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2 ROBERT F. GLECKNER

have come to see that the imagination isnot something used in lieu ofthe senses, not a transcendent faculty, but rather one which is inex

tricably bound upwith

the operation of thesenses.

Frye showedmost clearly in Fearful Symmetry that Blake's major objection to the

eighteenth-century Weltanschauung he inherited, was to Locke's separation of existence from perception: "If there is a reality beyond our

perception we must increase the power and coherence of our perception, for we shall never reach reality in any other way." Yet, while

Frye's analysis of Blake's reintegration of existence and perception is

undoubtedly correct, his explication of the relationship Blake sawbetween the senses and imagination seems to me misleading as it

stands, or perhaps, merely incomplete. "We use five senses in perception," he writes, "but ifwe used fifteen we should still have only a

single mind. The eye does not see: the eye is a lens for the mind tolook through. Perception, then, is not something we do with our

senses; it is a mental act."3 Blake did say that "Mental Things are

alone Real" (VLJ, K617), but as Frye cautions, for Blake "mental,"

"imaginative," and "intellectual" all mean the same thing.4 Moreimportant, all three of these terms do tend to deny the validity of an

opposition between body and soul.However, Frye's discussion of the

relationship between this implicit denial and his description of the

perceptual process tends oddly to separate rather than integrate thesenses and imagination. Further, the question is not how much more

man would seewith fifteen eyes instead of one, but rather how muchmore he would

perceivewith more senses than five, or with his

senses "cleansed." For Blake imaginative or total perception is not

merely amatter of "sight" as opposed to "vision"; it is a fourfold in

tegration of the whole man (what Blake calls "the human form di

vine"), and this involves all the senses.Thus Harold Bloom, basing his analysis on a passage from The

Marriage of eaven andHell which Iwish to look at further in a mo

ment, ismore accurate in emphasizing Blake's suggestion that man's

senses can become "more numerous and enlarged" so that he will be"able to discern a larger portion" of reality than he can with onlyfive senses. And cleansing the senses, writes Bloom, means "raisingthem to the heights of their sensual power."5 In his earlier analysis of

3. Fearful Symmetry (Princeton, 1947), pp. 25-26, 19.4. Frye, p. 19.5.Harold Bloom, Blake's Apocalypse (Garden City, N. Y., 1963), p. 89.

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BLAKE AND THE SENSES 3

The Marriage Nurmi too draws particular attention to Blake's keyphrase,

"'enlarged & numerous senses,'

"while also pointing out a

neglected keydetail in the second "Memorable

Fancy" (onIsaiah

and Ezekiel):" 'I saw no God, nor heard any,'

"says Isaiah, " 'in a

finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in

every thing ....' "6A further step still is taken by Peter Fisher:' Vi

sionary knowledge," he writes, "was knowledge based on senseswhich surpassed our senses. . . and an intellect which surpassed ourratio of the things of memory." For Blake "Reality was not to beconceived as the idea of spirit, nor as pure subjectivity, but as vision of

which spirit was an abstraction, and the subject-object relationship,a degree."7 If, asOrtega says, "Every object of depth withholds somesecret from us," this is only because the externality of object is insisted upon to the point of (or, indeed, because of) the obscuring or

obliterating of its relationship with subject.The point that I shall try to make is considerably more than an

epistemological quibble, since it involves not only the central matter

of perception, but also such other subjects as the origins of religionand priests, Blake's view of personification, the Fall, the nature oftrue art, the nature of God, the four Zoas, and a cluster of images and

symbols which he at the heart of Blake's prophetic books. AlthoughI shall touch upon these matters in the following pages, I shall do sonot with the intention of explicating Blake's poems and prophecies, orhis mythography; neither am I interested here in tracing the possiblesources of his ideas

(othershave done this better than I

could).What

I shall do is analyze closely a key passage in The Marriage and by reference to Blake's other uses of the same basic ideas, in his poetry and

prose, demonstrate his consistent development, and the cumulative

significance, of the relationship between the senses and Imagination,or between sense perception and what he called "Spiritual Sensation."8

The passage I refer to should be quoted in full:

The ancient Poets animated all sensibleobjectswith Gods or Geniuses, callingthem by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, moun

tains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could

percieve.

6. Martin K. Nurmi, Blake's "Marriage of eaven and Hell" (Kent, Ohio, 1957), pp.41, 43. The second "Memorable Fancy" is on Ki 53-154.

