).
Notes
197
17. Edward Taylor, Jacob Behmen’s Theosophik Philosophy Unfolded, ed. and abr.
Edward Taylor (London: Tho[mas] Salusbury, 1691), p. 1. This edition was
brought to my attention by Hirst’s discussion in Hidden Riches, p. 91.
18. Viscomi argues that the order of plate production was as follows: 21–4,
12–13, 1–3, 5–6, 11, 6–10, 14, 15, 16–20, 25–7; Joseph Viscomi, ‘The Evolution of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 58
(1997), pp. 281–344 (p. 324). Viscomi is unable to provide a definite position for plate 4 within this series, although he suggests that it appears to
be associated with plates 14 and 15 (ibid., p. 333).
19. Robert F. Gleckner, ‘Priestley and the Chameleon Angel in The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 13 (1979), pp. 37–9.
Priestley’s description is from The History and Present State of Discoveries
Relating to Vision, Light, and Colours. By reversing the order of the colourchanges, Gleckner argues, Blake is suggesting the Angel’s movement from
‘malleability’ to ‘steely self-righteousness’ (p. 38).
4 The opening eye
1. Richard Brothers, A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies & Times, 2 vols
(London: [n. pub.], 1794), I, p. 45.
2. An Account of the Doctrine, Manners, Liturgy, and Idiom of the Unitas Fratrum
(London: [n. pub.], 1749), p. 22.
3. See, for example, Corruptions, p. 2, where Priestley blames the doctrine of
Christ as Logos on the impact of Platonism: ‘That very system, indeed,
which made Christ to have been the eternal reason, or Logos or the Father, did
not, probably, exist in the time of the apostle John, but was introduced from
the principles of Platonism afterwards’. Though Priestley seeks to reject the
doctrine of Christ’s divinity, prized so highly by the Moravians and others,
his insistence on his humanity, his being made flesh and resurrected from
the dead, stems from a similar impulse for the removal of priestly and
political mystery even though his work perpetuates belief in the inaccessibility
of an invisible deity.
4. The New-Jerusalem Magazine, 6 vols (London: the Society, 1790), I, p. 77.
5. Marsha Keith Schuchard and Keri Davies, ‘Recovering the Lost Moravian
History of William Blake’s Family: Part II’ (unpublished article, 2004), §55.
This unpublished paper (hereafter referred to as Schuchard and Davies II)
represents the second half of a two part piece, the first of which was
published in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 38 (2004) and is cited above. As
the paper is in electronic form, I have opted to refer to paragraph numbers
rather than page numbers; these begin at paragraph 25.
6. Schuchard and Davies are here drawing upon Craig Atwood, ‘Blood, Sex, and
Death: Life and Liturgy in Zinzendorf’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Princeton
Theological Seminary, 1995), which unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to consult.
7. Emanuel Swedenborg, A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell, trans. [William
Cookworth and Thomas Hartley], 2nd edn (London: R. Hindmarsh, 1784),
§78. This is the edition annotated by Blake, although I have not had the
opportunity to consult Blake’s copy.
198 Notes
8. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F.L. Cross and
E.A. Livingstone (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 1327.
9. The Delights of Wisdom Respecting Conjugal Love. After Which Follow The
Pleasures of Insanity Respecting Scortatory Love [n. trans.] (London: London
Universal Society for Promotion of the New Church, 1790), §27. This edition
was published in serial form attached to each issue of The New Jerusalem
Magazine.
10. Marsha Keith Schuchard, ‘The Secret Masonic History of Blake’s Swedenborg
Society’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 26 (1992), pp. 40–51 (p. 45).
11. Schuchard provides detailed accounts of the political allegiances and conflicts amongst London Swedenborgians, situating these within the historical
context of late eighteenth-century Europe; see ‘Blake and the Grand Masters
(1791–4): Architects of Repression or Revolution?’, in Blake in the Nineties,
ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 173–93;
‘The Secret Masonic History’ and ‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’.
12. Emanuel, Swedenborg, The Wisdom of Angels Concerning the Divine Providence,
trans. [N. Tucker] (London: Hindmarsh [1790]), p. xviii; E609. I have consulted
the edition owned by Blake, though I have not been able to access his copy.
Bentley lists 1790 as the probable date of Blake’s annotation (Blake Books, p. 697).
13. See the discussion in Chapter 5 below, which discusses in detail Blake’s association of the understanding with God and experience, and of love with the
affections and the divine influx.
14. Gholam Reza Sabri-Tabrizi, The ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ of William Blake (London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 1973), pp. 1–24; for the political affiliations of different
Masonic lodges, see Schuchard, ‘Blake and the Grand Masters’, pp. 174–6.
15. The lack of a section number for this citation is due to the fact that this
sentence is not part of the main body of text, but rather a heading that
summarises the argument developed in sections 163–6.
16. The passage from Swedenborg reads:
With Respect to God, it is not possible that he can love and be reciprocally beloved by others, in whom there is any Thing infinite [. . .]; for if
there was any Thing infinite, [. . .] then it would not be beloved by others,
but it would love itself; for Infinite or the Divine is one; if this existed in
others, it would be itself, and it would be essential Self Love, whereof not
the least is possible in God; for this is totally opposite to the Divine
Essence; wherefore it must exist in others, in whom there is nothing of
the self-existent Divine: That it exists in the Beings created from the
Divine will be seen below.
The difference between creatures being divine and being ‘created from the
Divine’ is all important as the latter opinion, with which Blake takes issue, is
based upon the assumption that the creation is in itself dead.
17. Notably, the potential for a rapid engagement with topical issues during
the early 1790s seems to have been one of the benefits of the method of
illuminated printing in general, prior to Blake’s more expensive and timeconsuming experiments in colour-printing; see Worrall, ‘Blake and 1790s
Plebeian Radical Culture’, p. 195.
Notes
199
18. See Priestley’s edition of Hartley pp. ix–xi, xvii, xxi, and xxvii; and my
discussion above in Chapter 2.
19. For more on the shared significance of the figure or image in relation to
thoughts on futurity, thought and experience in both Blake and Derrida, see
Colebrook, pp. 23, 25–6.
20. The Illuminated Blake: William Blake’s Complete Illuminated Works with a Plateby-Plate Commentary (London: Dover, 1992), p. 102.
21. Joseph Priestley, The Present State of Europe Compared with the Antient Prophecies
(London: J. Johnson, 1794), p. 2.
22. Jon Mee, ‘Is There an Antinomian in the House? William Blake and the
After-Life of a Heresy’, in Historicizing Blake, ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall
(London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 43–58 (p. 48).
5 The ark of God
1. The liminal status of this work can be extended beyond the level of content
and can be applied to its position with Blake’s corpus as a whole. Produced
in 1793, For Children incorporates sketches from Blake’s notebook as well as
illustrations used in other works produced during the 1780s and ’90s,
including, The Marriage, the Book of Urizen and the Book of Los as well as
illustrations to Blair’s Grave and to Milton’s Paradise Lost. The continued
importance of the series is indicated by Blake’s revision and reissue of the
work, as For The Sexes: The Gates of Paradise, c. 1820 (Viscomi, Blake and the
Idea, p. 264).
While I have included references to the facsimiles and transcriptions in
Erdman’s Complete Works, the numbering of plates from For Children follows
that used on the Blake Archive, which is from Bentley.
2. Frank M. Parisi, ‘Emblems of Melancholy: For Children: The Gates of Paradise’,
in Interpreting Blake, ed. Michael Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978), pp. 70–110 (p. 75).
3. Erdman suggests the sibylline connection in his examination of the
sketch of this emblem found in Blake’s notebook (David V. Erdman and
D.K. Moore, The Notebook of William Blake (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1973), p. 21).
4. Worrall, who notes the connection between Eno and the figure on For
Children plate 18, suggests that Eno occupies ‘a transitional phase between
primitive female bard and early priest’ and thus ‘is historically poised
between true vision and the corruption of organized religion’ (‘The Book of Los:
The Designs’, in William Blake: The Urizen Books (Italy: Princeton University
Press/William Blake Trust, 1995), p. 202).
5. Robert Lowth, Isaiah: A New Translation, 2nd edn (London: J. Dodsley and
T. Cadell, 1779).
6. Viscomi notes that The Marriage was ‘restructured’ in copy G (printed in
1818), ‘with the “memorable fancies” of plates 15 and 12–13 reversed, creating
the sequence of plates 1–10, 11, 15, 14, 12–13, 16–27’ (Blake and the Idea,
p. 331); however, the plate order in earlier copies seems to have been consistent
and when Blake printed The Marriage again in 1827 (copy I) it ‘reverted to its
original order’ (ibid.).
