God & Nature

New York Public Library

Milton

Plate 26

Larry's Notes in Google Docs

Blake's God

Some understanding of Berkeley's thought is a good preliminary to understanding the shape of Blake's mature vision of God, which came to him definitively about 1800.

You can say nothing other than the products of your mind, which means that an objective God is a complete unknown; Blake would say there's no such thing:

"Mental Things are alone Real what is Calld Corporeal Nobody Knows of its Dwelling Place it is in Fallacy & its Existence an Imposture Where is the Existence Out of Mind or Thought Where is it but in the Mind of a Fool."
(From, A Vision of The Last Judgment)

In Blakean theology Jesus is the only God; not the man named Jesus: he's only a man. No! Blake's Jesus is the indwelling spirit within the psyche - the fount of imagination and forgiveness. Jesus is one.

Thus, when the two Great Commandments meld together, the neighbor we're exhorted to love is the God within the other. So to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength involves loving God in all the particulars-- not just your neighbor, but his animals, insects, sticks and stones. Nature thus becomes what is groaning in travail; to love and care for it is to love God. "God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men" (MHH Plate 16).

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Romans 8

[19] For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God;
[20] for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope;
[21] because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.
[22] We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now;
[23] and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 

Milton, Plate 26, (E 124)

"This Wine-press is call'd War on Earth, it is the Printing-Press
Of Los; and here he lays his words in order above the mortal brain
As cogs are formd in a wheel to turn the cogs of the adverse wheel.
Timbrels & violins sport round the Wine-presses; the little Seed;
The sportive Root, the Earth-worm, the gold Beetle; the wise Emmet;
Dance round the Wine-presses of Luvah: the Centipede is there:
The ground Spider with many eyes: the Mole clothed in velvet
The ambitious Spider in his sullen web; the lucky golden Spinner;
The Earwig armd: the tender Maggot emblem of immortality:
The Flea: Louse: Bug: the Tape-Worm: all the Armies of Discase:
Visible or invisible to the slothful vegetating Man.
The slow Slug: the Grasshopper that sings & laughs & drinks:
Winter comes, he folds his slender bones without a murmur. 
The cruel Scorpion is there: the Gnat: Wasp: Hornet & the Honey Bee:
The Toad & venomous Newt; the Serpent clothd in gems & gold:
They throw off their gorgeous raiment: they rejoice with loud jubilee
Around the Wine-presses of Luvah, naked & drunk with wine.

There is the Nettle that stings with soft down; and there        
The indignant Thistle: whose bitterness is bred in his milk:
Who feeds on contempt of his neighbour: there all the idle Weeds
That creep around the obscure places, shew their various limbs.
Naked in all their beauty dancing round the Wine-presses."

Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris',(E 663)

Berkeley: "Plato and Aristotle considered God as abstracted or
distinct from the natural  world.  But the Aegyptians considered
God and nature as making one whole, or all things together as
making one universe.

Blake: "They also considerd God as abstracted or distinct from the
Imaginative World but Jesus as also Abraham & David considerd God
as a Man in the Spiritual or Imaginative Vision
     Jesus considerd Imagination to be the Real Man & says I will
not leave you Orphanned and I will manifest myself to you   he
says also the Spiritual Body or Angel as little Children always
behold the Face of the Heavenly Father   

 Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris', (E 664) 

Berkeley: "By experiments of sense we become acquainted with
the lower faculties of the soul; and from them, whether by a
gradual evolution or ascent, we arrive at the highest.  These
become subjects for fancy to work upon.  Reason considers and
judges of the imaginations.  And these acts of reason become new
objects to the understanding." 

Blake: "Knowledge is not by deduction but Immediate by Perception or
Sense at once Christ addresses himself to the Man not to his
Reason   Plato did not bring Life & Immortality to Light Jesus
only did this" 

Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris' (E 664) 

Berkeley: "It is a maxim of the Platonic philosophy, that the
soul of man was originally furnished with native inbred notions,
and stands in need of sensible occasions, not absolutely for
producing them, but only for awakening, rousing or exciting, into
act what was already preexistent, dormant, and latent in the
soul."
Blake: "The Natural Body is an Obstruction to the Soul or Spiritual
Body" 

 Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris', (E 664) 

 Berkeley: ". . . Whence, according to Themistius, . . . it may
be inferred that all beings are in the soul.  For, saith he, the
forms are the beings.  By the form every thing is what it is. 
And, he adds, it is the soul that imparteth forms to matter, . ." 

 Blake: "This is my Opinion but Forms must be apprehended by Sense or
the Eye of Imagination 
     Man is All Imagination God is Man & exists in us & we in him"  

Annotations to Berkeley's 'Siris', (E 664)  

Blake: "What Jesus came to Remove was the Heathen or Platonic
Philosophy which blinds the Eye of Imagination The Real Man"   

As Damon states in his section on Nature, "But When Man fell, his senses turned outward: 'they behold what is within now seen without' (Four Zoas, E 314); and Nature appeared to be separate from Man. That is delusion: "In your bosom you bear your Heaven and Earth & all you behold; tho' it appears Without, it is Within' (Jerusalem, (E 225.)    

Jerusalem, Plate 71, (E 225) 

"For all are Men in Eternity. Rivers Mountains Cities Villages,
All are Human & when you enter into their Bosoms you walk
In Heaven & Earths; as in your own Bosom you bear your Heaven
And Earth, & all you behold, tho it appears Without it is Within
In your Imagination of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow."

God, Man and Nature are One. They are all aspects of the complex unity of whatever is.