other till they become a moral tangle impossible to straighten out into any thread of moaning, or weave into any garment for thought. Blake, however, knew what he intended to convey, and in his mind there was no confusion on the subject. By looking into the different expressions and comparing them with others of the same class in his different writings we notice that pride and humility may be tabulated in their good and bad aspects thus:—
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Good Pride. Elation of joy and delight in Vision. Adoration of the Divine in Adoption, by sympathy with the Divine, of its Self-approval. In a lower plane: Healthy Satanic pride in the energy of that lower part of mind called body, which has also a right to its elation because "everything that lives is Holy." "Honest, triumphant pride," in "act," as when the merchant Canaanite is scourged out of the mind.—(" Thought is act.") |
Bad Pride. "Sneaking pride of heroic schools," the Homeric or chivalrous pride that is self-satisfied equally for killing and for sparing the vanquished. This is the Serpentine pride. In true mental warfare, the vanquished ought either not to be vanquished, or not spared. Error is the enemy, and though Sin is to be forgiven, Error is not. Thus war, in Eternity, is a "fountain of life," for it is directed against error, death; not against love, life, for the propagation of death. Death and Error are Reason when confined to the experience of the five senses, proud of its humility, its limits and arguments. This is the "yea-nay creeping Jesus," the lower imagination pretending to brotherhood without the true material of brotherhood, common inspiration. |
Humility—always bad.
"The most sublime act is to set another before you." (" Proverb of Hell.") The sublimity consists in perception and adoption of his well-founded elation and annihilation of your own envy: not in Humility which is forbidden and sinful as modesty is (which blasphemes the Symbol of God, the naked body). Humility is forbidden because it is doubt, not faith, and doubts the Godhead in ourselves, His chosen Temple.
The last version of the poem given above hardly overlaps the others in more than a few places, so far as verbal