200 Notes
7. Frye, for instance, argues:
Oothoon has ‘plucked the flower’ of imaginative experience and has
entered the state of innocence. She cannot argue or rationalize, but she
has passed through sense to imagination and can no longer be persuaded
against her own direct knowledge that the world is one of uniform law.
[. . .]. She has learned that this life is a transfiguration of the sexual life
of the natural world, and has nothing to do with the refined fantasies
of spiritual eunuchs. But once this more abundant life gets loose in the
natural world, it will destroy the present form of that world if it is not
smothered, and another thing that Oothoon has learned is that there are
plenty of people waiting to smother it. (pp. 239–40)
Ostriker provides a more optimistic reading of the text and an even more
celebratory characterisation of its heroine. Describing Oothoon as ‘a heroine
unequalled in English poetry before or since’, she writes:
Oothoon not only defines and defends her own sexuality [. . .] and not
only attacks patriarchal ideology root and branch, but outflanks everyone
in her poem for intellectuality and spirituality, and is intellectual and
spiritual precisely because she is erotic. (Alicia Ostriker, ‘Desire Gratified
and Ungratified: William Blake and Sexuality’, in Critical Essays on
William Blake, ed. Hazard Adams (Boston, MA: Hall, 1991), pp. 90–110
(p. 94))
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Bruder similarly emphasises Oothoon’s sensuality, rejecting ‘the idea that
she should be the passive object of male desire and instead claims the right
to be the subject of her own libidinous inclination’ (Helen P. Bruder, William
Blake and the Daughters of Albion (London: Macmillan, 1997), p. 74).
Bruder notes that these ‘activities in Leutha’s vale have drawn a good deal
of critical comment, with some writers arguing that it is a realm of sexual
evasiveness and denial [. . .], whilst others, though prepared to admit that
she finds her sexuality here, argue that all Oothoon wants to do is give it
away, as a gift to give pleasure to a man’ (p. 75). In contrast, Bruder presents
a convincing argument that Oothoon is embracing her own potential for
sexual pleasure and, indeed, auto-eroticism (ibid.).
The points of uncertainty are marked by Erdman’s typography, which I have
omitted above for ease of reading. Erdman’s original rendering of the problematic lines reads as follows, with the bracketed material representing
conjecture: ‘Man could ?never [have received] ?light from heaven ?without
[aid of the] affections’ (E602).
Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 171–2.
See Worrall, ‘William Blake and Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden’.
For two informative discussions of The Fertilization, see Mee, Dangerous
Enthusiasm, pp. 158–9; and, Beer, ‘Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth: Some
Cross-Currents and Parallels, 1789–1805’, in William Blake: Essays in Honour
of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed. Morton D. Paley and Michael Phillips (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 231–59 (pp. 246–53).
Notes
201
13. Darwin’s essay on the Portland Vase forms part of the ‘Additional Notes’
appended to the Economy of Vegetation, which were paginated separately.
A similar set of notes were also appended to The Loves of the Plants, though
there the pagination is continuous. All references are from the Scholar Press
reprint of Johnson’s 1791 edition (Menston: 1973), though I have also
consulted the Woodstock Books facsimile of the 1789 edition of Loves
(New York: 1991).
14. Although Botanic Garden was not published until 1791, this passage can also
be found in proem of The Loves of the Plants (London: J. Johnson, 1789; repr.
New York: Woodstock Books, 1991), p. v.
15. Indeed, the Moravians were subject to criticism from outside sources, seeking
to foster hostility towards the group by means of publicising their allegedly
immoral acts; see Schuchard, ‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried’, p. 49.
16. Cf. Politics, p. 65:
‘Love’ wants to possess. It wants the possessing. It is the possessing –
cupidity itself (Habsucht); it always hopes for new property; and even
the very Christian ‘love of one’s neighbour’ – charity, perhaps – would
reveal only a new lust in this fundamental drive.
17. The passage in question reads:
Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poets Song
Record the journey of immortal Milton thro’ your Realms
[. . .] Come into my hand
By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm
From out the Portals of my Brain [. . .].
(Milton, 2.1–7; E96)
Essick associates the ‘Poets Song’ with dictation and hearing, noting the
movement from this oral/aural communication into the ‘ “hand” of the
writer-etcher’ (Blake and Language, p. 183).
18. Both the letters in question are from 1803, numbers 27 and 28 in Erdman’s
edition. The relevant lines read:
I have written this Poem from immediate Dictation twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time without Premeditation & even
against my Will. (E728–9)
I hope [. . .] to speak to future generations by a Sublime Allegory which
is now perfectly completed into a Grand Poem[.] I may praise it since
I dare not pretend to be any other than the Secretary the Authors are in
Eternity[.] (E730)
19. While Viscomi notes that All Religions was composed in 1788, the only extant
copy that was printed by Blake and to which he assigns a date is copy A, printed
in 1795. The Marriage, on the other hand, was reprinted on numerous occasions
with copy D printed in 1795 (Blake and the Idea, pp. 187, 376–9).
202 Notes
20. Some Thoughts Concerning Education: A New Edition (London: J. & R. Tonson,
1779). Concerning Education was first published in 1690 and was reprinted
throughout the eighteenth century. I have selected the 1779 edition primarily
for its historical proximity to Blake.
21. I am thinking here primarily of the Innocence poem, whose power and
insight resides in its sense of the subtle workings of a concept that, retroactively, can be identified as ideology. One of the most comprehensive and
informative discussions of the poem in this context remains Larrissy’s
discussion of the poem in William Blake.
22. John Casper Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to Promote the Knowledge
and the Love of Mankind, trans. Henry Hunter, Vol. 1 (London: John Murray,
1789), p. 20. This work consists of three volumes with a complicated production history and multiple title pages, each with differing publication details
(Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 593–5). All of Blake’s engravings, or at least all
which have been signed by him, occur in Volume 1 (ibid., p. 594). This is the
only volume that I have cited and my reference follows the publication
details given on its title page. The edition I have used corresponds to ‘A’ in
Bentley and is housed in the British Library.
23. George Cumberland, Thoughts on Outline, Sculpture, and the System that
Guided the Ancient Artists in Composing Their Figures and Groupes (London:
Robinson, 1796), pp. 47–8.
24. In a letter dated 23 December 1796, Blake writes:
I have lately had some pricks of conscience on account of not
acknowledging your friendship to me [before] immediately on the reciet
of your. beautiful book. [. . .].
Go on
Go on.
such works as yours Nature & Providence the
Eternal Parents demand from their children how few produce them in
such perfection[.] (E700)
The depth and longevity of Blake’s friendship with Cumberland is further
attested by a recently discovered letter from Blake to Cumberland, posted in
September 1800, which begins, ‘To have obtained your friendship is better
than to have sold ten thousand books’ (Robert N. Essick and Morton D.
Paley, ‘ “Dear Generous Cumberland”: A Newly Discovered Letter and Poem
by William Blake’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 32 (1998), pp. 4–13 (p. 4)).
The letter contains the first extant references in writing to Blake’s upcoming
move to Felpham, but a large portion of it is devoted to Cumberland’s
projects (ibid., pp. 5, 10). Of particular significance to the idea of outline is
the proposal for a national gallery to house plaster replicas of antique
statues, which Blake mentions in this letter. Blake discusses this proposal in
other letters to Cumberland (cf. the letter of 2 July 1800; E706) and in the
letter to the Monthly Magazine, which he attaches to the newly discovered
letter. In the latter, Blake describes the use of such a gallery as ‘To Correct
& Determine Public Taste as well as to be Treasures of Study for Artists’
(‘A Newly Discovered Letter’, p. 4). While the bearing this has on the idea of
outline may seem unclear, Cumberland himself maintains that ‘statue is all
Outline’ (Outline, p. 9) and thus the study of sculpture includes within it the
study of outline. Indeed, while ‘a fine simple Outline may possess grace,
Notes
203
action, expression, character, and proportion’, a statue is better ‘as it contains
all these qualities when varied a thousand ways; but, at the same time, we must
acknowledge, that it costs infinitely more study and labour’ (ibid., p. 33).
The establishment of a national gallery of plaster casts, therefore, would
provide an opportunity to study outline as embodied in the sculptures of
great artists.
25. William Robson, Grammigraphia; Or the Grammar of Drawing (London: the
author, 1794), p. 147.
