Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/212

198 all the world beside. XXI. A man's worst enemies are his own creations, however high an attribute mental creation may be, if he makes of these a law to subdue others, or to punish them. Imagination is of Jesus: Dogma, of Satan. XXII. Then Blake utters his manifesto. He will exchange inspiration with all, imposing it on none. Then what would lead only to war will bring mingling of love and mingling of labour.

A few lines in prose follow, explaining in plain terms the mental position on which the myth is built. Incidentally they use the word "Humility" in a sense as the opposite of spectrous pride. This is the Humility which is Emanative and Christian, and its spectre or opposite is the Humility which "is only doubt, and doth the Sun and Moon put out."

Chapter II.

P. 28, 11. 1 to 4. — Imagination is forbidden. The time of Envy : Jealousy, Punishment, has come. Fallen Man is the Punisher and Judge.

P. 28, 1. 5, 12. — His Eeasons tell him that poetic ideas are hybrid, belonging to a mixture of fact and fancy in ill-assorted union. There is sin in this. He will reduce them to fixed forms. He will not have one man bathe in another man's mind. He will have them separate (so that they may agree as mere coincidences if at all, and disagree as argument and contest).

P. 28, 11. 13 to 16.— Cold snows of loveless thought drift round him. His creative part is frozen. At this a conception of God as outside the bosom of Man — even outside his eternal bosom that is not born and does not die — is set up. At once from the lower part of his mental system — his heel — the idea of Virtue as a negative quality, an abstaining, not an act, springs up.

P. 28, 11. 17 to 19. — This idea, once produced, became bigger