Page:The sanity of William Blake.djvu/39

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of William Blake
29

And again, in the Milton we read:—

The Oak is cut down by the axe, the Lamb falls by the knife.
But their Forms eternal exist forever! Amen! Hallelujah!
For God Himself enters Death's door always with those that enter,
And lies down in the Grave with them.—p. 32, extra.

Then he goes on to remark that the body in its ordinary conception is but that portion or product of soul which we can see and touch. Hence it comes that when we have left our childhood and have reached those years of discretion which so sedulously forbid the sacramental bread, when we have come to trust those five senses for what they are not worth, when we see not through but merely with our eyes, we disbelieve in anything but ocular evidence. Therefore we believe more in the body than the soul, though many for religious purposes still claim that the soul does really exist, if merely as a nebulous appendix which we can for the present most happily dispense with. And then this aphorism ends with a touch of bitter satire on the philosophy of Locke, the most trusted philosopher in that eighteenth century. This philosophy Blake