Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/256

198 whispered to allow, is not done in passion, but in cool-blooded design and intention.

Many suppose that, before the Creation, all was solitude and chaos. This is the most pernicious idea that can enter the mind, as it takes away all sublimity from the Bible, and limits all existence to creation and chaos—to the time and space fixed by the corporeal, vegetative eye, and leaves the man who entertains such an idea the habitation of unbelieving demons. Eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. I have represented those who are in eternity by some in a cloud, within the rainbow that surrounds the throne. They merely appear as in a cloud, when anything of creation, redemption, or judgment, is the subject of contemplation, though their whole contemplation is concerning these things. The reason they so appear is the humiliation of the reason and doubting selfhood, and the giving all up to inspiration. By this it will be seen that I do not consider either the just, or the wicked, to be in a supreme state, but to be, every one of them, states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil, when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent.

Many persons, such as Paine and Voltaire with some of the ancient Greeks, say: 'We will not converse concerning good and evil; we will live in Paradise and Liberty.' You may do so in spirit, but not in the mortal body, as you pretend till after a Last Judgment. For in Paradise they have no corporeal and mortal body: that originated with the Fall and was called Death, and cannot be removed but by a Last Judgment. While we are in the world of mortality, we must suffer—the whole Creation groans to be delivered.

There will be as many hypocrites born as honest men, and they will always have superior power in mortal things. You cannot have liberty in this world without what you call moral virtue, and you cannot have moral virtue without the subjection of that half of the human race who hate what you call moral virtue.