te designs, else the book is
shorn of half its force and beauty); let him ponder it closely, and he
will either be repelled and shocked, in which case he had better read no
more Blake, or he will be strangely stirred and thrilled, he will be
touched with a spark of the fire from Blake's spirit which quickens its
words as the leaping tongues of flame illuminate its pages. The kernel
of the book, and indeed of all Blake's message, is contained in the
following statements on p. 4, headed "The Voice of the Devil."

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following
Errors:--

1. That man has two real existing principles, viz. a Body and a
Soul.

2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that
reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.

3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his
Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are True:--

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul, for that called Body is
a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of
Soul in this age.

2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the
bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

Blake goes on to write down some of the Proverbs which he collected
while walking among the fires of hell. These "Proverbs of Hell" fill
four pages of the book, and they are among the most wonderful things
Blake has written. Finished in expression, often little jewels of pure
poetry, they are afire with thought and meaning, and inexhaustible in
suggestion. Taken all together they express in epigrammatic form every
important doctrine of Blake's. Some of them, to be fully understood,
must be read in the light of his other work. Thus, "The road of excess
leads to the palace of wisdom," or, "If the fool would persist in his
folly he would become wise," are expressions of the idea constantly
recurrent with Blake that evil must be embodied or experienced before it
can be rejected.[80] But the greater number of them are quite clear and
present no difficulty, as for instance the following:--

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is