Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/16

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THE SYMBOLIC STRUCTURE

division of the Head, a mournful inactivity, for this great mistake shuts the mind out from emotional joy. In the Loins division of the Head, external reason, taking upon itself the separated life of vegetative things, wars upon the paradisiacal emotions. In the Head division of the Heart, the falling light, Lucifer, the intellectual or formative portion of the emotional life descends to organize the external reason into a personality — into an image of that unity or self-consciousness of God, whose abode is in the heart, that it may be saved, finally from the indefinite. This personality is itself shaped in six stages, which correspond to the first six eyes of God, already described in the chapter on the Covering Cherub. The giving of personality to the reason takes place also in the fourth chapter of " Vala " and of " Urizen." The fourth stage of all things is constructive. The corporeal life is completed in three stages, but when the fourth comes " the form of the Fourth " begins to be imprinted on the clay. The same story is revealed, in the incidents tabulated from "Jerusalem." In the first chapter, which is under the head, the winter of materialism and corporeal life covers man, and Divine love, or Jerusalem, is absorbed in Vala or corporeal love. In the second chapter, tabulated under the Heart, the Divine Family, or the passive imaginative moods and affections descend, like Ololon in " Milton," and try to draw humanity back into the world of imagination, but in vain, for they are and not masculine-inspired energy, and can only soothe, not change, the will of man. They are a pleasant rest, but man must wait the fire of God before he becomes regenerate. In the incident taken from the third chapter, " Affection," Luvah becomes generate in turn, and threefold fallen man is completed. But now in the fourth chapter the Divine personality descends into him and he arises into imagination. This story is identical with that of the fourfold story described in " Milton," but it stretches further and carries mankind to the personality of God instead of to the mere semblance of that personality forced by God upon the reason. The first of the