— 43 —
"O! Reader, behold the Philosopher's grave!
He was born quite a Fool, but he died quite a Knave".
On Dante the following note has been written by Blake on a drawing of Homer:
"Everything in Dante shows that for tyrannical purposes he has made this world the foundation of all and as poor Cha-Bell (?) said: Nature not memory, thou art my goddess".
Of Swedenborg he tells us in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell that "he wrote down all the old falsehoods" by which falsehoods Swedenborg's belief in Nature must be understood. And in Jerusalem we find in the following lines the idea expressed that Newton and Locke's doctrines are pernicious to mankind.
"The Spectre like a hoar-frost and a
mildew rose over Albion;
Saying: I am God, o sons of men, I am
your rational power.
Am I not Bacon and Newton and Locke
who teach humility to men!
Who teach doubt and experiment".
We see in the foregoing examples that besides the Venetian and Flemish schools of painting Blake's hatred was enflamed against the belief in nature, against empirical science and rational philosophy; for Blake saw here everywhere hindrances for the development of the imaginative faculties. Faith in mysticism, in supernatural agency, in heavenly inspiration, in the exulting purifying influence of the art of the visionary could not be expressed in the solid worldliness of style of the aforenamed painters, neither exist in the minds of men who accepted nothing that had not been sufficiently proved. For Blake to whom "imagination was the principal goddess" this was ample reason for violent hatred. It was not against the art itself of those painters he revolted, but against the meaning and influence of it.