26. Compare, for example, the description of ‘Love’ as ‘the human form divine’
in ‘The Divine Image’ from Innocence (l.11; E13) and ‘the Human Form
Divine’ as ‘Terror’ concealed by the ‘Secrecy’ of ‘the Human Dress’ in the
Experience poem (‘A Divine Image’, ll. 3–4; E32).
27. The term is Cumberland’s; cf. Outline, p. 44:
ladies, who have walked without harm with gentlemen through every
Museum in Europe, and beheld all that Grecian Art, even when it was
playful, could shew, teach their countrywomen [. . .] to examine [. . .]
the antique statues.
6 The Sublime Act
1. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (London: Vintage, 1998), p. 318.
2. Percival Proctor and William Catieau, The Modern Dictionary of Arts and
Sciences, 4 vols (London: the authors, 1774), IV.
3. In addition to Boehme’s texts themselves, Blake would have encountered
Boehme’s idea of speech as an affective embodiment of thought through the
medium of Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, which Blake annotated in the
same year as Aphorisms (Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 695–6). Unlike Boehme and
Blake, however, Swedenborg does not attribute this affective power to
human speech, but only to the speech of angels (cf. Heaven and Hell,
§234–44).
4. See Edward Larrissy, ‘Postmodern Romanticisms’, NASSR ’99 (Conference Paper,
Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada, 12–15 August 1999), August 14;
and Edward Larrissy, ‘When Was Blake?’ (Inaugural Lecture, University of
Leeds, 31 January 2001).
5. There have been many excellent studies in this area. Three of the most
recent, produced in the past eight years, are Williams’ Ideology and Utopia,
Makisi’s Romantic Imperialism, and Bruder’s Blake and the Daughters of Albion.
Bibliography
An Account of the Doctrine, Manners, Liturgy, and Idiom of the Unitas Fratrum (London:
[n. pub.], 1749).
Atwood, Craig, ‘Blood, Sex, and Death: Life and Liturgy in Zinzendorf’ (unpublished
doctoral thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1995).
Aubrey, Bryan, Watchmen of Eternity: Blake’s Debt to Jacob Boehme (London:
University Press of America, 1986).
Bacon, Francis, The Two Bookes of Sr Francis Bacon, of the Proficience and Advancement
of Learning, Divine and Humane (Oxford: Thomas Huggins, 1633).
Baine, Rodney M. and Mary R. Baine, ‘Blake’s Inflammable Gas’, Blake Newsletter,
10 (1976), pp. 51–2.
Beer, John, Blake’s Humanism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968).
——, ‘Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth: Some Cross-Currents and Parallels,
1789–1805’, in William Blake: Essays in Honour of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed. Morton D.
Paley and Michael Phillips (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 231–59.
——, ‘Influence and Independence in Blake’, in Interpreting Blake, ed. Michael
Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 196–261.
Benjamin, Walter, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, ed.
and intro. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, repr. (New York: Schocken Books,
1969), pp. 253–64.
Bentley, G.E. Jr., Blake Books (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
——, The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (London: Yale
University Press, 2001).
Berkeley, George, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I
(Dublin: Jeremy Pepyat, 1710).
The Bible, King James Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, [n.d.]).
[Boehme, Jacob], Jacob Behmen’s Theosophik Philosophy Unfolded, ed. and abr.
Edward Taylor (London: Thomas Salusbury, 1691).
——, The Works of Jacob Behmen, The Teutonic Theosopher, ed. G. Ward and
T. Langcake [trans. J. Sparrow, J. Ellistone, and H. Blunden] 4 vols (London:
M. Richardson, 1764–81).
——, The Signature of all Things; of the Supersensual Life; of Heaven and Hell;
Discourse Between Two Souls (London: M. Richardson, 1764–81; repr. [London]:
Kessinger, 2004).
Brothers, Richard, A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies & Times, 2 vols (London:
[n. pub.], 1794).
Bruder, Helen P., William Blake and the Daughters of Albion (London: Macmillan,
1997).
Bryant, Jacob, A Mythological, Etymological, and Historical Dictionary; Extracted from
the Analysis of Ancient Mythology, ed. William Holwell (London: C. Dilly, 1793).
Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Conor Cruise O’Brien
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968; repr. 1987).
——, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,
ed. James T. Boulton, rev. edn (London: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
204
Bibliography
205
Clark, Lorraine, Blake, Kierkegaard, and the Spectre of Dialectic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Clark, Steve, ‘Blake’s Milton as Empiricist Epic: “Weaving the Woof of Locke” ’,
SiR, 36 (1997), pp. 457–82.
——, ‘ “Labouring at the Resolute Anvil”: Blake’s Response to Locke’, in Blake in
the Nineties, ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall (London: Macmillan,
1999), pp. 133–52.
Clark, Steve and David Worrall, Historicizing Blake (London: Macmillan,
1994).
——, eds, Blake in the Nineties (London: Macmillan, 1999).
Clarkson, Laurence, ‘A Single Eye’, in A Collection of Ranter Writings from the 17th
Century, ed. Nigel Smith (London: Junction, 1983), pp. 161–75.
Colebrook, Claire, ‘The New Jerusalem and the New International’, Parallax,
7 (2001), pp. 17–28.
Connolly, Tristanne, William Blake and the Body (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan,
2002).
Coppe, Albiezer, ‘Some Sweet Sips, of Some Spiritual Wine’ and ‘A Fiery Flying
Roll’, in A Collection of Ranter Writings from the 17th Century, ed. Nigel Smith
(London: Junction, 1983), pp. 42–72, 80–97.
Cumberland, George, Thoughts on Outline, Sculpture, and the System that Guided the
Ancient Artists in Composing Their Figures and Groupes (London: Robinson, 1796).
Damon, S. Foster, A Blake Dictionary, rev. edn (London: University Press of
New England, 1988).
Darwin, Erasmus, The Botanic Garden (London: J. Johnson, 1791; repr. Menston:
Scholar Press, 1973).
——, The Loves of the Plants (London: J. Johnson, 1789; repr. New York: Woodstock
Books, 1991).
Davies, Keri, ‘William Blake’s Mother: A New Identification’, Blake: An Illustrated
Quarterly, 33 (1999), pp. 36–50.
Deleuze, Gilles, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco:
City Light Books, 1988).
Derrida, Jacques, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and
the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf, intro. Bernd Magnus and Stephen
Cullenberg (London: Routledge, 1994).
——, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (London: University of Chicago Press,
1995).
——, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London: Verso, 1997).
Eaves, Morris, William Blake’s Theory of Art (New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1982), pp. 152–3.
Erdman, David V. (ed.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, rev. edn
(London: Doubleday, 1988).
——, Blake: Prophet Against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977;
repr. London: Dover, 1991).
——, The Illuminated Blake: William Blake’s Complete Illuminated Works with a
Plate-by-Plate Commentary (London: Dover, 1992).
Erdman, David V. and D.K. Moore, The Notebook of William Blake (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1973).
Essick, Robert N., William Blake and the Language of Adam (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989).
206 Bibliography
Essick, Robert N. and Morton D. Paley, ‘ “Dear Generous Cumberland”: A Newly
Discovered Letter and Poem by William Blake’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly,
32 (1998), pp. 4–13.
Fairbanks, A. Harris, ‘Blake, Burke, and the Clanrickard Monument’, Blake:
An Illustrated Quarterly, 31 (1997), pp. 76–81.
Ferber, Michael, The Social Vision of William Blake (Guildford: Princeton University
Press, 1985).
Frosch, Thomas R., The Awakening of Albion: The Renovation of the Body in the
Poetry of William Blake (London: Cornell University Press, 1974).
Frye, Northrop, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947).
Glausser, Wayne, Locke and Blake: A Conversation Across the Eighteenth Century
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998).
Gleckner, Robert F., ‘Priestley and the Chameleon Angel in The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 13 (1979), pp. 37–9.
Hacking, Ian, ‘Memory Sciences, Memory Politics’, Tense Past: Cultural Essays in
Trauma and Memory (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 67–87.
Hagstrum, Jean H., ‘William Blake Rejects the Enlightenment’, in Critical Essays on
William Blake, ed. Hazard Adams (Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1991), pp. 67–78 (p. 69).
Hall, Carol Louise, Blake and Fuseli: A Study in the Transmission of Ideas (London
and New York: Garland Publishing, 1985).
Hartley, David, Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind, [Observations on Man], 2nd
edn (London: J. Johnson, 1790).
——, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 3 vols
(London: [n. pub.], 1744; repr. J. Johnson, 1791).
Hill, Christopher, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English
Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1975).
Hill, Christopher, Barry Reay and William Lamont, The World of the Muggletonians (London: Temple Smith, 1983).