7. The Valley of Vision, ed. Northrop Frye (Toronto, 1961), pp. 245, 239.8. Letter to Trusler, August 23, 1799 (K794). Blake also uses the phrase "Spiritual

Perception'' (AfR, K473), opposing both of these to "bodily sensation*' (AR, K98).








As One Man all theUniversal family; & that ne Man

They callJesus theChrist, & they nhim & he in themLive inPerfect harmony, inEden the land of life.

(FZ,K277; alsoJ, K664-665)

That this condition of mental reality, which Blake equates with theDivine Body of Imagination?with the divine humanity of JesusChrist?is also one of infinite sense perception, Blake makes clear inseveral of his writings. It isno accident, for example, that the passageI quoted in full from TheMarriage isfollowed immediately y the"Memorable Fancy" inwhich Isaiah poses a sharp distinction between"a finite organical perception" (that is, perception of the five senses

of fallen, unimaginative man) and his "senses." The latter, obviously"enlarged & numerous" as those of the "ancient Poets," "discover'dthe infinite in every thing" (MHH, K153). Just so, although Blake inThere IsNo Natural Religion seems to dissociate the senses from imagination, inAll Religions Are One, written at the same time, he implies

a distinction between "bodily sensation" and what he calls later "Spiritual Sensation," the latter phrase clearly implying the union of senseand spirit (or imagination). In the Visions of theDaughters ofAlbionthe same contrast ismade again: Oothoon, decrying the uniformityof the existence perceived by the five senses, postulates numerousother senses beyond fallen man's, while Bromion, her tyrannical ad

versary, proclaims the totality of aworld of five senses, "spread in theinfinite

microscope,"inwhich there is "one law for both the lion and

the ox" (VDA, K191-192). The microscope, the telescope, and all

optical devices intensify the senses, then, without expanding them.Or, asBlake writes inMilton, "they alter | he ratio of the Spectator'sOrgans, but leave Objects untouch'd" (K516). Newton's vision is

"Single" (L, K818), the "reality" it yields is surface, its heaven "aLawful Heaven, seen thro' a Lawful Telescope" (AT, K787). Finally,in his Annotations to Berkeley's Siris, Blake writes: "Forms must be

apprehended by Sense or the Eye of Imagination" (K775), the "or"clearly indicating in the context an identification rather than an alternative.

The relationship on the one hand between this mental reality andthe Lockean world of sensory data and on the other between whatone might call "closed or limited" sense perception and infinite sense

perception or imagination is clarified by Blake through his concep








tion of vortexes.14 What man perceives with his senses is a reflectionof inner, mental reality. Total vision, or imagination, is thus impos

sibleas

longas

thereare

onlya

limited number of senses to serve asinlets to, or outlets for perception by, soul or mind, or as long as thebasic senses remain "closed," uncleansed, bound, or unexpanded.Opening or expanding man's eyes inward is the same as opening his

"vegetable" eye outward. Diagrammatically,15 each of man's sensesis the point of intersection, or vortex, of two cones, the open ends ofthe cones continuing into outer (sensory) and inner (imaginative) in

finity. When these senses are closed, uncleansed, bound, or unex

panded, perception in both "directions" is limited, so that the fuzzy,obscure horizon of, say, picturesque painting or poetry describes thefinite limits of man's imaginative penetration inwards to mental

reality.16 Thus Blake writes, interpreting the Biblical flood as the

overwhelming of vision by the waters of materialism:

. . .when the five senses whelm'dIn deluge o'er the earth-born man; then turn'd the fluxile eyes

Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things (E, K241);

and, as a result,

all the vast of Nature shrunk

Before their shrunken eyes. (SL, K246; cf. M, K516).

When "the doors of perception [are] cleansed," however, "everything [will] appear toman as it is, infinite" (MHH, K154), since the

prismaticvortex of each sense will then

project outwardly (inNa

ture) the totality of inner mental reality. Similarly, if the senses are

expanded or multiplied infinitely, the points of intersection (or"doors of perception") will expand to the point where both innerand outer cones cease to be conical and their bounding lines obliterated by infinity; that is, outer reality, "this Vegetable Glass ofNature,"inwhich inner or mental reality, "the Permanent Realities of Every

Thing," is reflected will become no longer a reflection but an iden

tity. And this identity of inner and outer is no longer describable

14-Hazard Adams' explanation of this concept in his William Blake (pp. 30 f.) is the

best I have seen. For Blake's presentation seeM, K497.15. Although, following Adams, I resort to this kind of explanation reluctantly, it

is, I think, helpful. See Adams, pp. 30, 33.16. As Blake writes:

If Perceptive Organs vary, Objects of Perception seem to vary:If the Perceptive Organs close, their Objects seem to close also. (J, K661)








in terms of cones but rather in terms of "their Eternal Forms inthe divine body of the Saviour" (VLf,K605-606). "Identity sone

thing Corporeal Vegetation isanother thing" (VLJ, 607).A total apprehension of inward reality, then, is also a total sensoryperception of outer reality. At the Fall, Blake's first idea Was to havethe senses rush "inward," hence obliterating mental vision and lifeitself (BU, K236; VDA, K191), amovement which is tantamount to

turning inner mental reality completely outward, imprisoning it inmaterial nature. Later, with the fuller development of his idea of

vortexes, the senses "roll outward" and man beholds "What iswithinnow seen without . . ." (FZ, K281). Man's reascent to unity and

imagination, then, involves his multiplying, cleansing, and expanding the senses inward:

... to open the Immortal EyesOf Man inwards into the orlds of Thought, into EternityEver expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination.

C/,K623)

For "What isAbove isWithin" (J, 709) just as inEternity hat iswithout iswithin. In terms of the senses and imagination, infinitesense perception, the perception of infinite senses, and imaginativeperception all yield the same reality, the eternal fourfold world,

spaceless and timeless, of Eden.

11

The second part of the passage from The Marriage has to do with the

origin of organized religion and priesthood, the organization of a

"system." This system for Blake includes, in effect, all systems of

thought, not merely religions. "All sects of Philosophy," he writes inAll Religions Are One, "are from the Poetic Genius adapted to theweaknesses of every individual" (K98). The process of adaptation isthe important element here for it implies that sectarianism, or the

fragmentation of the one true religion, comes about as a result of the

limitation in vision discussed above. "The trueMan," Blake writes, "isthe ource" of all religions, he being the oeticGenius" (AR,K98);and the "true Man" we know is Jesus Christ, the Divine Body of

Imagination. Thus, just as to imaginative vision all creation is one,indeed is one man (Blake's Albion), so all religions were one until thelimitation of vision to the five senses.17

17. See especially Blake's Descriptive Catalogue for this idea, especially: "the Grecian








This limitation, for Blake, is the process of "abstraction" or "real

ization," the "Philosophy of Five Senses" which he equates with the

teachings of Newton and Locke (SL, K246). TheHuman

Abstract ofSongs ofExperience is a result of this process applied to The Divine

Image of Songs of Innocence. Just as the priests in The Marriage enslavethe vulgar by abstracting "the mental deities from their objects," sotoo does Urizen, Blake's arch-priest, enslave them (FZ, K323); andas the priests leadmen to forget "that All deities reside in the human

breast," so Urizen builds his "temple in the image of the humanheart" replete with the legalized ark and covenant:

And in the inner part of the Temple, wondrous workmanship,

They form'd the Secret place, reversing ll the order of delight,That whosoever enter* d into the temple might not behold

The hidden wonders, allegoric of the Generations

Of secret ust, hen hid in chambers dark the nightly harlotPlays inDisguise inwhisper'd hymn & mumbling prayer. The priestsHe ordain'd & Priestesses, cloth'd in disguises beastial,

Inspiring secrecy. . . .(FZ, K333)

Finally, just as the priests, as enslavers, are also enslaved by the verysystem they create, so too isUrizen a product of his own construct:

he is seen constantly as an abstraction, a nonentity, "self-closed," the

imprisoning cave of the body (BU, K222 ff.; BA, K249).In terms of perception, by abstracting "the mental deities from

their objects" the priests destroy the union of object and subject, of

body and soul, of nature and informing spirit, of reality and mind.

This process of abstraction and dissociation is, of course, a rationalone:

Thought chang'd the infinite to a serpent. . .

Then was the serpent temple form'd, image of infinite

Shut up in finite revolutions, and man became an Angel,Heaven a mighty circle turning, God a tyrant crown'd. (E, K241)

This God, the bstract, silent invisible"Nobodaddy (NB,K171),is for Blake an "Allegory of Kings" (AT, K789), the product of

man's rational mind (priests) who "in Selfhood"

gods were the ancient Cherubim of Phoenicia" (K571); and: "The antiquities of everyNation under Heaven, is no less sacred than that of the Jews. They are the same thing,as Jacob Bryant and all antiquaries have proved.... All had originally one language,and one religion: this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel'* (K578-579).

