Blake's Annotations

Although there are many of Blake's Annotations in the "Big Book" (Erdman 583-667) , they're likely to be neglected by the general reader or student; that's unfortunate! With his Annotations Blake gave us lots of direct looks at his values.

Of all the great men and others whose books Blake annotated The
Annotations to Berkeley's Siris, may well represent the man whose values Blake resembled most.
George (Bishop) Berkeley (1685-1753) was born in County Kilkenny and< educated at Kilkenny College and Trinity College in Dublini. His wife was a daughter of the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He had a large income in Dublin, but in 1728 he went to America, landing at Newport Rhode Island; he bought a plantation there; it was called Whitehall. After four years he returned to the Old World and lived in London. He promoted and founded the Foundling Hospital in 1739. In 1734 he had been appointed the Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland. Read about Bishop Berkeley and you may be struck by the fact (like I was) that like Blake he was very much of an individual. Both of them were 'their own man' (as you and l likely are). He moved around the world, as Blake, with the means, might well have done. Blake of course had to do his traveling in his mind, with his reading. Berkeley like Blake was an idealist, not only philosophically, but in the vulgar sense as well: he founded hospitals; in the interest of doing something for the poor slaves in Jamaica he moved to America, etc, etc. He lived an interesting life. The Annotations that follow here are made up of quotations, preceded by a p number and followed by Blake's own word, preceded by the : "Annotations to Berkeley's Siris Dublin, 1744

[P 203] God knoweth all things, as pure mind or intellect, but
nothing by sense, nor in nor through a sensory. Therefore to
suppose a sensory of any kind, whether space or any other, in God
would be very wrong, and lead us into false conceptions of his
nature.magination or the HumanI Eternal Body in Every Man

[P 204] But in respect of a perfect spirit, there is nothing
hard or impenetrable: there is no resistance to the deity. Nor
hath he any Body: Nor is the supreme being united to the world,
as the soul of an animal is to its body, which necessarily
implieth defect, both as an instrument and as a constant weight
and impediment. Imagination or the Divine Body in Every Man

P 205] Natural phaenomena are only natural appearances. . .
. They and the phantomes that result from those appearances,
the children: of imagination grafted upon sense, such
for example as pure space, are thought by many the very first in
existence and stability, and to embrace and comprehend all
beings.The All in Man The Divine Image or Imagination
The Four Senses are the Four Faces of Man & the Four Rivers
of the Water of Life

[P 212] 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.
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

[P 213] The perceptions of sense are gross: but even in the
senses there is a difference. Though harmony and proportion are
not objects of sense, yet the eye and the ear are organs, which
offer to the mind such materials, by means whereof she may
apprehend both the one and the other.
Harmony [&] Proportion are Qualities & Not Things The
Harmony & Proportion of a Horse are not the same with those of a
Bull Every Thing has its own Harmony & Proportion Two Inferior Qualities in it For its
Reality is Its Imaginative Form

[P 214] 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.
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

[P 215] There is according to Plato properly no knowledge,
but only opinion concerning things sensible and perishing, not
because they are naturally abstruse and involved in darkness: but
because their nature and existence is uncertain, ever fleeting
and changing.
Jesus supposes every Thing to be Evident to the Child & to
the Poor & Unlearned Such is the Gospel
The Whole Bible is filld with Imaginations & Visions from
End to End & not with Moral virtues that is the baseness of Plato
& the Greeks & all Warriors The Moral Virtues are continual
Accusers of Sin & promote Eternal Wars & Domineering over others

[P 217] Aristotle maketh a threefold distinction of objects
according to the three speculative sciences. Physics he
supposeth to be conversant about such things as have a principle
of motion in themselves, mathematics about things permanent but
not abstracted, and theology about being abstracted and
immoveable, which distinction may be seen in the ninth book of
his metaphysics.
God is not a Mathematical Diagram

[P 218] 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.
The Natural Body is an Obstruction to the Soul or Spiritual
Body

[P 219] . . . 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, . .
. 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

PAGE 241 What Jesus came to Remove was the Heathen or Platonic
Philosophy which blinds the Eye of Imagination The Real Man
(Erdman 663-4)