Page:Works Of William Blake Volume 1.pdf/8

 xii

PREFACE

on a lower level. It belongs to Time, not to Eternity. It is only so far as conduct affects imagination that it has any importance, or, to use Blake's term, “ existence.”

The whole of Blake's teaching,—and he was a teacher before all things,—may be summed up in a few words.

Nature, he tells (or rather he reminds) us, is merely a name for one form of mental existence. Art is another and a higher form. But that art may rise to its true place, it must be set free from memory that binds it to Nature.

Nature,— or creation,— is a result of the shrinkage of con­sciousness,— originally clairvoyant,— under the rule of the five senses, and of argument and law. Such consciousness is the result of the divided portions of Universal Mind obtaining perception of one another.

The divisions of mind began to produce matter (as one of its divided moods is called), as soon as it produced con­traction (Adam), and opacity (Satan), but its fatal tendency to division had further effects. Contraction, or divided into male and female,— mental and emotional egotism. This was the ” fall.” Perpetual war is the result.Morality wars on Passion, Reason on Hope, Memory on Inspiration, Matter on Love.

In Imagination only we find a Human Faculty that touches nature at one side, and spirit on the other. Imagination may be described as that which is sent bringing spirit to nature, entering into nature, and seemingly losing its spirit, that nature being revealed aa symbol may lose the power to delude.

Imagination is thus the philosophic name of the Saviour,