ensity as with
his obscurity. Indeed, when we speak of Blake's obscurity, we are
uncomfortably reminded of Crabb Robinson's naive remark when recording
Blake's admiration for Wordsworth's _Immortality Ode_: "The parts ...
which Blake most enjoyed were the most obscure--at all events, those
which I least like and comprehend."

Blake's view of good and evil is the characteristically mystical one, in
his case much emphasised. The really profound mystical thinker has no
fear of evil, for he cannot exclude it from the one divine origin, else
the world would be no longer a unity but a duality. This difficulty of
"good" and "evil," the crux of all philosophy, has been approached by
mystical thinkers in various ways (such as that evil is illusion, which
seems to be Browning's view), but the boldest of them, and notably Blake
and Boehme, have attacked the problem directly, and carrying mystical
thought to its logical conclusion, have unhesitatingly asserted that God
is the origin of Good and Evil alike, that God and the devil, in short,
are but two sides of the same Force. We have seen how this is worked out
by Boehme, and that the central point of his philosophy is that all
manifestation necessitates opposition. In like manner, Blake's
statement, "Without Contraries is no progression," is, in truth, the
keynote to all his vision and mythology.

Attraction and Repulsion, Benson and Energy, Love and Hate, are
necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil.

Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

With these startling remarks Blake opens what is the most intelligible
and concise of all the prophetic books, _The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell_. Swinburne calls it the greatest of Blake's books, and ranks it as
about the greatest work "produced by the eighteenth century in the line
of high poetry and spiritual speculation." We may think Swinburne's
praise excessive, but at any rate it is well worth reading (_Essay on
Blake_, 1906 edn., pp. 226-252). Certainly, if one work had to be
selected as representative of Blake, as containing his most
characteristic doctrines clothed in striking form, this is the book to
be chosen. Place a copy of _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ in the
hands of any would-be Blake student (an original or facsimile copy,
needless to say, containing Blake's exquisi