The reference is to Jacob Bryant's New System; or, An Analysis ofAntient Mythology

(London, 1774-1776). Cf. also Edward Davies' Celtic Researches (London, 1804).








appropriateThe Divine Names, seeking toVegetate the ivine VisionIn a corporeal & ever dying Vegetation & Corruption. (J,K737)

This theory of the origin of religions Blake certainly knew of fromthe many treatments of it in his time.18 Thomas Blackwell, for ex

ample, pointed out in 1748 that "the Gods of the greatest Nations"were "afterwards multiplied first by the Knowledge of the Philoso

phers, then by the Fictions of the Poets, and most of all by the Ambi

tion, and Avarice, of the Priests, and Superstition of the Credulous

Vulgar."19 The apologists for this systematizing, however, such asBishop Burnet, believed that the vulgar had to be led to a true appreciation of divinity through stages?from "Barbarity" to "Superstition" to "a chaste and solid Religion," from a cosmogony to a

theogony.20 Thus, asErnest Tuveson points out, "even attribution of

divinity to the stars and the planets, the streams and the mountains, isan advance since it represents the beginnings of a religious sense; fromthis

pointa

peoplecan evolve to the

pointwhere it has an idea of

divinity separate from natural objects, and at last arrive at monotheism."21

Such a process not only has obvious and manifold ramifications inBlake's mythology and poetry, but also in his ideas about poetry aswell. Adams is certainly correct in saying that "Much of Blake's

poetry is about how personification became a meaningless devicerather than a vehicle of thought"; or, better, as Frye puts it, themen

tal deities of the ancient poets became, in the hands of priests, "increasingly vague and general until, in their final stages, they are mere

personifications."22 With his idea of the essentially creative nature of

perception, Coleridge states the case for the falsity of these gods withadmirable clarity and succinctness: "If themind be not passive, if it beindeed made inGod's Image, and that, too, in the sublimest sense, the

Image of the Creator, there is ground for suspicion that any systembuilt on the

passivenessof the mind must be

false,as a

system."23

18.Nurmi, p. 41 n.

19. Letters Concerning Mythology (London, 1748), p. 275.20. Archaeologiae Philosophicae; or, the Ancient Doctrine concerning the Originals of

Things (London, 1692), pp. 160 f.21.Millennium and Utopia (New York, 1964), p. 170.22. William Blake: A Reading of the Shorter Poems, p. 224; Fearful Symmetry, p. 119.23. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. H. Coleridge (London, 1895), 1, 352.








The differences between Blake's mythological personifications and

eighteenth-century personifications, then, are understandable in terms

of differencesin

perception. When BertrandBronson writes

that "inthe general conception of mankind, God Himself is a personification,"24 he is at once justifying the human necessity of bringing toterms in idealized abstractions the multiplicity of experience, and

enunciating the basis of the religious system against which Blake rebelled. This basis is rational abstraction, the product of which is personification. Although, as Earl Wasserman points out, this figure"represents the highest reach of the imagination" for the eighteenthcentury poet since it "most nearly resembles creation, rather than

mere imitation," the creation to Blake is itself the product of abstraction. Of all of the rhetorical figures, Wasserman continues, "prosopopoeia is precisely that one that best corresponds to the true natureof human abstraction, for it presents a universal in the corporeal substance by which alone it has existence for man and can be compre

hended by him."25 The imagination functions, then, as a collecting

and assimilating power, a function Blake relegates to thememory (asColeridge relegates it to the fancy). For Blake, it is the person that

exists, really and unchangeably, the corporeal substance being onlythat "portion of Soul [or reality] discern'd by the five Senses" (MHH,

K149), what Blake calls, ironically, the "Spectre." The eternal forms,which constitute the Divine Humanity, "are not Abstracted nor

Compounded from Nature" (AJR, K459); they are "visions of theeternal

attributes,or divine names,

which,when erected into

gods,become destructive to humanity . . .who is Jesus the Saviour, thevine of eternity, they are thieves and rebels, they are destroyers"(DC, K571).What isdestroyed s the identity fGod andman, God

and thing; what is "created" by the eighteenth-century poet is a

similitude.The "forms of worship" the Priests created out of "poetic tales,"

then, re the fableswhich, in their "Allegoric pomp" (J, 734) and"allegoric delusion & woe" (J, K735), are substituted for the "SpiritualMystery & Real Visions" (VLJ,K605) of the one true religion,according to which "All deities reside in the human breast." The

personifications, out of which allegories are made, give substantiality

24- "Personification Reconsidered," ELH, xrv (1947), 167.25. "The Inherent Values of Eighteenth-Century Personification," PMLA, lxv

(1950), 445, 450.








to phantasms, solidity to shadows, visualizability to the invisible.