Hilton, Nelson, Literal Imagination: Blake’s Vision of Words (Berkeley: California
University Press, 1983).
Hindmarsh, James, A New Dictionary of Correspondences, Representation, &c. or the
Spiritual Significations of Words, Sentences, &c. As Used in the Sacred Scriptures
([London]: Robert Hindmarsh, 1794).
Hirst, Desiree, Hidden Riches: Traditional Symbolism from the Renaissance to Blake
(London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964).
Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991).
Johnson, Mary Lynn, ‘Blake, Democritus and the “Fluxions of the Atom”: Some
Contexts for Materialist Critiques’, in Historicizing Blake, ed. Steve Clark and
David Worrall (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 105–24.
Jordan, Susanna, ‘Burke’s Pain: The Authority of the Invisible in Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry’, Romanticism and Empirical Method (Conference Paper, Queen
Mary College, University of London, 2–3 March 2001), March 3.
Kittel, Harald A., ‘The Book of Urizen and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’,
in Interpreting Blake, ed. Michael Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978), pp. 111–44.
Larrissy, Edward, William Blake (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985).
——, ‘Postmodern Romanticisms’, NASSR ’99 (Conference Paper, Saint Mary’s
University, Halifax, Canada, 12–15 August 1999), August 14.
Bibliography
207
——, ‘Spectral Imposition and Visionary Imposition: Printing and Repetition in
Blake’, in Blake in the Nineties, ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall (London:
Macmillan, 1999), pp. 61–77.
——, ‘When Was Blake?’ (Inaugural Lecture, University of Leeds, 31 January
2001).
Lavater, John Casper, Aphorisms on Man, trans. J.H. Fuseli (London: J. Johnson, 1788).
——, Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to Promote the Knowledge and the Love of
Mankind, trans. Henry Hunter, Vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1789).
——, Aphorisms on Man: A Facsimile Reproduction of William Blake’s Copy of
the First English Edition, intro. R.J. Shroyer (Delmar, New York: Scholars’
Facsimiles & Reprints, 1980).
Locke, John, ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity’, The Works of John Locke, 3rd edn,
3 vols (London: Arthur Bettesworth, 1727), II, pp. 473–541.
——, Some Thoughts Concerning Education: A New Edition (London: J. & R. Tonson,
1779).
——, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
London Universal Society for Promotion of the New Church, The New Jerusalem
Magazine, 6 vols (London: The Society, 1790).
Lowth, Robert, Isaiah: A New Translation, 2nd edn (London: J. Dodsley and
T. Cadell, 1779).
Makdisi, Saree, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Mee, Jon, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the
1790s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
——, ‘Is There an Antinomian in the House? William Blake and the After-Life of
a Heresy’, in Historicizing Blake, ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall (London:
Macmillan, 1994), pp. 43–58.
Muggleton, Lodowick, The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit (London: [n. pub.],
1699).
——, A True Interpretation of all the Chief Texts [. . .] of the Revelation of St. John
(London: the author, 1665; repr. [London(?)]: [n. pub.], 1746).
Nicholson, William, An Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London:
J. Johnson, 1787).
Ostriker, Alicia, ‘Desire Gratified and Ungratified: William Blake and Sexuality’,
in Critical Essays on William Blake, ed. Hazard Adams (Boston, MA: Hall, 1991),
pp. 90–110.
Otto, Peter, Constructive Vision and Visionary Deconstruction: Los, Eternity, and the
Productions of Time in the Later Poetry of William Blake (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1991).
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone
(London: Oxford University Press, 1988).
The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989; repr.
London: BCA, 1994).
Paine, Thomas, Common Sense and Other Political Writings, ed. Nelson F. Adkins
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1953).
——, The Age of Reason (New York: Prometheus Books, 1984).
Paley, Morton D., Energy and the Imagination: A Study of the Development of Blake’s
Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
208 Bibliography
Parisi, Frank M., ‘Emblems of Melancholy: For Children; The Gates of Paradise’, in
Interpreting Blake, ed. Michael Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978), pp. 70–110.
Priestley, Joseph, Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (London: J. Johnson,
1777).
——, The Present State of Europe Compared with the Antient Prophecies (London:
J. Johnson, 1794).
——, A History of the Corruptions of Christianity (London: British and Foreign
Unitarian Association, 1871).
Proctor, Percival and William Catieau, The Modern Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,
4 vols (London: the authors, 1774).
Raine, Kathleen, Blake and Tradition, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1968).
Reay, Barry, ‘The Muggletonians: An Introductory Survey’, in The World of the
Muggletonians, ed. Christopher Hill, Barry Reay and William Lamont (London:
Temple Smith, 1983), pp. 23–63.
Reeve, John and Lodowick Muggleton, A Divine Looking-Glass: Or the Third and
Last Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 3rd edn (London: [n. pub.], 1656; [London:
[n. pub.], repr. 1719).
Ricoeur, Paul, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (London: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).
Robson, William, Grammigraphia; or The Grammar of Drawing (London: the author,
1794).
Rushdie, Salman, The Satanic Verses (London: Vintage, 1998).
Sabri-Tabrizi, Gholam Reza, The ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ of William Blake (London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 1973).
Salmon, Joseph, ‘A Rout, A Rout’ and ‘Heights in Depths and Depths in Heights’,
in A Collection of Ranter Writings from the 17th Century, ed. Nigel Smith (London:
Junction, 1983), pp. 189–200, 203–23.
Schock, Peter A., ‘ “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”: Blake’s Myth of Satan and
its Cultural Matrix’, ELH, 60 (1993), pp. 441–70.
Schuchard, Marsha Keith, ‘The Secret Masonic History of Blake’s Swedenborg
Society’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 26 (1992), pp. 40–51.
——, ‘Blake and the Grand Masters (1791–4): Architects of Repression or
Revolution?’, in Blake in the Nineties, ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall
(London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 173–93.
——, ‘Why Mrs. Blake Cried: Swedenborg, Blake and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual
Vision’, Esoterica, 2 (2000), <http://www.esoteric.msu. edu>, pp. 45–93.
Schuchard, Marsha Keith and Keri Davies, ‘Recovering the Lost Moravian
History of William Blake’s Family’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 38 (2004),
pp. 36–43.
——, ‘Recovering the Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s Family: Part II’
(unpublished article, 2004), §25–75.
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, ed. T.J.B. Spencer (London: Penguin, 1980).
Spinoza, Benedict de, Ethics, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (London: Penguin, 1996).
Swedenborg, Emanuel, A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell, trans. [W. Cookworth
and T. Hartley], 2nd edn (London: R. Hindmarsh, 1784).
——, The Wisdom of Angels, Concerning Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, trans.
[N. Tucker] (London: W. Chalklen, 1788).
Bibliography
209
——, The Delights of Wisdom Respecting Conjugal Love. After Which Follow The
Pleasures of Insanity Respecting Scortatory Love [n. trans.] (London: London Universal Society for Promotion of the New Church, 1790).
——, The Wisdom of Angels Concerning the Divine Providence, trans. [N. Tucker]
(London: Hindmarsh [1790]).
Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
Taylor, Edward, ed., Jacob Behmen’s Theosophik Philosophy Unfolded (London:
Tho[mas] Salusbury, 1691).
Thompson, E.P., Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Vincent, William, A Discourse, Addressed to the People of Great-Britain, May 13th,
1792 (London: [Hookham and Carpenter], 1792).
Vine, Steve, Blake’s Poetry: Spectral Visions (London: Macmillan, 1993).
Viscomi, Joseph, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Chichester: Princeton University
Press, 1993).
——, ‘The Evolution of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, Huntington Library Quarterly,
58 (1997), pp. 281–344.
——, ‘In the Caves of Heaven and Hell: Swedenborg and Printmaking in Blake’s
Marriage’, in Blake in the Nineties, ed. Steve Clark and David Worrall (London:
Macmillan, 1999), pp. 27–60.
Whale, John C., ‘Literal and Symbolic Representations: Burke, Paine and the
French Revolution’, History of European Ideas, 16 (1993), pp. 343–9.
White, Harry, ‘Blake and the Mills of Induction’, Blake Newsletter: An Illustrated
Quarterly, 10 (1977), pp. 109–12.
Williams, Nicholas M., Ideology and Utopia in the Poetry of William Blake
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Worrall, David, ‘William Blake and Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden’, Bulletin of
the New York Public Library, 78 (1975), pp. 397–417.
——, (ed.), William Blake: The Urizen Books (Italy: Princeton University Press/William
Blake Trust, 1995).
