The "return" is treated of with great fullness in the _Jerusalem_: the "fall" is hardly more than sketched in the fragmentary Books of _Urizen_, _Los_, and _Ahania_. But as the process of return is the exact reverse to that of the fall, an understanding of the one enables one to fill in the gaps of the other. If there were other books dealing with the fall more in detail, I for one can contemplate the loss with equanimity. _The Book of Urizen_ is supposed to be the account of the creation, and those who endorse this view proceed to identify Urizen with the Jehovah of the Old Testament, which is as false as to identify him with the Jesus of the New, although it is only too true that scores of Christians worship Urizen under the names of Jehovah and Jesus. In strict truth, Blake gives no account of the creation at all. To create can only mean that which the Catholic Church affirms that it does mean, to make something out of nothing. To reject this leaves two alternatives--either that God made the universe out of something outside of Himself, which is dualism, or out of something inside of Himself, which is pantheism. Blake, like Swedenborg, adopted the last, but whereas Swedenborg tried to evade the pantheistic conclusion by his doctrine of discrete degrees, Blake swam in the pantheistic sea, and was saved from drowning by clinging to the rocks which he discerned standing out in bold outline, and a perception of the ultimate irreconcilable antinomy of good and evil, of sheep and goats, which is a direct contradiction of pantheism, and fits in only with the catholic doctrine. There are other such contradictions in Blake, which did not in the least trouble him. With his passion for contraries he harboured them all, marrying them when he could, and just leaving them when they absolutely refused to unite. He had not the requisite talent for building a coherent system. [Illustration: URIZEN IN CHAINS. _From The First Book of Urizen._] What is called, then, Blake's account of the creation is really his account of the fall of the universe out of eternity into time and space, and the consequent appearance of man in his contracted and sense-bound condition. Urizen is the agent in the fall; but he must not be identified with Satan any more than with Jehovah. He, as nearly as possible, represents reason. When he stands in the eternal order working on those things supplied him by Los (imagination), he is a fountain of light, intellect, and joy; when he is rent from Los' side, he becomes self-closed, all repelling, shut up in an abominable void and soul-shuddering vacuum, and his intellect becomes dark and cold because his reason has nothing to work upon except what is supplied by the narrow inlet of the senses.