Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/197

 Rh the war of reason against prophecy by tears, arguments, science, fear, standing on the darkening Thames, — the ever more physical parental power.

P. 7, 11. 9 to 50. — Under the names of the sons of Albion, and under figure of their inhabiting certain eastern lands, he pointed out how the forces of unimaginative intellect had taken up their abode in moral laws. He told how the Natural affections torture the natural heart (Vala scaled Luvah in the furnaces). He told how Albion's sons and daughters, — his mental and instinctive forces now that he was given up to belief in experience — had so dealt that they had generated a Law of sin among themselves who should yet punish prophecy in his members, that is to say in his system of thought.

P. 7,11. 51 to 70. — Los answered that the true method did not lie in destroying the impulses for the sake of the intellect and calling this morality. That was death. It lay in learning to see in physical needs a symbol of the great spiritual need, universal unity, and in the forgiveness of sins that should keep pace with physical needs, the way to learn the spiritual love which utters no accusation. He told him too that when this is learned the Incarnation will have taken place. He prays to be delivered from wrath.

P. 7, 11. 71 to 73. — But man's chief intellectual conviction, — (called Hand, Albion's eldest son), was full of cold selfrighteousness, that whirlwind of the north which is the direct opposite of the whirlwind of the south out of which God rebuked Job for this error.

P. 8, 11. 1 to 43. — Then Los threatened his own reasoning self that his enthusiastic self should punish and torture it, if it should dare to do anything but obey him, and with this he forces it to work at his enthusiasms. So the spectre was forced to work in the furnaces.

P. 8, 11. 44 to 45. — But in Albion, his chief power of mental self-hood — (Hand) — had destroyed all that was innocent, lovely and graceful.

P. 9, 11. 1 to 11. — For he had condensed the impulses into