"They become Natures far remote, in a little & dark Land" (FZ,

K281). In the history of the rise of religions, Blake singlesout

particularly the pre-Biblical Druidical age as the one "which began toturn ... mental signification into corporeal command" (DC, K578).

What Blake calls "The Atlantic Mountains" (that is, Atlantis, thelost city of Art, Eden, now overwhelmed by the waters of material

ism), "where Giants dwelt in Intellect," are "Now given to stonyDruids and Allegoric Generation,"

TotheTwelve Gods of Asia, the Spectres of those who SleepSway'd by a Providence oppos'd to the ivine Lord Jesus.

(J, 681)Druidical sacrifice in a Stonehenge-like building of "Natural Reli

gion" on its "Altars of Natural Morality," then, is properly seen byBlake as a closing of the senses. InJerusalem, "As the Senses of Menshrink together nder the Knife of flint" (which swielded by Tir

zah),26Ah alas at the sight of theVictim & at sight f thosewho are smitten,All who see become what they behold; their eyes are cover'd

With veils of tears and their nostrils & tongues shrunk up,Their ear bent outwards; as their Victim, so are they . . .

And as their eye & ear shrunk, the heavens shrunk away:The Divine Vision became First a burning flame, then a columnOf fire, then an awful fiery wheel surrounding earth & heaven,

And then globe of blood wandering distant in an unknown night.Afar into the unknown night the mountains fled away,Six months of mortality, a summer, and six months of mortality,

a winter.The Human form began to be alter'd . . .

And the perceptions to be dissipated into the Indefinite. . . .

(J,K702-703)The fallen state of man, then, is complete, having out of his own

reasoning brain created a God outside himself in his own image, to26. In Blake's "To Tirzah" (Songs ofExperience), she is the "Mother of my Mortal

part" whoWith cruelty didst mould my Heart,And with false self-decieving tearsDidst bind my Nostrils, Eyes, & Ears:

Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay,And me toMortal Life betray. (K220)








which he bows and enslaves himself, sanctioning the entire processby pronouncing "that the Gods had order'd such things." The same

terrible irony Blake uses again in his description of the Fall in TheBook ofUrizen: after the "net" of religion ("twisted like to the human brain") is formed and eternal man with "shrunken eyes" and

"narrowing perceptions" contracts

in reptile forms shrinking together,Of seven feet stature they remain'd.

Six days they shrunk up from existence,And on the seventh day they rested. (K236)

Thus self-enslaved and blind, they give thanks for all their blessings,

And they bless'd the seventh day, in sickhope,And forgot their ternal ife. (K236)

The reachievement of their unfallen state of unity, Eden and Eternity,is to be accomplished, however, not by a destruction of the senses or

reason and a substitution of imagination for them but rather bymeans of those senses themselves, by what Blake calls in The Marriage"an improvement of sensual enjoyment," in the prophecies the rein

tegration of the four Zoas.

ill

When, according to The Marriage, "the whole creation will be con

sumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite &corrupt," this apocalyptic event "will come to pass by an improve

ment of sensual enjoyment." That last phrase has been interpreted inawide variety of ways by Blake critics, but none, I think, has seen the

phrase as expressive of themultiplication aswell as the expansion and

cleansing of the senses, processes which will reform the eternal sensesof man to their imaginative wholeness. Peter Fisher seems to me tocome as close as anyone, however: "The improvement of sensationincluded the restoration of the faculties and their powers," that is, acommunis sensus.27 Blake was no doubt aware of the eighteenth-century search, by Berkeley and others, for some principle by which thesenses could be united with each other, a kind of total synaesthesiareflective of total coinstantaneous perception. As early as 1788 Blake

27. The Valley of Vision, p. 241.








was attracted to Lavater's notion of "copiousness, extent of glance(coup d'oeil), and instantaneous intuition of the whole at once"

