Page:The sanity of William Blake.djvu/36

 Rh Now I want to draw your attention especially to these three aphorisms, because the critics, notable among them Mr. Swinburne, have generally held that Blake's was a gospel of licence. And I am the more willing to insist upon their real meaning in connection with the magnificent but most cryptic of his prophetic books, Jerusalem, because this, more than any other, exposes him to the charge of incoherencies.

"(1) Man has no body distinct from his soul." All systems of religion have taught that man possesses a soul, whereas Blake would have us understand that the reverse is the case: Edmund Spenser had long before expressed the same truth thus:—

Or to quote certain lines of Blake from Jerusalem more cryptic but signifying the same idea:—