quired no such elaboration. For all his mythological heroes (and especially Los) are, in a sense, Blake himself or Everyman; just as all his female characters are phases of the eternal female he discovered in his wife. Had he not in the comparatively simple Everlasting Gospel, and the still later Ghost of Abel, made return to a more reasonable mode of stating his message, there would be some excuse for those who consider him eccentric, or even insane. Jerusalem, for example, is one of the most obscure poems ever written, though it becomes clearer if it is read after reading all the preliminary prophetic books in order; and it becomes still clearer with every successive re-reading, though in it from beginning to end Blake's mind moves through chaos.

Another and a more serious defect in Blake's system arises from his denial of nature above mentioned. Being, as he was, a man of highly strung imagination, and believing as he did that "it is better to believe vision with all our might and strength, though we are fallen and lost", he made the profound mistake of supposing that nature provides no help to the visionary imagination. "I assert that for me the natural world does not exist". this remark of his later years reveals exactly where Blake went wrong. He committed precisely the error of early medieval and monastic Christianity, which, seeing too clearly the miseries of this world, attempted to substitute for human life a period of trial, leading to a better world. But he did not see the paradox which modern science, no less than the Apostle's Creed, teaches us; that in whatever world we are, we cannot exist without matter in some form, without limitation and embodiment. Whitman and Patmore, each in his own way, saw the flesh and spirit, as one, not as apart; and their attempt to transcend life leads to life ever more rich and abundant; whereas Blake's way, the way of the imagination unaided and unbounded by reality, leads, as he himself admitted, only to eternal annihilation of all selfhood.

Yet we can forgive Blake even this final heresy, because we know dimly what he suffered. He was born a full century, at least, before his time. The political revolutionaries whose energies he admired "energy is eternal delight" is one of his finest sayings—were one and all materialists, without imagination, without God. And the religious people of his day were one

and all living in a state of reactionary negation, worshipping either the "selfish, cold" Urizen as God, or bowing before the Cross and Tomb instead of looking for the living risen Christ among mankind. The naïve egotism of his various addresses and manifestoes to the public are one index to the state of his mind; another and not less clear is the profoundly unforgettable note that he was to leave behind in his papers: "Tuesday, Jan. 20,1807, between two and seven in the evening, despair." When that note was made, Blake was nearly fifty years old.

That he triumphed over his despair we not only have the fragments of the Everlasting Gospel as well as the Dante and Job series of illustrations to remind us, but also we have the public interest in his work to account for, which, though Blake has not yet been a hundred years in his unmarked grave in London, is continually busy with new editions of his work, or new studies of its author. That interest is, I suggest, not merely motivated by curiosity in an extraordinary man. We have arrived at a time in the world's history when scientific theory and religious faith have begun, not to oppose, but to give support to one another; though many of our scientists and religious leaders fail to observe the fact. We have therefore come to the junction of art (which reposes in faith) and science (which reposes in knowledge). The synthesis of these two contrasting ideas, the artistic and the scientific, might produce a great poem. But to put a poem of that sort into concrete form needs not only experiment with all kinds of new utterance, but a personality strong enough to see the abstract concretely, and to write it in the form of "allegory addressed to the intellectual powers". We must therefore re-adopt Homer's prerogative, and recreate a mythology. Hitherto Blake's attempt has been the sole one in the field. And his triumph in it might have been even greater had he been given a lifetime to devote solely to poetical work.

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.

HATRED

BY STEPHEN GWYNN

CIVILIZED Society has not yet abolished any of the vices, perhaps because it would be dull without them; but it does its best to eliminate passions, and in one case has virtually succeeded. Hatred as a passion, as something which takes and shakes a man, has no longer any real existence for the spheres of our life in which urbanity is the rule. In such regions to avow your love is rather like undressing in public, but nobody is shy of proclaiming a hate, because what passes with them for hate is not the crude stuff. Love always retains some of the primitive, all conquering sway that Sophocles wrote about in another highly civilized society two thousand five hundred years ago; and even today no drawingroom is without apprehension that the creature may break loose. It is not altogether a disagreeable apprehension: the discouragement of love is never whole hearted; everybody, someone said, loves a lover, and at any rate every decent person does. But hate with its acrid atmosphere carries discomfort into sensitive circles; its sudden explosion affects people like a bad smell, and so manners, much more powerful than morals, have brought it very tolerably under control. The task has been easier because hate is not a necessity of nature; breeding earth has no use for it; and it runs counter to that instinct of association which is part of man's gregarious temperament. Thus it lacks the physical basis on which love is founded, whether between man and woman or child and parent, and which spreads out till it colours even the clannish bond with something of kinship. Yet one dare not deny hate's antiquity; it springs where love does, it dogs love like a shadow; jealousy is its first and fiercest form, growing as rank among kindred as among lovers. Cain was jealous. But, as society is well aware, Cain lived and killed a long time ago; the world has grown wider, kinsmen who hate can easily avoid each other, and under social pressure they do so, instead of troubling company with

