poets-his art has a moment of mysticism, and, to this extent, his poetry is mystical. Poetry and mysticism are so nearly allied that sometimes men otherwise obscure and of little talent have been raised by the intensity of their mystical vision into great writers. In English literature alone we find many such men, some little known, like the old Saxon author of The Dream of the Rood, or Cædmon, the writer of Christ and Satan, or Langland, the composer of the visionary epic Piers Plowman; and others again, like John Bunyan, who have become world-famous. Certain later writers, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edwin Arnold, have tried, by sheer talent, to revive the old religious mysticism, and to create a sort of artistic and artificial religion, enough to serve as a foundation for their mystical poetry. But only those who are sincere, whose soul is moved by intense faith, can, like Christina Rossetti, strike the true note. And, in every age, those have been the greatest in whom poetic genius was allied with the strongest and most genuine religious feeling. From this point of view, Dante's poetry holds the chief place. So far as man can, he, by virtue of his marvellous evocative power, and that of his love, his hatred and his faith, did really descend into hell. Milton's visions were of the same kind, and sprung from the same causes. He, if he did not complete the whole sorrowful journey, was at any rate transported to some high mountain from which he could look into the unfathomable depths. The same degree of mysticism is to be observed in a poet like Shelley, though he saw not the God of any orthodox Church, but all the spirits of nature, all the Gods of antiquity, and the very soul of the beauty that dwells in all things, and whose belief in them was as strong as that of any martyr in his Christ. And indeed, there is not one of our great modern poets who does not show some clear marks of mysticism, either sacred or profane. Blake's mysticism stands between the two: sacred by virtue of the subjects he deals with, profane in respect of his treatment of them, religious in the widest sense of the word, and yet despising all religions and excommunicated by all the Churches. But it was, above all, intellectual and poetical, and it bore the stamp of a powerful imagi nation. There is also a third kind of mysticism to which Blake was not altogether a stranger, and this may be called active mysticism. It would be a mistake to regard all mystics as mere contemplatives, vowed to inaction and of no use in the world. Certainly there have been many who, like the monk of the Imitation, would, if the world were perishing around them, only cover their heads and let it perish. There are others who, misunderstanding their Master's teaching, would renounce this life, and seek to enjoy in advance the Nirvânâ which is the object of their desire. Their mysticism is emotional or intellectual only. But mysticism is not confined to the limits of mind or heart. It is not enough to think about God and to love Him. We must also do His will: and here comes in the necessity for action. Does mysticism become active when it takes possession of these strenuous souls that feel the need of action? Or does it rather endow even the weakest with the desire and the power of acting? Undoubtedly it does both. In any case, whenever a mystic has set himself to accomplish what he believed to be God's work, no obstacle but death has been able to stop him. Many great mystics have been men of action, giving to God all their energies as well as all their intellect and their love. Joan of Arc saved her country: St. Bernard drew all Europe after him, organised a crusade, and silenced Abelard. St. Teresa's power of vision is scarcely more wonderful than her administrative capacity, and the unwearied energy which enabled this weak and sickly woman to reform and create anew the ever flourishing and powerful Carmelite Order. If certain profound words of St. Paul fill us with wonder, how can we express our admiration for his indefatigable work, his never-ending travels, his missions in every quarter of the ancient world, and, finally, the greatness of that Church of which he was one of the chief founders ? Blake, though far from being a mere contemplative, was not one of those great men of action who revolutionise whole societies. His work was more modest; but it absorbed him absolutely. He, whose hands were never idle, could not have been satisfied without action, But his work was his art. He had to preach his doctrines, to set forth his visions, by pencil and pen, as painter and as poet. Any work unconnected with this great task was to him a burden, a slave's employment, and he did it only with the utmost repugnance. But to his real work, the spreading of the gospel that he had to, communicate to the world, he dedicated the best part of his time and his whole soul. VII: HIS THEORIES-THE WORK OF DEMOLITION— NEGATION OF THE SENSES AND OF REASON H IS message was a strange one for the age he lived in. He seems, almost purposely, to have formed his system of religion and philosophy out of everything that was regarded by the eighteenth century as contemptible or ridiculous. It was a rationalistic age, basing upon reason its philosophy, its religion and even its poetry. It was the age of Locke, with his absolute faith in the evidence of our senses, of Newton, with his science and mathematics. It was, moreover, an age of atheism derived from Voltaire and his imitators, and of natural religion modelled upon the doctrines of Rousseau. And never, perhaps, have reason, natural religion, and belief in science found a more strenuous opponent than Blake. Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke and Newton are names that he refers to again and again, and always with execration. Did this mean that the downfall of the goddess of Reason was going to occur at the very moment when the French Revolution was raising altars in her honour? Indubitably, both science and rationalistic philosophy had failed to satisfy the hopes of their adherents. The end of this rationalistic period was, consequently, a time when mystics and occultists were much in fashion. And Blake was but a unit in this movement: one of its least known figures, but by no means one of the least original or least interesting. His system rests upon the destruction of two principles: that of the evidence of our senses, and that of reliance upon human reason. Belief in the evidence of the senses has been an axiom from the beginning of time. We have no apparent reason to doubt the existence of what we see or feel, and if one of our senses does sometimes deceive us, the error is quickly corrected by the others, or by calculations based upon other sensations. If we are to trust the school of Locke, which flourished a little before Blake's time, all our moral and intellectual ideas proceed from our senses. Deprived of our perceptive organs, we should possess no more of moral and intellectual life than we attribute to a stone. But if this is so, if all our inner life, all our knowledge depend for their source upon physical sensation, what is to become of all the revelations of faith, all the mysteries of religion, all our suppositions regarding the invisible world. Obviously there is an absolute antagonism between this sense-philosophy and religious faith. And this antagonism produced the philosophic idealism of Berkeley, which denied the existence of the world of sense. According to this theory, the existence of our own spirit is the only thing of which we can be sure. Sight, touch, smell are but modes of our own knowledge, having no relation to any external reality. The dispute between the idealistic and the sensualistic philosophies is a classical one, and, like so many others, must remain for ever unsettled. It is not difficult to foretell what Blake's attitude in such a contest would be. A mystic, governed by visions, cannot have the same confidence in his senses as an ordinary man. On the one hand, if he does not believe in the reality of his visions, he must necessarily distrust all his other perceptions which, having deceived him in some cases, are just as likely to do the same in others. If, on the other hand, he believes in his visions, he cannot but feel that his senses are more acute than those of other people, and that there are things in heaven and earth beyond ordinary human perception. But then, may not there also be things outside his own perception, things that he could see if his senses were more highly developed? Such was the first idea of Blake's system. " From a perception of only three senses or three elements, none could deduce a fourth or fifth." Consequently the evidence of our senses is incomplete. Blake must often have felt this, when his spirit was filled with visual perceptions, in which his bodily eye had no part. He saw many things as clearly as if his eyes had seen them, and those things he called "real." He regarded his power of internal vision as a new sense added to the other five. And the objects thus seen actually existed. What matter if they were invisible to others? That was no reason for doubting their reality. Hence this new axiom: "Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception: he perceives more than sense (though ever so acute) can discover." 2 The ideas of eternity, of God, of the infinite, and many others cannot, according to him, be resolved into any conception furnished by the senses. They are not what he calls organic ideas, that is to say, ideas produced by our physical organs. And yet they exist in man. Much more: they are objects of his desire. The spirit's aspiration towards something infinitely remote and unrealisable is at the bottom of Blake's soul, as it is with all mystics. He regards this aspiration as an indisputable fact. We have a tiny 1 There is no Natural Religion. 2 There is no Natural Religion. sketch of his showing some men lost upon what seems to be a bare, white mountain top, or, perhaps, some small section of the earth's surface, melting into the obscurity of the sky. Far away, above them, the moon and stars are shining. And one of the men, having raised a huge ladder of light, which, its end almost lost in illimitable perspective, just touches the moon, is attempting to climb it. Underneath is written "I want! I want!" In another drawing, the same aspiration is represented symbolically in the figure of a young man stretching out his arms towards a swan, which flies, unregarding, far away from him. Dreams of infinite knowledge, of absolute beauty, these are the desires that gnaw unceasingly at the human heart. But, says Blake, "none can desire what he has not perceived." 1 The desire of the infinite being in every man, every man must have perceived something to desire, and must, consequently, possess means of perception independent of his organs of sense. Therefore we must have either an innate conception or a supernatural revelation of those things and perhaps, in their essence, these two are the same. But Blake is not contented with affirming the inadequacy of the senses he denies the truth of their evidence. Not only do they fail to show us all what they do show is false. His vision of legions of angels in place of the sun is one of the best known examples of this false-witness borne by the sense of sight. Blake regarded the eye not as an instrument of vision, but merely as a window to be looked through. Those who accept visual perception as it appears to us are men of "single vision," from which "may God us keep." They believe in the reality of what they see. Men of "double or triple vision," like Blake, see through the eye and beyond, not with it. Their spirit goes much further than the appearance of things. They interpret every image that their eye receives, and it is this interpretation that is impressed upon their intelligence. We see a flash of lightning and say simply, " that is a flash of lightning." Blake says: "That is the sigh of an angel-king!" Before my way A frowning Thistle implores my stay. For double the vision my Eyes do see, 1 There is no Natural Religion. 2 To Mr. Butts. & id. 2 |