THE GOOD LIFE

Milton O. Percival in his book WILLIAM BLAKE'S CIRCLE OF DESTINY, analyzed the ideas that lie behind Blake's thinking. He finds Blake to exhibit familiar tenets of idealism. These are the ones he names:
1.) Appearances are not reality
2.) Intuition is a prime source of knowledge
3.) The mind creates the universe in its own likeness
4.) The cosmic mind corresponds to the individual mind
5.) Reality is mental
Percival adds these tenets in Blake's thought.
6.) The individual and universal minds are identical in nature
7.) The supreme experience is ecstasy
8.) The good life is unitive concerning itself in building Jerusalem

Percival describes the good life as envisioned by Blake thus:
"It requires that one make the mystical identification of oneself with others and of all with God; and that one should have faith in that identification when the immediate perception fades. ...

"The good life must be built by faith or experience, on the qualities of imagination.To attempt to build it on the qualities of reason or sense is to reduce a god-like man to a handful of dust."

Blake in his poetry continually restates and develops these tenets. Furthermore he lived his life by these tenets in his commitment to Eternity and to the expression of Imagination.

"Drinking at the River of Life"