'This,' said he, 'like all firm persuasions, is come to pass, for all nations believe the Jews' code and worship the Jews' God; and what greater subjection can be?'
I heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction.
* * * * *
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is—infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
A Memorable Fancy.
I was in a printing-house in hell, and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
In the first chamber was a dragon-man, clearing away the rubbish from a cave's mouth; within, a number of dragons were hollowing the cave.
In the second chamber was a viper folding round the rock and the cave, and others adorning it with gold, silver, and precious stones.
In the third chamber was an eagle with wings and feathers of air; he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite. Around, were numbers of eagle-like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs. In the fourth chamber were lions of flaming fire raging around and melting the metals into living fluids.
In the fifth chamber were unnamed forms, which cast the metals into the expanse.
There they were received by men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books, and were ranged in libraries.
The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence, and now seem to live in it in chains, are, in truth, the causes of its life and the sources of all activity, but the chains are the cunning of weak and tame minds which have power to resist energy; according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning.
Thus, one portion of being is the Prolific, the other the Devouring. To the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains, but it is not so; he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole.
But the Prolific would cease to be prolific, unless the devourer, as a sea, received the excess of his delights.
* * * * *
