contempt to the
contemptible.

Exuberance is Beauty.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.

There are two tendencies of Blake's mind, both mystical--that is, rooted
in unity--the understanding of which helps, on the one hand, to clear
much in his writing that seems strange and difficult; and, on the
other, reveals a deep meaning in remarks apparently simple to the point
of silliness. These are his view of the solidarity of mental and
spiritual as compared with physical things, and his habit of
concentrating a universal truth into some one small fact.

For Blake, mental and spiritual things are the only real things. Thought
is more real than action, and spiritual attitude is more real than
thought. It is the most real thing about us, and it is the only thing
that is of any importance. The difference between Blake's attitude and
that of the ordinary practical man of the world is summed up in his
characteristic pencil comment in his copy of Bacon's _Essays_ on the
remark, "Good thoughts are little better than good dreams," in the Essay
on Virtue. Blake writes beside this, "Thought _is_ act." This view is
well exemplified in the Job illustrations, where Blake makes quite clear
his view of the worthlessness, spiritually, of Job's gift to the beggar
of part of his last meal, because of the consciously meritorious
attitude of Job's mind.[81]

If this attitude be remembered it explains a good many of the most
startling and revolutionary views of Blake. For instance, in the poems
called "Holy Thursday" in the _Songs of Innocence and Experience_, he
paints first of all with infinite grace and tenderness the picture of
the orphan charity children going to church, as it would appear to the
ordinary onlooker.

The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.

* * * * *

Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

But in short, scathing words and significant change of metre he reverses
the picture to show his view of it, when, in the companion song of
"Experience," he asks--

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduc'd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

It is owing to a false idea that we can bear to see this so-called
"charity" at all, fo