——, ‘Blake and 1790s Plebeian Radical Culture’, in Blake in the Nineties, ed. Steve
Clark and David Worrall (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 194–211.
——, ‘Alternative Europes: Blake and London Print Subcultures’, Blake, Nation
and Empire (Conference Paper, Tate Gallery, 8–9 December 2000), December 8.
Index
abstraction, 46–50, 53, 55, 57, 60,
64–5, 69, 80, 84, 91, 95, 109,
115, 118, 122, 132, 138–9,
144, 151–2, 162, 164, 169,
171, 180, 182–3
abyss, 53, 72–3, 76, 78, 94, 99,
116–17, 143
abyssal eye, 72–3, 91, 130
accident, 1, 18, 88, 104, 172–4,
177, 180, 181, 185, 187, 189
action, 32, 33, 37, 47, 83, 122–3, 130,
170, 175–6
creative, 48, 92, 155, 170, 183, 186
divine/spiritual, 46, 69, 79, 87, 92,
122, 133, 142, 176, 183
intellectual/mental, 15, 21, 22,
27–8, 46, 57, 67, 68, 88,
101, 112, 147, 157–8, 163,
165, 180, 188
of love, 103–4, 121–3, 180
redeemed/redemptive, 12, 75–7, 86,
102, 107, 142, 156, 177, 188–9
sensory/perceptive, 23, 62, 85, 88,
92, 143, 155, 165
sexual, 125, 132, 143, 153, 200, 201
virtuous, 1, 174–5
Adam Kadmon, 73
see also divine humanity; God
as a man
aesthetics, 10, 22, 44, 140, 169, 182
aetiology, 33, 47, 49, 68, 72
affection/mental affect, 32, 34, 57–9,
120–3, 125, 145–7, 149, 154, 162,
165, 176, 180–1, 189, 193, 198,
200, 203
see also divine love
Ahania, 64
Ahania, The Book of, 33, 42–3, 63–6, 165
alchemy, 93–5, 108
All Religions are One, 7, 10, 11, 13–14,
34, 47–8, 68–9, 71, 88, 92, 97–8,
120, 137–9, 159, 167, 171–2, 176,
181, 191, 194, 201
alterity, 17–18, 45, 48, 50, 67, 74,
78, 83–4, 91, 116, 126, 130,
141, 152, 154–6, 163–4, 173,
177, 182, 184
see also other
America: a Prophecy, 19, 24,
129, 137
angels, 33, 48, 52, 79–82, 95, 97, 99,
100, 105–7, 109–10, 112–21,
125–7, 176, 183–4, 189–90, 203
Annotations
to An Apology for the Bible by
R. Watson, 11, 47, 147, 179,
188, 192
to Lavater’s Aphorisms on Man, 1,
9, 15, 33, 56, 116, 121,
131–3, 142, 144, 159,
166–81, 185–9, 191
to Swedenborg’s Divine Love and
Divine Wisdom, 50, 106,
108–26, 145–6, 158, 161,
166, 180, 185, 188–9
to Swedenborg’s Divine Providence,
106, 108–26
to Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell,
106, 108–26, 203
to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds,
2, 4, 10, 23, 26
anti-Semitism, 72, 179
antijacobinism, 16, 178
antinomianism, 1, 5, 72, 75, 82, 99,
102, 129
apocalypse, 11–13, 32, 36, 105,
125, 127
appearance, 15, 29, 31–2, 67–8,
74, 78, 83, 87, 101, 120, 121,
125, 141, 165
Aristotle, 16, 95, 103–4, 118, 132
Ark of the Covenant, 131–3,
147, 164
Armitage, Catherine, 101–2,
108, 132
Armitage, Thomas, 101–4, 121
210
Index 211
art
production of, 4, 7, 10–11, 18, 23,
76, 120, 138–9, 154–7, 168–9,
187
public reception of, 168–9
and redemption, 4, 9, 104, 139, 156,
169, 173, 186, 188–9
association, doctrine of, 56–61, 65
atonement, 38, 42, 146
attraction and repulsion, 53–6, 69,
72, 95
Atwood, Craig, 197
Aubrey, Bryan, 74–5, 93–5, 196
Bacon, Francis, 1, 6, 8, 10–14, 19, 23,
26, 61, 83–4, 196
Baine, Rodney M. and Mary R. Baine,
35, 194
Basire, James, 194
beauty, 77, 168, 172
see also sublime, the
Beer, John, 3, 191, 194, 200
Behmenism, 75–7, 93–9, 101, 109–10,
174–5
Benjamin, Walter, 22, 193
Bentley, G.E. Jr., 23, 71, 167, 193, 198,
199, 202, 203
Berkeley, George, 14, 89, 105
Bible, The, 4, 16, 36–8, 71, 75, 79, 89,
118, 128, 192
Blake, Catherine (née Boucher), 109
Blake, William, see individual works
blood theology, 101, 129, 138
body
divine/spiritual, 3, 89–91, 95–104,
107–8, 129, 132–3, 178, 182,
188
history of, 31, 61, 71
human, 2, 13–14, 31–6, 38, 47,
53–4, 58, 60, 68, 72–6, 92,
96–104, 108, 112–14, 122–3,
132–3, 135–6, 145–6, 153–4,
160–2, 165–7, 173, 175,
188, 189
physical, 30, 31, 67, 71, 74, 161, 167
representations of, 3–4, 31, 58,
60–8, 71, 96, 100–2, 107,
118, 129, 160–1
see also dualism (mind–body)
Boehme, Jacob, 3–4, 6, 73–5, 77, 80,
91–9, 106, 109–10, 129, 173,
175–6, 185, 196, 197, 203
bounding line, 18, 153–62, 167, 168,
170, 180
brain, 42–3, 57–8, 63–4, 123, 143, 161
Brothers, Richard, 4, 5, 20, 88, 100,
126–30, 186, 197
Bruder, Helen P., 200, 203
Burke, Edmund, 22–3, 44–5, 59–60,
78, 129, 194–5
cause and effect, 1, 21, 29–30, 39, 43,
50–7, 60, 67, 98, 121, 166–7, 181
caverned man, 26–33, 116, 160–2, 179
see also self
Christ, 3, 37–9, 76, 87, 92, 102–3,
121, 146, 164–5, 173,
178–9, 197
Christianity, 4, 35–9, 80, 132–3, 162,
171, 179, 201
Christology, 3, 38, 89–90, 100–5, 118,
132, 147
Church, 116–18, 145
Church doctrine, 38, 42
Church of England, 39, 81
New Jerusalem Church, 108–10,
113, 115
Roman Catholic, 39
Civil War (English), 75, 81
clarity, 4, 45, 128, 156, 162, 168, 185
Clark, Lorraine, 193
Clark, Steve, 4, 5, 6, 13, 20–3, 27, 45,
191, 192, 193
Clarkson, Laurence, 75–8, 80, 196
Colebrook, Claire, 32, 33, 73–4, 100,
193, 195, 199
comportment
of embrace/engagement, 18, 118,
124–5, 141, 152, 156, 177,
181–2
of withdrawal, 24–5, 31, 46, 111,
114–15, 141, 150, 163
conception and execution, 155–9,
163, 170
Connolly, Tristanne, 3, 60, 104,
191, 195
conscience, 11, 47–9, 60, 71, 76, 90,
137, 146, 162
212 Index
contraries, 13, 54, 69, 93, 95–6, 110,
119–20, 125, 174–6, 185
Coppe, Albiezer, 76–80, 127, 196
corporeality, see embodiment
cosmogony, 13, 72, 93
counter-enlightenment, 4, 5, 9, 82–3, 99
see also Enlightenment, the;
post-enlightenment
crucifixion, 38, 42, 65–6, 103,
146–7, 178–9
see also mysterium tremendum;
passion (suffering)
Cumberland, George, 8, 9, 156, 159,
167–9, 188, 202, 203
Damon, S. Foster, 35, 136, 192
Darwin, Erasmus, 3, 6, 8, 148–52,
184, 201
Davies, Keri, 5, 81–2, 101–4, 115, 191,
196, 197
Deleuze, Gilles, 34, 47, 164, 165, 194
demonic, the, 77, 80–1, 91, 100
see also enthusiasm; orgiastic, the
demonstration, 38, 46–8, 50, 76, 80,
86–7, 91, 105, 107, 116–19, 129
Derrida, Jacques, 16, 17, 20–2, 48,
