William Blake

by G. K. Chesterton

No pagan republican, such as those on whom the eighteenth century ethic was founded, could have made head or tail of this mere humanitarian horror. He could not even have comprehended this idea—that war is immoral when it is not unjust. You cannot find this sentiment in the pagans of antiquity, but you can find it in the pagans of the eighteenth century; you can find it in the speeches of Fox, the soliloquies of Rousseau and even in the sniggering of Gibbon. Here is an element of the eighteenth century which is derived darkly but indubitably from Christianity, and in which Blake strongly shares. Regulus has returned to be tortured and pagan Rome is saved; but Christianity thinks a little of Regulus. A man must be pitied even when he must be killed. That individual compassion provoked Blake to violent and splendid lines—

“And the slaughtered soldier’s cry

Runs in blood down palace walls.”

The eighteenth century did not find that pity where it found its pagan liberty and its pagan law. It took this out of the very churches that it violated and from the desperate faith that it denied. This irrational individual pity is the purely Christian element in the eighteenth century. This irrational individual pity is the purely Christian element in William Blake.

And second, there was another eighteenth century element that was neither of Christian nor of pagan Rome. It was from the origins; it had been in the world through the whole history of paganism and Christianity; it had been in the world, but not of it. This element appeared popularly in the eighteenth century in an extravagant but unmistakable shape; the element can be summed up in one word—Cagliostro. No other name is quite so adequate; but if anyone desires a nobler name (a very noble one), we may say—Swedenborg. There was in the eighteenth century, despite its obvious good sense, this strain of a somewhat theatrical thaumaturgy. The history of that element is, in the most literal sense of the word, horribly interesting. For it all works back to the mere bogey feeling of the beginnings. It is amusing to remark that in the eighteenth century for the first time start up a number of societies which calmly announce that they have existed almost from the beginning of the world. Of these, of course, the best known instance is the Freemasons; according to their own account they began with the Pyramids; but according to everyone else’s account that can be effectively collected, they began with the eighteenth century. Nevertheless the Freemasons are right in the spirit even if they are wrong in the letter. There is a tradition of things analogous to mystical masonry throughout all the historic generations of Paganism and Christianity. There is a definite tradition outside Christianity, not of rationalism, but of paganism, paganism in the original and frightful forest sense—pagan magic. Christianity, rightly or wrongly, always discouraged it on the ground that it was, or tended to be, black magic. That is not here our concern. The point is that this non-Christian supernaturalism, whether it was good or bad, was continuous in spite of Christianity. Its signs and traces can be seen in every age: it hung like a huge fume, in many monstrous forms, over the dying Roman Empire: it was the energy in the Gnostics who so nearly captured Christianity, and who were persecuted for their pessimism; in the full sunlight of the living Church it dared to carve its symbols upon the tombs of the Templars; and when the first sects raised their heads at the Reformation, its ancient and awful voice was heard.

PHILANDER’S DUST (1796)

Now the eighteenth century was primarily the release (as its leaders held) of reason and nature from the control of the Church. But when the Church was once really weakened, it was the release of many other things. It was not the release of reason only, but of a more ancient unreason. It was not the release of the natural, but also of the supernatural, and also, alas! of the unnatural. The heathen mystics hidden for two thousand years came out of their caverns—and Freemasonry was founded. It was entirely innocent in the manner of its foundation; but so were all the other resurrections of this ancestral occultism. I give but one obvious instance out of many. The idea of enslaving another human soul, without lifting a finger or making a gesture of force, of enslaving a soul simply by willing its slavery, is an idea which all healthy human societies would regard and did regard as hideous and detestable, if true. Throughout all the Christian ages the witches and warlocks claimed this abominable power and boasted of it. They were (somewhat excusably) killed for their boasting. The eighteenth century rationalist movement came, intent, thank God, upon much cleaner things, upon common justice and right reason in the state. Nevertheless it did weaken Christianity, and in weakening Christianity it uplifted and protected the wizard. Mesmer stepped forward, and for the first time safely affirmed this infamous power to exist: for the first time a warlock could threaten spiritual tyranny and not be lynched. Nevertheless, if a mesmerist really had the powers which some mesmerists have claimed, and which most novels give to him, there is (I hope) no doubt at all that any decent mob would drown him like a witch.

The revolt of the eighteenth century, then, did not merely release naturalism, but a certain kind of supernaturalism also. And of this particular kind of supernaturalism, Blake is particularly the heir. Its coarse embodiment is Cagliostro. Its noble embodiment is Swedenborg. But in both cases it can be remarked that the mysticism marks an effort to escape from or even to forget the historic Christian, and especially the Catholic Church. Cagliostro, being a man of mean spirituality, separated himself from Catholicism by rearing against it a blazing pageant of mystical paganism, of triangles, secret seals, Eleusinian initiation, and all the vulgar refinements of a secret society. Swedenborg, being a man of large and noble spirituality, marked his separation from Catholicism by inventing out of his own innocence and genius nearly all the old Catholic doctrines, sincerely believing them to be his own discoveries. It is startling to note how near Swedenborg was to Catholicism—in his insistence on free will, for instance, on the humanity of the incarnate God, and on the relative and mystical view of the Old Testament. There was in Blake a great deal of Swedenborg (as he would have been the first to admit), and there was, occasionally, a little of Cagliostro. Blake did not belong to a secret society: for, to tell the truth, he had some difficulty in belonging to any society. But Blake did talk a secret language. He had something of that haughty and oligarchic element in his mysticism which marked the old pagan secret societies and which marks the Theosophists and oriental initiates to this day. There was in him, besides the beneficent wealth of Swedenborg, some touch of Cagliostro and the Freemasons. These things Blake did inherit from that break up of belief that can be called the eighteenth century: we will debit him with these as an inheritance. And when we have said this we have said everything that can be said of any debt he owed. His debts are cleared here. His estate is cleared with this payment. All that follows is himself.

If a man has some fierce or unfamiliar point of view, he must, even when he is talking about his cat, begin with the origin of the cosmos; for his cosmos is as private as his cat. Horace could tell his pupils to plunge into the middle of the thing, because he and they were agreed about the particular kind of thing; the author and his readers substantially sympathised about the beauty of Helen or the duties of Hector. But Blake really had to begin at the beginning, because it was a different beginning. This explains the extraordinary air of digression and irrelevancy which can be observed in some of the most direct and sincere minds. It explains the bewildering allusiveness of Dante; the galloping parentheses of Rabelais; the gigantic prefaces of Mr Bernard Shaw. The brilliant man seems more lumbering and elaborate than anyone else, because he has something to say about everything. The very quickness of his mind makes the slowness of his narrative. For he finds sermons in stones, in all the paving-stones of the street he plods along. Every fact or phrase that occurs in the immediate question carries back his mind to the ages and the initial power. Because he is original he is always going back to the origins.