Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/196

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172
WILLIAM BLAKE

imagination which Blake taught and exemplified. In Jerusalem it is stated in a single sentence: 'I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination: Imagination, the real and eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more.' 'O Human Imagination, O Divine Body I have Crucified!' he cries; and he sees continually

'Abstract Philosophy warring in enmity against Imagination,
Which is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus, blessed for ever.'

He finds the England of his time 'generalising Art and Science till Art and Science is lost,' making

'A pretence of Art, to destroy Art, a pretence of Liberty
To destroy Liberty, a pretence of Religion to destroy Religion.'

He sees that