49–50, 67, 72–81, 100–1, 103–4,
112, 121–2, 123, 125, 130, 154,
162–4, 179, 193, 199
Descartes, René, 2, 31
desire, 28, 37, 51–2, 62–8, 84, 91–2,
98, 102, 116, 118, 122–5, 129,
132–4, 138, 140, 143–5, 154, 158,
159, 165, 170, 171, 177, 179–80,
182–3, 185, 188, 200
see also energy
determinism, 59–60, 161
devils, 16, 33, 35, 71, 79–81, 90–1, 95,
100, 105, 107, 109, 110, 114,
125–6, 138–9, 183–4
disembodiment, 43, 56, 91, 101, 132
see also embodiment
divine humanity, 106–7
see also Adam Kadmon; God,
as a man
divine immanence, 36, 77, 94, 96,
103, 133, 171, 175, 182–3
divine love, 121, 132, 163, 175
see also desire
division, 14, 24, 29, 31, 50, 52, 62–3,
77, 97, 115, 132, 150, 157
dualism (mind–body), 5, 34, 54–5,
58, 60, 74, 95–6, 98, 101,
112–13, 123, 129, 136, 146,
150, 161–2, 167
Eaves, Morris, 193
economy of justice/sacrifice, 75–8,
105, 121, 145–7, 178
education, theories of, 61, 160–61,
195, 202
effect, see cause and effect
emanation, 123, 132
embodiment, 3, 47–8, 50, 56, 60, 64,
68–70, 73–4, 81–2, 91–2, 96–8,
104, 114, 120, 130, 139, 145, 156,
176, 182, 184–5, 187–8, 203
see also disembodiment
embrace, see comportment
empiricism, 1, 3–4, 5–8, 10–40,
44–6, 48–51, 55–61, 64–5, 68,
73, 82–9, 91, 95, 99, 106, 116,
118, 123, 137, 140, 159, 165,
167, 184–5, 192
see also perception; philosophy of
the five senses
enemy, the, 15–17, 20, 74, 79, 115,
126, 163, 178–9
see also friendly enemy
energy, 14, 23, 27, 35, 54, 63, 68–70,
77, 93–4, 96, 112, 115, 129, 136,
143, 151, 158, 165, 171, 173,
188–9, 194
see also desire
engraving
concept of, 18, 154–8, 163, 167
projects Blake worked on, 8, 14, 57,
148, 166–7, 202
Enitharmon, 69
Enlightenment, the, 8, 28, 32, 48, 54,
61, 68, 72, 81–4, 99, 151, 179, 193
Blake’s response to, 1, 4–9, 11,
14–15, 17, 23, 26, 32, 40,
44, 47–8, 66, 68, 88–92, 117,
133, 151
see also counter-enlightenment;
post-enlightenment
enmity, 15–17, 72, 97, 178–80
Index 213
enthusiasm, 1, 4–6, 8, 20, 38, 77, 81,
88, 113, 126, 129, 131–3, 159, 167
see also demonic, the; orgiastic, the
epistemology, 2, 4–5, 8–9, 10–28,
33, 51, 61, 68, 73, 91, 102, 130,
143, 156–61, 179, 181
see also empiricism
Erdman, David V., 16, 23, 26, 113–14,
124, 125, 135–6, 144–5, 191, 192,
193, 194, 195, 199, 200, 201
eschatology, 72
essence, 9, 15, 34, 38, 45, 67, 72, 83,
87, 97–8, 104, 166, 171–6, 180–1,
184–89, 198
see also substance
Essick, Robert N., 155–6, 158, 193,
201, 202
Eternals, the, 61, 66
Eternity, 2, 18, 23–4, 31, 34, 46, 53–4,
62–74, 77, 80, 85, 90–1, 96–9,
107–8, 115, 132, 134, 142, 166,
168, 172–3, 185–7, 201, 202
see also Infinity; time
ethics, 23, 46–50, 77, 79–80, 133, 164,
171–2, 180–1
Europe a Prophecy, 74, 77, 129, 153, 155
evil, 47, 93–4, 96–7, 112, 118, 123, 125,
135, 142, 158, 160, 169, 174–6
execution, see conception and
execution
exegesis, 3, 21, 36, 38, 68, 77, 87, 92,
118, 128, 183–4
experience, 2–3, 5, 6, 10–15, 17–18,
22, 24, 30–2, 45–50, 54–5,
59–60, 67–9, 71–81, 84–91,
95, 102–3, 106–9, 112, 114–19,
121–3, 126–9, 141, 143, 145–9,
155–6, 163–5, 169, 173, 177,
182, 184, 198, 199, 200
see also empiricism
experiment, concept of, 10–14, 24, 36,
39, 54, 95, 150, 187
eye of faith, 82–3, 88–90, 129
eye of reason, 82–3, 88–9
Ezekiel (prophet), 47, 137–8, 182–3
Fairbanks, A. Harris, 194
fall from Eternity, 24, 31, 43, 52–3, 61,
68, 102, 116, 161, 163, 175
fantasy, see phantasy
Ferber, Michael, 3, 19, 48–9, 188,
191, 193
fire, 12, 19, 32–4, 54, 63, 66, 93, 96–7,
109, 117, 124, 135, 142–3, 154,
173, 175
For Children: The Gates of Paradise,
134–7, 199
forgiveness, 16–17, 103, 180–1
form, 38, 47–8, 53, 60–1, 67–8, 73–4,
90, 92, 96–7, 106–8, 111, 132,
140, 144, 153–62, 166–76, 181–5,
188–9, 203
For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise, 199
Four Zoas, The, 7, 11–13, 21
freemasonry, 108–10, 198
French Revolution, 16, 22, 44, 114,
126–7, 129
friend, 15–17, 20, 26, 74, 79–80,
103, 115, 126, 177–8, 183,
185, 188
friendly enemy, 15–16, 20, 74, 101, 126
see also enemy, the; friend
Frosch, Thomas R., 31, 53, 61, 193
Frye, Northrop, 3, 4, 18–19, 27, 51,
191, 200
Fuzon, 63–6
Genesis (Bible), 66, 136
genitalia, 102, 169, 188
Glausser, Wayne, 4, 20, 23, 60–1,
159, 191, 194
Gleckner, Robert F., 95, 125, 197
Glorious Revolution, the, 20
God
and the senses/understanding, 9, 11,
14, 31, 37, 43–8, 56, 58, 60, 65,
71, 77, 92, 101–2, 104, 127, 133,
137–9, 142, 145–7, 154, 156,
162, 171, 175, 181, 183, 198
as a man, 14, 34, 46, 48–9, 69, 125,
132, 176–7, 182–3
see also Adam Kadmon; divine
humanity
body of, 34–7, 39, 72, 90–2, 95–8,
102, 138, 171–2, 175, 180,
182, 185
death of, 90–1, 147, 163
providence of, 114, 116, 126–8
214 Index
God – continued
relationship with human beings,
3, 18, 38, 50, 59–60, 68–9,
75–80, 84–7, 90, 97–8, 101,
103–4, 107–8, 120–2, 131–2,
162, 164, 175, 177, 179, 185,
189, 198
word of, 71, 78, 83, 87, 90–1, 98,
127–8, 146, 159, 185
good, 15, 80, 92, 137, 176
good and evil, 47, 93–4, 96–7,
135, 142, 175–6
Hacking, Ian, 192
Hagstrum, Jean H., 13, 20, 192
Hall, Carol Louise, 192
Hartley, David, 28, 57, 59, 61, 64,
66–7, 123, 161, 195, 199
hate, 17, 54
see also love and hate
Hayley, William, 3, 16, 179
heaven, 19, 46, 63, 65, 76–7, 80,
89–90, 93, 97, 105–7, 110,
114, 117, 120–1, 142, 145–6,
189, 200
hell, 16, 19, 33–4, 76, 93, 105, 114,
116–19, 154, 165–6
Hill, Christopher, 79, 85, 196
Hilton, Nelson, 193
Hindmarsh, James, 192
Hindmarsh, Robert, 115, 192,
197, 198
Hirst, Desiree, 4, 191, 197
Hobbes, Thomas, 5, 18–19, 38–9,
82–4, 86–91, 96, 104, 118, 194
human beings/humanity, 1, 3–4,
9, 10–16, 18, 25–6, 28, 31–7,
39, 44, 46–9, 51, 53, 55–60,
68–9, 71–4, 83–92, 96–8, 107,
111–13, 116–18, 121–3, 126,
129–37, 139, 142–7, 152–3,
157, 159–69, 172, 174–82, 185,
188–9, 197, 200
Hume, David, 8, 14, 23–4, 192
identity
artistic, 18, 48, 155, 170
as sameness, 7, 164, 169, 180, 184,
