Palamabron, another son of Los, gave abstract Law to Trismegistus,
Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Abstract Law is also negative, and
therefore Orc (passion) finds himself chained down with the chain of
Jealousy, and howls in impotent rage.
Sotho teaches Odin a Code of War which at any time may become the
philosophy of a nation.
All these, abstract philosophy, abstract law, the Mahometan Bible, Codes
of War, with the Churches, Hospitals, Castles, Palaces, which they
involve, while seeking to catch the joys of eternity, serve in reality to
obliterate and erase eternity altogether, and the children of men schooled
in these philosophies behold the vast of Nature shrunk before their
shrunken eyes. After the shrinkage there can only arise a philosophy of
the five senses, and then Newton and Locke, especially Locke, Rousseau and
Voltaire, have it all their own way.
From all this Blake looked for deliverance to the thought-creating fires
of Orc, which had flared up in France, and might be expected to spread
over Europe, and set even Asia in a conflagration. The Kings of Asia, snug
in their ancient woven dens, are startled into self-exertion, and emerging
uneasily from their dens, call on kings, priests, counsellors and privy
admonishers of men to use their immemorial rights to teach the Mortal
Worms, and keep them in the paths of slavery. Happily, Orc's fires are
insatiable. Raging in European darkness, he arose like a pillar of fire
above the Alps, and, while "milk and blood and glandous wine in rivers
rush," led the wild dance on mountain, dale, and plain, till the sullen
earth shrunk away, and there dawned the eternal day.
_The Book of Los_ (engraved 1795) begins with the lament of Eno, aged
Mother, as she recalls the "Times remote, when love and joy were adoration
and none impure were deemed." For now, alas! Los, who alone could teach
joy and liberty, is bound "in a chain and compelled to watch Urizen's
shadow." Yet he cannot be bound for ever. Maddened by hard bondage, he
rends asunder the vast Solid that has bound him, only to fall through the
horrible void of error--"Truth has bounds, Error none"--till his
contemplative thoughts arise and throw out some sort of standing-ground
amidst the dire vacuity. Urizen by his contemplative thoughts, it will be
remembered, had created "a wide World of solid obstruction." Now the two
dæmons become rivals, and the grim conflict of the ages is waged
incessantly. Los with hammer and tongs organizes lungs (understanding, see
Swedenborg), and some Light even appears; but the book closes with no sign
of the ultimate triumph of Los, for Los and Urizen are here rivals: there
can be no victory until they cease to be rivals, and re-enter into the
union of the eternal order.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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