Page:William Blake (Chesterton).djvu/185

WILLIAM BLAKE ritual. But common sense is in favour of mummery and ritualism, the common sense of mankind. The man who attempts to do without symbols is a prophet so austere and isolated as to be dangerously near to a madman. The man who does not believe in ghosts is a solitary fanatic and lonely dreamer among the sons of men. Therefore I do not in any sense count even his craziest visions or wildest symbols among the real fads or eccentricities of Blake. But he had mental attitudes which were really fads and eccentricities, in this essential sense, that they were not exaggerations of a general human feeling but definite denials of it. He did not lead humanity, but attacked or even obstructed it. Many instances might be given of the kind of thing I mean; there was something of it in Blake's persistent and even pedantic insistence that war as war is evil. There was something of Tolstoy in Blake; and that means something that is inhuman as well as something that is heroic. But his allusions to this were occasional and perhaps even accidental, and better cases could certainly be found. The essential of all the cases is, however, that when 173