Page:The sanity of William Blake.djvu/35

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of William Blake
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lifelong glory of faith, that the man is father of his country and must save it. For this is the secret of his mighty work Jerusalem, the spiritual England; this is the inspiration of her maternal weeping over the chaining of her sons. He sees everywhere the triumph of idolatry over worship, the letter of the law over the spirit, money over flesh and blood, reason over imagination. And, like all true prophecy, his words are not for his own age only, but make appeal to the men of every generation. Prophecy indeed is the appeal of the eternal to the people of time.

The whole argument of the Jerusalem is summed up in those three memorable aphorisms in the opening of Heaven and Hell, words which are childlike in their disregard of philosophic authority and its futile presentation of the absolute; and yet they are profound in essential wisdom.

"(1) Man has no body distinct from his soul. For that called 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.

"(3) Energy is eternal delight."