{AL,K69).While itmay seem as if this emphasis on the amalgamation of thesenses tends to contradict the idea of their necessary multiplication,the two ideas are but opposite sides of the same coin. The union ofthe five senses (or, as Blake more often has it, four senses)28 into one

imaginative eye precludes any distinction, in Eternity, between thesenses and imagination; as I have said above, multiplication of thesenses ad

infinitumwould

multiplythe number of chinks in man's

bodily cavern to the point where the cavern itself is annihilated, orceases to obscure. So too, cleansing the "doors of perception" and

expanding the five (or four) senses yields precisely the same result. InA Vision of the Last Judgment, then, Blake can write: "Four LivingCreatures [i.e. the Zoas] ... I suppose to have the chief agency in re

moving the old heavens & the old Earth tomake way for the NewHeaven & the New Earth . . ." (K612). In Eternity these four livingcreatures constituted the fourfoldness of "the Immortal" (i.e.Albion,the Grand Man, Christ, Imagination), who, before the Fall, "ex

panded I r contracted his all flexible senses" at will (BU, K223).... for contracting their Exalted Senses

They beholdMultitude, or Expanding they behold as one,As One Man all theUniversal family; & that ne Man

They call Jesus the Christ_(FZ, K277; cf.J, K664-665)

"Every thing isHuman" (J, K665) and each human

stood Fourfold; each Four Faces had: One to theWest,One toward the East, One to the South, One to the North. . . .

U K745)"Around the Throne Divine" stand the four Zoas, Urthona to the

North, Urizen to the South, Luvah to the East, and Tharmas to theWest

(M,K500);And the Eyes are the South, and the Nostrils are the East,And the Tongue is theWest, and theEar is theNorth.

U, K632)

28. In Eternity, for Blake, there are four eternal senses, corresponding to the fourrivers of Eden, the water of life. Thus Tharmas, one of the Four Zoas, combines thesenses of taste and touch, symbolized by Blake in the tongue.








Later inferusalem, lestwe do not understand, Blake explicitly identifies the Zoas as "the Four Eternal Senses of Man," which, after the

Fall, become "Four Elements separating from the Limbs of Albion."29Blake also speaks of the "gates" of the Zoas, who are all entrancesto Eternity; and at each compass point there are four gates, which atthe Fall are closed, or at best made single. "Single vision & Newton's sleep" (L,K818), then, refers not only to the sense of sight butto the contraction of the enlarged and numerous to five (or four),each of which is single-dimensional. Thus perception by means of thefallen senses yields but a "ratio" of total sense perception; and "He

who sees the Ratio only, sees himself only" (NNR, K98), a limited,confined, imprisoning selfhood, separate from the human form divine, a human abstract of the divine image.

Every Universal Form was become barren mountains of Moral

Virtue, and everyMinute Particular harden'd into grains of sand (J,K657),all now perceivable and real only to the single-fold senses and theratiocinative

powersof man. And the erstwhile divine

humanityof

all things becomes instead a

world [of]vast enormities,Fright'ning, faithless, fawningPortions of life, similitudesOf a foot, or a hand, or a head,Or a heart, or an eye. ...

(BU, K234)

Fragmented vision yields a fragmented humanity; the senses perceiveat best a ratio of wholeness, at worst merely a similitude of that ratio.

Blake's cry inferusalem, then, reinterprets the familiar Biblical callto God in terms of a reintegration, cleansing, multiplication, and ex

pansion of the senses:

O Lord my Saviour, open thou the GatesAnd Iwill lead forth thy ords (f,K715)

And these are the words, bringing together magnificently many ofthe strands of Blake's apocalypse:South stood the Nerves of the Eye; East, inRivers of bliss, theNerves of theExpansive Nostrils; West flow'd the Parent Sense, theTongue; North stoodThe labyrinthine Ear: Circumscribing & Circumcising the excrementitious

29. K663. Cf. MHH, inwhich one of the "Proverbs of Hell" associates the four elements with man and his senses: "The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth ofwater, the beard of earth" (K152).








Husk & Covering, intoVacuum evaporating, revealing the lineaments fMan,Driving outward theBody ofDeath in an Eternal Death & Resurrection,Awaking it to Life among the Flowers of Beulah, rejoicing inUnityIn the Four Senses, in the Outline, theCircumference & Form, for everIn Forgiveness of Sinswhich is SelfAnnihilation; it is theCovenant of Jehovah.

The Four Living Creatures, Chariots ofHumanity Divine Incomprehensible,In beautiful Paradises expand. These are the Four Rivers of Paradise

And the Four Faces of Humanity, fronting heFour Cardinal PointsOf Heaven, going forward, forward irresistible rom Eternity to Eternity.

All Human Forms identified, venTree, Metal, Earth & Stone: allHuman Forms identified, iving.... (J,K745-747)

And "This will come to pass by an improvement in sensual enjoyment."

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE

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