Swedenborg wrote (237): _Man at birth comes first into the natural degree, and this increases in him by continuity, according to his various knowledge ... until he reaches the highest point of the understanding which is called the rational. But still the second degree, which is the spiritual, is not opened by this means. This is opened by love towards the neighbour ... the third degree by love towards the Lord._ With all Blake's devout admiration for Swedenborg this was too much for him. A child born solely into the natural degree! That! after all Blake knew, and all Christ had said about little children! Heaven save us all, especially Swedenborg! Blake's comment is important. Note that even when he is differing from his teacher, his language is Swedenborgian. He says: "Study science till you are blind. Study intellectuals until you are cold. Yet science cannot teach intellect. Much less can intellect teach affection. How foolish it is then to assert that man is born in only one degree, when that one degree is receptive of the three degrees: two of which he must destroy or close up or they will descend. If he closes up the two superior, then he is not truly in the third but descends out of it into mere Nature or Hell. Is it not also evident that one degree will not open the other, and that science will not open intellect, but that they are discrete and not continuous so as to explain each other, except by correspondence, which has nothing to do with demonstration, for you cannot demonstrate one degree by the other, for how can science be brought to demonstrate intellect without making them continuous and not discrete?" There are three comments in which Blake introduces an element lacking in the voluminous writings of Swedenborg. On Swedenborg's statement: "A spiritual idea does not derive anything from space, but it derives its all from state," he remarks: "_Poetic_ idea"; on paragraph 10, Blake comments: "He who loves feels love descend into him, and if he is wise, may perceive it from the _Poetic Genius_, which is the Lord"; on Swedenborg's phrase: "The negation of God constitutes hell," he remarks: "The negation of the _Poetic Genius_." Here we get a hint of a small seed of difference which when fully grown was to sever Blake from Swedenborg for ever. I must give one more, very pregnant, passage from _The Angelic Wisdom_. 68. _Man out of his hereditary evil reacts against God. But if he believes that all his life is from God, and all good of life from the action of God, and all evil of life from the reaction of man, then reaction becomes the offspring of action, and man acts with God as from himself. The equilibrium of all things is from action and joint reaction, and everything must be in equilibrium._