Page:William Blake (Chesterton).djvu/114

 WILLIAM BLAKE Blake's critics and often perplexed Blake himself. I think he suffered from the great modern loneliness and scepticism which is the root of the sorrows of the mere spiritualist. The tragedy of the spiritualist simply is that he has to know his gods before he loves them. But a man ought to love his gods before he is sure that there are any. The sublime words of St John's Gospel permit of a sympathetic parody; if a man love not God whom he has not seen, how shall he love God whom he has seen? If we do not delight in Santa Claus even as a fancy, how can we expect to be happy even if we find that he is a fact? But a mystic like Blake simply puts up a placard for the whole universe, like an old woman letting lodgings. The mansion of his mind was indeed a magnificent one; but no one must be surprised if the first man that walked into it was "the man who built the pyramids," the man with the face of a moon-calf. And whether or no he built the pyramids, he unbuilt the house.

But this conclusion touching Blake's original sanity but incidental madness brings us abruptly in contact with the larger question 102