187, 189
personal, 18, 32–4, 47–8, 64, 74, 78,
108, 116, 124, 153–4, 161–4,
170–6, 180–1, 184, 189–90
political, 115, 162
ideology, concept of, 18, 144, 162,
181, 202
see also opinion
illuminated printing, 4, 7, 11, 18,
32–3, 185, 187, 198
imagination, 2, 11, 37, 97, 123, 150–1,
154, 200
see also Poetic Genius
immaterialism, 36–7
impulse, 14, 48–9, 57, 72, 133, 140,
154–5, 159, 161, 176, 189
incarnation, 31, 69, 80, 90, 92, 125,
138–9, 176, 182–3, 189
Infinity, 45–6, 50, 185
see also Eternity
inheritance (cultural), 1–2, 6–7, 13, 15,
19, 21–2, 26, 28, 33, 52, 55, 73–5,
80–1, 91, 94–5, 98–9, 118, 126,
133, 153, 171, 179
concept of, 21–2
innocence, 169, 200
inspiration, 2, 14, 16, 18, 23, 86–7,
126–7, 136, 138, 154–6, 182, 201
invention, see conception and
execution
Isaiah, 79, 137–8, 158, 182–3
Island in the Moon, An, 23–6, 35
Jerusalem, 132, 133
Jerusalem, 7, 11–12, 18, 21, 147, 156
Jesus Christ, 37–9, 67, 76, 89, 90, 92,
100–4, 107, 121, 128, 132, 138,
146–7, 164–5, 173–4, 178–9,
187–9, 197
wounds of, 101–2
Job (Bible), 134, 136
John (Bible), 178
Johnson, Joseph, 6, 16, 19, 35, 57
Johnson, Mary Lynn, 53, 194
Jordan, Susanna, 45, 195
joy, 52, 61–2, 66, 77, 91–3, 96, 142,
152, 154, 177
judgement
human, 10, 76, 132, 157–8, 166
moral, 137, 174
Index 215
Kabbalah, 4, 73, 101, 106, 132
Kittel, Harald A., 64, 195
language, concept of, 18, 58, 122,
128, 155, 168
Laocoön, The, 71
Larrissy, Edward, 2, 9, 74, 144,
153–6, 166, 184, 186, 191,
193, 202, 203
Lavater, John Casper, 9, 15, 33, 47, 56,
116, 131–3, 142, 165–8, 171–81,
185–7, 189, 191, 192, 202
law, 36, 49–50, 64–6, 68–70, 78, 83–4,
101, 104, 131, 133–4, 142, 164–5,
173–4, 200
Law, William, 4
liberty, 17, 39–40, 47, 115, 139–41,
148, 152–3, 161–2, 181–2, 185
light, 65, 77, 91, 93, 96, 101, 110–12,
139, 149–51, 168
interiorisation of, 49, 73, 75–81,
97, 104, 132–3, 145–6, 149,
162, 188
spiritual, 67, 75, 77, 83, 92–3, 96,
99, 111–12, 121, 145–7, 150–1,
175, 184, 188, 200
Locke, John, 1, 3–4, 6, 8–9, 10–34,
40, 45–7, 50–61, 69, 76, 80,
83–4, 87–8, 99, 106, 115,
125–6, 156–61, 164, 167,
169, 184, 189, 193, 196
logos, 37, 185, 197
London Universal Society, 109,
115, 198
Los, 2, 21, 61–2, 69, 74, 163
Los, Book of, 155, 165, 199
Los, Song of, 52
love, 60, 76, 93, 97, 101–4, 108,
110, 113, 120–3, 130, 132,
145–6, 151, 153, 163, 165–6,
171, 175, 177–82, 185, 190,
198, 201, 203
conjugal, 75, 107–10, 121, 143,
151, 153–4, 171, 174
see also love and hate
love and hate, 54, 69, 72, 93, 95–6
see also hate; love
Lowth, Robert, 138, 199
Luke (Bible), 178
Makdisi, Saree, 147, 200
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The,
13–14, 24–6, 33–5, 37–9, 43,
46–50, 53–4, 69–70, 75–6, 80,
89, 93–5, 98–9, 100, 105–6,
109–16, 119–21, 124–5, 129,
132–5, 137, 139, 146, 150–2,
154, 158–9, 165, 169, 177,
179, 182–4, 186, 188–9, 195,
199, 201
Marx, Karl, 125
materialism, 2, 7, 28, 35–6, 55–8,
89–90, 95, 96, 98–9
see also Visionary Materialism
matter, 29–36, 53–8, 61, 67, 71, 89,
94, 96, 157, 166
Matthew (Bible), 75–6, 79
Mee, Jon, 126, 129, 191, 199, 200
mental fight, 23
messianic, the, 4, 42, 79, 88–9, 124,
161, 183–4, 186
Milton a Poem in 2 Books, 7, 18–19, 37,
147, 155, 163, 201
Milton, John, 6, 13, 45, 49, 172,
199, 201
mind, 24, 26–34, 45, 54, 58, 60–1,
64, 67, 101, 104, 123, 125,
157–62, 175
see also dualism (mind–body)
miracle, 84, 86, 187–8
monarchy, 20, 49, 64–5, 71, 79,
90, 114–15, 127, 133, 140, 174,
178, 184
morality, 15, 42–3, 46–7, 51, 57,
59–61, 64–6, 68, 70, 94, 100–1,
131–5, 137, 142, 147, 151, 153,
158, 160–6, 173–4, 195
Moravian Brethren, 3, 5, 75, 81, 88,
100–5, 106, 115, 118, 121, 129,
132–3, 138, 153, 196–7, 201
Muggleton, Lodowick, 71, 82–91,
97, 128
Muggletonianism, 5, 71, 82–91, 97,
99, 102, 104, 106, 129
muse, 18, 155, 201
mysterium tremendum, 80, 90, 129,
146–7, 163
see also crucifixion; passion
(suffering)
216 Index
mystery, 20, 37–9, 41–5, 50, 59, 78,
80–1, 98, 161, 197
opening of, 68–9, 72–3, 78–81, 87,
91–2, 98, 100–3, 108, 127–9,
133, 145, 148
see also secret, the
mysticism, 3, 6, 8, 75
see also Behmenism; Kabbalah
narrative, 66, 119
natural idea, 120, 158, 162, 169, 171
necessitarianism, see determinism
nervous system, 45, 57–66, 104,
123, 201
New Jerusalem Church, see Church
New Jerusalem Magazine, 108, 197, 198
newness, 27, 33, 60, 76, 79, 89, 100,
157, 187
Nicholson, William, 36, 194
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 154, 164
obscurity, 43, 44–5, 50, 55–6, 62, 64–5,
70, 80, 108, 168, 185
onto-theology, 21, 33, 48, 78, 81,
88, 92, 112, 125, 130, 137,
146, 163
ontology, 2–5, 15, 18, 21, 23–4, 34, 46,
50, 68, 72, 98, 102, 112, 118, 122,
148–9, 152, 160, 165–6, 179
Oothoon, 25, 52, 140–54, 180–1, 200
opinion, 17, 27, 32, 39, 47, 117,
159–61, 185
see also ideology, concept of
opposition, 2, 20, 120, 183
oppression
economic/political, 87, 142, 184
mental, 37, 142, 144, 184
sexual, 142–3, 152
Orc, 19, 69
organic, the, 3, 82, 135–9, 150, 174, 184
orgiastic, the, 80–1, 100, 133
see also demonic, the; enthusiasm
Ostriker, Alicia, 200
other, 7, 16–18, 31–2, 49–50, 74–81,
90, 101, 104, 108, 118, 121–4,
129, 134, 147, 154–6, 161,
163–4, 176–81
see also alterity; self and other
Otto, Peter, 18, 31, 141, 193
outline, see bounding line
Ovid, 152
paganism, 35–7, 42, 133
Paine, Thomas, 6, 8, 16, 19, 22, 40, 47–9,
71, 138, 178, 187–8, 194, 195
Paley, Morton D., 35, 54, 194, 200, 202
pantheism, see divine immanence
paradise, 31, 49, 134–5
Parisi, Frank M., 134–6, 199
passion (emotion), 44–5, 62–3, 66–7,
69, 116, 123, 143, 165, 177–9
passion (suffering), 3, 66, 89–90, 100,
104, 144–7, 178–9
see also crucifixion; mysterium
tremendum
perception, 3, 6, 11, 13–14, 23–4, 27,
29–34, 44–57, 60, 63, 67, 73, 77,
80, 82–5, 88–92, 98–9, 111–12,
128–9, 134, 137–43, 147, 149–50,
152, 156–8, 161–2, 165–6, 180–3
