Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/84

70 THE MARKIAOE OF HEAVEN AND HELL. bo the Gnomes of Palamabron. They are not part of the four- tuld humanity, but are rather impulses of expansion than of origination. They pass forward the inspirations of the four regions to the sixth, where the highest dark form is reached, — that oi' the closed book. A seven! li singe must have been that of manifestation, and the books would have opened themselves. Blake was not ready to go so far yet. That the giants who framed this world live in it in chains is the next thing told in the story. The great liberation has not arrived. That the chains are the work of weak and tame minds recalls the description in " Vala " already referred to in the description of the nets which are made when " the weak begin their work." (Night II., 1. 154.) The Prolific and Devourer here contrasted are also the Eagle and Serpent. But they are both devourers from the point of view of one another. Blake's use of the word Man was universal. It included ^ God, and did not exclude Nature. Everything had " Human forms identified, even Tree, Metal, Earth, and Stone ' : ("Jerusalem," p. 99, 1. 1), and " Every Truth is a Man" (MS. Book). The Antediluvians lived before the flood of Time and Space, or as it is also called, of the five senses. ' This flood is creation. Of our Energies that belong to the pre-natal eternal in us, one, now known to us by the form of its impulse that drives us out from all restraints, is well symbolized by the figure of that Son of God whom He sent to put a term to His own Law. Law, according to Blake, being rightly called Christ's mother. Christ still lives, tempting us to freedom. Satan, tempting to delusion, acts partly by His means, and through Him, since in His ultimate form He is known to us as our Imagination. Satan the Accuser, the wicked Satan, is practically another being altogether. It is in the Transgressor, not in the Accuser, that the Saviour shall be