gestible to Blake; he batters upon it with the heaviest artillery of his "gospel."
Was Jesus humble? or did he
Give any proofs of humility?
Boast of high things with humble tone,
And give with charity a stone?"
Again;
When the rich learned Pharisee
Came to consult him secretly,
Upon his heart with iron pen
He wrote 'Ye must be born again.'
He was too proud to take a bribe:
He spoke with authority, not like a Scribe."
Nor can the love of enemies be accepted literally as an endurable doctrine; for "he who loves his enemies hates his friends," in the mind of the too ardent and candid poet, who proceeds to insist that the divine teacher "must mean the mere love of civility" (amour de convenance); "and so he must mean concerning humility": for the willing acceptance of death cannot humiliate, and is therefore no test of "humility"[1] in Blake's sense; self-
- ↑ There are (says the mystic) two forms of "humility": detestable both, and condemnable. By one, the extrinsic form, a man cringes and submits, doubts himself and gives in to others; becomes in effect impotent, a sceptic and a coward; by the other or intrinsic form, he conceives too meanly of his own soul, and comes to believe himself less than God—of course, to a pure Pantheist, the one radical and ruinous error which throws up on all sides a crop of lies and misconceptions, rank and ready; as base a thing to believe as an act of bodily "humility" were base to do: consequently any mere external worship is by this law heathenish, heretical and idolatrous. This heathenish or idolatrous heresy of spiritual humility comes merely of too much reliance on the reasoning power; man is undivine as to his mere understanding, and by using that as an eye instead of an eyeglass "distorts" all which he does not obliterate. "Pride of reason" is a foolish thing for any clerical defender of the "faith" to impugn; such pride is essentially humility. To be proud of having an empty eye-socket implies that you would be ashamed of having eyesight; then you are proud on the wrong side, and humble there exactly where humility is a mere blundering