see also empiricism; philosophy of
the five senses
perhaps, the, 5, 50, 72–4, 79, 112
phantasy, 62, 109, 112, 118–20, 125,
144, 181, 185
philosophy of the five senses, 11, 33,
144, 156
see also empiricism; perception
physiognomy, 9, 104, 166–7, 172–5,
184–5
physiology, 28, 51, 59–61, 104
physionomy, 166–7
pity, 41–3
Plato, 31, 81, 133
Platonism/neo-platonism, 37, 80, 101,
137, 197
Poetic Genius, 11, 34, 37, 46,
47–50, 67, 69, 71, 73, 88, 92,
109, 120–3, 130, 138–9, 166–7,
172, 176, 185
see also imagination
poetic idea, 120, 130, 171, 182, 185
Poetical Sketches, 139–40
post-enlightenment, 72, 81, 95
postmodernism, 184
priesthood, 32, 38, 43, 64–5, 68, 79,
88, 119, 134–5, 137–8, 174, 178,
184, 197, 199
Index 217
Priestley, Joseph, 5–6, 8, 16, 28, 34–40,
42–3, 46, 48, 53–61, 64, 67, 69,
90, 95–8, 101, 104, 106, 123,
125–6, 128, 161, 167, 185, 194,
195, 197, 199
printing press, 186, 188
Proctor, Percival and William Catieau,
174, 203
prophecy, 2, 9, 12–14, 79, 84–2, 112,
127–9, 135, 138, 140, 145–50,
154, 158, 183–8
prophetic vision, 18, 84–5, 95, 112–15,
126–30, 142, 148–50, 173, 184–8
Protestantism, 1, 4, 20, 49, 99, 171
Psalms, 134
psychology, 13, 24, 27–32, 56–61, 66,
122, 145, 161
qualities, 18, 29, 33, 92–3, 120,
172–5, 185
primary and secondary, 29–31, 51
radicalism, political, 19, 48–9, 108,
114, 126, 129
Raine, Kathleen, 5, 93, 95–6, 191
Ranters, the, 5, 73–82, 88, 127
reason, 14, 31, 35, 37, 43–4, 54, 56,
63, 69, 80, 82–92, 95, 100,
116–17, 119, 123, 125, 197
Reay, Barry, 86, 196
redemption, 2–4, 9, 11–12, 17–18,
20–1, 23, 38–9, 60, 68, 76, 88,
90, 97, 100, 102, 105, 120, 123,
135–7, 139, 142, 147–8, 152,
161–4, 169, 173, 176–7, 184–8
Reeve, John, 82, 85–9, 97, 196
repetition, 43, 66, 161, 186–7
repulsion, see attraction and repulsion
restraint, 1, 37, 137, 165, 173
resurrection, 38, 76, 96–7, 104,
107, 197
revelation, 50, 79, 83–9, 122
Revelation (Bible), 127, 196
revolution, see French Revolution;
Glorious Revolution, the
Reynolds, Joshua, 10–11, 22–3, 44, 168
Ricoeur, Paul, 32, 192
Robson, William, 168–70, 188, 203
Rushdie, Salman, 171, 182, 190, 203
Sabri-Tabrizi, Gholam Reza, 110,
114, 198
Salmon, Joseph, 76–80, 127, 196
Schock, Peter A., 194
Schuchard, Marsha Keith, 5, 75,
81–2, 101–4, 107–10, 115, 121,
132, 191, 196, 197, 198, 201
sculpture, 202–3
secret, the, 21, 39, 43, 50, 65, 70,
76–81, 98, 100, 103–4, 108,
129, 133, 153, 162–3, 172,
178–81, 203
see also mystery
seed of faith and seed of reason, see
eye of faith; eye of reason
self, 17–18, 45, 56, 74, 80, 170,
177–8, 181
and divine influx/possession, 47–9,
67–9, 77–80, 81, 100, 103–5,
121, 134, 154–6, 162–4, 169,
179–80
Lockean self, 9, 31–2, 64, 80,
156–63, 169, 179, 184
punctual self, 28–9, 61, 80, 159
self and other, 7, 15, 18, 24, 32, 69,
102, 121, 146, 155–9, 164,
180–4
see also other; self
sensation, organic, 11, 13, 26–35,
45–6, 50–2, 55–8, 63, 67,
74–6, 111, 116, 143–4, 156–8,
161–2, 200
sensation, spiritual, 76, 82–91, 111,
137, 140, 147
sexuality
fallen, 102, 142–3, 153, 169, 200
female, 52, 102, 142–3, 200
liberated/redemptive, 74–5, 102,
107–8, 141, 169, 188, 200
spiritual significance of, 108, 121,
129–30, 133–4, 147, 153–4
Shakespeare, William, 49, 99, 195
signature, the, 175–6
sin, 1, 63–4, 90, 123, 146–7, 174
slavery, 18–20, 24, 60, 145
Songs of Innocence and Experience, 24,
42, 155, 160, 203
space, 34, 36, 120, 123, 138, 157–7,
161, 173, 181
218 Index
spectre, the, 20–2, 54, 67, 73–4, 78,
80–1, 101, 113, 115, 125, 178, 193
speech, 122–3, 155, 158, 175–6, 203
Spinoza, Benedict de, 34, 47, 164–5,
172, 194
spirit, 2, 14, 20–1, 31–2, 35–7, 48, 54, 61,
71, 74, 76, 84, 90, 92–3, 101, 107,
111–12, 119, 123, 125, 137, 142,
146, 150, 158–9, 166–7, 175–6
spiritual idea, see poetic idea
stamina, 164, 174–5, 185
sublime, the, 44–50, 59, 64, 68, 78, 98,
156, 168, 177
and the beautiful, 22
substance, 34, 39, 53–6, 73, 96,
171–7, 180–1, 185–9
spiritual, 83–91, 106, 113
see also accident; essence
substitution, 178
suffering, see passion (suffering)
superstition, 4, 39–40, 49, 82, 159, 180
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 3–4, 6, 46, 73,
75, 88, 94–9, 100–1, 105–27,
145–6, 150–1, 158, 165–6, 171,
183–5, 195, 197, 198, 203
Swedenborgianism, 12, 108–15, 146,
153
sympathy, 60, 104, 147
Taylor, Charles, 28–9, 31, 162, 192
Taylor, Edward, 93, 197
Thel, The Book of, 36
theology, 4, 21, 36, 49–50, 75, 82, 85,
87, 165
see also blood theology;
onto-theology
There is No Natural Religion, 7, 12–13,
54, 84, 99, 117, 137, 150, 176,
186, 191, 194
Thompson, E.P., 4–5, 81–2, 86, 91,
109, 114, 129, 191, 195, 196
time, 34, 62, 72, 85, 103–4, 127, 158,
173, 175, 186–7
tincture, 172–3
transcendentalism, 7, 33–6, 47, 50, 84,
164, 180
see also immaterialism
Tree of Knowledge, the, 42, 135
Tree of Mystery, the, 41–3, 64–6,
161, 185
understanding, the, 18, 31, 92, 98,
101, 110–12, 139, 145–7, 154,
165, 188, 198
Urizen, 12, 14, 25–6, 29, 45, 52, 60–70,
111, 143–5
Urizen, The First Book of, 2, 13–14,
24, 25, 45, 52, 54, 61–70,
111, 119, 137, 155, 161–3,
165, 195
variety, 7, 48, 50, 77, 164, 169–72,
180, 185, 187–9
vice, 1, 42, 131, 174, 195
Vincent, William, 195
Vine, Steve, 193
virtue, 1, 42–3, 47, 49, 98, 115–16,
162–5, 175–6
Viscomi, Joseph, 7, 33, 76, 94–5, 138,
154, 156, 171, 187, 191, 193, 197,
199, 201
Visionary Materialism, 2–3, 70, 73,
82–4, 91, 102, 129, 159–64, 185
Visions of the Daughters of Albion, 51, 79,
112, 137, 140–54, 180–4, 189–90
visor effect, 67, 78, 101
Watson, Richard, 11, 22, 45–7, 137, 188
Whale, John C., 44, 194
White, Harry, 11–12, 192
will, 38, 43, 64, 72, 77, 83, 102, 145,
158, 175, 201
Williams, Nicholas M., 18, 144, 161,
183–4, 193, 203
withdrawal, see comportment
Worrall, David, 5, 8, 66, 109, 129,
149–50, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195,
198, 199, 200