Page:William Blake (Chesterton).djvu/192

WILLIAM BLAKE mere rhetoric, to throw open the doors of death.

I have given two cases of the presence in Blake of these anti-human creeds which I call fads—the case of clothes and the case of the crucifixion. I could give a much larger number of them, but I think their nature is here sufficiently indicated. They are all cases in which Blake ceased to be a poet, through becoming entirely, instead of only partially, separated from the people. And this, I think, is certainly connected with that quality in him to which I referred in analysing the eighteenth century; I mean the element of oligarchy and fastidiousness in the mystics and masonries of that epoch. They were all founded in an atmosphere of degrees and initiations. The chief difference between Christianity and the thousand transcendental schools of to-day is substantially the same as the difference nearly two thousand years ago between Christianity and the thousand sacred rites and secret societies of the Pagan Empire. The deepest difference is this: that all the heathen mysteries are so far aristocratic, that they are understood by some, and not understood by 180