manifestations of their rancour. Further, this concession to urbanity starves hate, deprives it of its natural food; for, as the Irish song says, I love my love for his way of walking, I love my love for his way of talking, and the same is true of hatred. As love fastens on whatever is individual and charming in bodily gesture, so you hate a man for his way of clearing his throat, or some other annoying and ugly trick he has. But in truth, when his whole being is an offence to you, every action of his is a new grievance and the nearer you live to him the more you loathe. From the town, where we have no fellowship with our neighbours, hatred, properly so called, has been almost banished; but it thrives profusely in Boeotia, which borders upon Arcady. In a dull countryside you will not find man or woman readily owning up to a hatred, and still less will they parade the emotion. Hate prefers to be disguised when it is the true passion and hopes for its effect; indeed, sooner than be avowed, it will hide like the ostrich. Only in a society which does not fear this Boeotian obsession could Dr. Johnson's phrase be applauded. For, as everybody knows, when the doctor said he loved a good hater, that was part of his humour. No one was ever less likely to approve the person who would willingly inflict harm on another to gratify his own passion—and that is what hate means. Johnson might hate a Whig, or an atheist, or an ungrammatical writer, but if you had produced before his eyes a suffering human, all thought of Whig, atheist, or scribbler would have vanished. Intellectual aversions and repugnances of taste do no great harm. But I have known a prominent man who became possessed of the power to ruin a very insignificant political opponent. It was pleaded that the victim had wife and children. "Isn't the workhouse good enough for them?" was the reply. That, now, was a good hater; but would Johnson have loved him?

The truth is that Johnson was a typical Englishman, and the English are of all peoples the least prone to hatred. Whether they have succeeded by their good nature, or are good natured because they have succeeded, may be argued; but the fact is that they have felt for a very long time no continued need of hate. For whether hate be natural or no, man has always found hate proper to be cultivated for his extra-natural purposes, in politics

and theology. Without these departments of activity, hating might be a lost art in civilized manhood, gone like the power to track game or light a fire by rubbing two sticks; but through them it has been always and probably always will be maintained and held in honour.

I need not dwell on theology further than to recognize that Christianity has always attempted to inculcate hate for the sin and love for the sinner. But Christianity, especially in practice, keeps a strong Judaic tinge, and the Hebrew mind for all its subtlety never essayed this distinction which should rank among counsels of perfection. In politics we are on clearer ground. Nobody there affects to behave like a Christian; indeed, we are all aware how necessary it is to be on guard against amiable weaknesses, the seductions of decent feeling. "I never can hate a man properly after I've met him," said one of the most human and also the most effective Irish politicians to me, giving his reason for avoiding intercourse with his opponents. He was joking, yet only half joking; he knew his own dreadful liability to like and to be liked: he knew that the House of Commons tends to deaden by personal contact the intensity of party passions and to blunt the sharp outline of party beliefs. In that institution you inevitably become aware that the other side are not monsters of iniquity and that their opinion has something to be said for it. Is this a merit or a defect? Merit, no doubt, if your purpose belongs to the ordinary political processes of a well established state; but defect, if you mean revolution. Ireland tended more and more to believe that Irish politicians who went to Westminster lost something; and it was true. Except in rare and specially gifted individuals, hatred was sapped: and it would be foolish to deny that hatred is a driving force. No revolutionary movement has been able to dispense with it: the weaker the insurgent force, and the more strongly established the power which it seeks to overthrow, the greater will be the need of this stimulus. Very little hatred seems to have entered into either of the two English revolutions, which were made by a body of the people conscious of their strength, and exempt from the touch of hysteria which attends on desperate enterprises. Where there is no fear there is not much hate. Napoleon fright