Блейк-Словарь (Деймон)/Все религии едины

ALL RELIGIONS ARE ONE ( ca. 1788), a small tractate, perhaps Blake’s first experiment in his illuminated printing, exists in only one copy. It affirms that the Imagination (“the Poetic Genius”) is “the true Man”; that it creates man’s body and the forms of all things; that (allowing for infinite variety) all men are alike in the Poetic Genius; that all sects of philosophy are derived from it, “adapted to the weaknesses of every individual”; that all religions are derived from each nation’s different reception of the Poetic Genius; and that the two Testaments “are an original derivation from the Poetic Genius.” Thus early Blake had completed his revolutionary theory of the nature of Man and proclaimed the unity of all true religions. The influence of Lavater’s Aphorisms is obvious. The very first two read: “Know, in the first place, that mankind agree in essence, as they do in their limbs and senses. Mankind differ as much in essence as they do in form, limbs, and senses—and only so, and not more.” Blake commented: “This is true Christian philosophy far above all abstraction” (K 65). Blake also probably had in mind Spenser’s “For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make” (Hymn to Beauty 133).