Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/202

 178

Of Blake it may be said as he says of Albion: 'He felt that Love and Pity are the same,' and to Love and Pity he gave the ultimate jurisdiction over humanity.

Blake's gospel of forgiveness rests on a very elaborate structure, which he has built up in his doctrine of 'States.' At the head of the address to the Deists in the third chapter of Jerusalem, he has written: 'The Spiritual States of the Soul are all Eternal. Distinguish between the Man and his present State.' Much of his subtlest casuistry is expended on this distinction, and, as he makes it, it is profoundly suggestive. Erin says, in Jerusalem: