Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/283

 Rh because he, too, objects to the rule of reason. Both Michael and Thulloh reprove the faculty for the "tears" of outer natures have weakened their impulse.

P. 6, ll. 34 to 44. The Imaginative Will, "Rintrah," however, is full of anger against the opaque, and it flames above the tracks of thought, "the ploughed furrows," and slays Thullah, watery or instinctive naturalistic conception, with its own fiery creative power, "its spear," thereby confining procreative instinct to physical function by driving it out with the energy of the mind. He compels Michael, who had grown weary, to begin again his contest with Satan. He then weeps, becoming himself infected with corporeal life by the law that makes us "become what we behold." Mind — "Los" — hides new corporeal procreative instinct from the sight of the purely mental emotions and affections, "Enitharmon," lest they beholding it might "die of grief," that is, become opaque also. The mental emotions and affections weave a world for rest and peace about the contending states, and shut man out from war and contest by Love, "a tender moon." Amid this world, woven by the affections, buries Thullah.

P. 6, l. 46, to p. 7, l. 6. All the corporeal side of the mind is now becoming unvital, non-mental, and in order to make it live again, imaginative impulse calls the mental faculties to descend into the corporeal, that it may become vital once more, even though that vitality be only "to defend a lie." The corporeal functions may thus be "grown" and "caught" and "taken "by mental life. The powers of vision, "All Eden," descend into the dwelling Imaginative Impulse has made for itself, among the forces of unimaginative life. Imaginative Impulse prays that God may protect it from the powers that pretend to be its friends, like generalizing reason and mechanical labour. It can protect itself against its avowed negations. (The descent of "All Eden" reminds us that we are now in the Second Church, the church of redemption, and invites comparison with the descent of "the Divine