A Memorable Fancy 2

(plates 12-13)

The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they

dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whatever they did

not think at the time that they would be so misunderstood,& so be the

cause of imposition. Isaiah answer'd: 'I saw no God, nor heard any, in a

finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in

every thing, and as I was then persuaded,& remain confirm'd, that the

voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for

consequences, but wrote. ' Then I asked: 'Does a firm perswasion that a

thing is so, make it so? ' He replied: ' All poets believe that it does,&

in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many

are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing. ' Then Ezekiel said:

'The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human

perception: some nations held one principle for the origin,& some

another; we Israel taught that the poetic genius (as you now call it) was

the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the

cause of our despising the priests & philosophers of other countries, and

prophecying that all gods would at last be proved to originate in ours &

to be tributaries of the poetic genius; it was this that our great poet

king David desired so fervently & invokes so pathetic'ly, saying this he

conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God, that we

cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations and asserted

that they had rebelled; from this opinions the vulgar came to thin that

all nations would at last be subjected to the Jews. 'This' he said 'like

all firm perswasions, is come to pass; for all nations belive the Jews'

code and worship the Jews' God, and what the greater subjection can be? 'I

heard this with some wonder,& must confess my own convivtion. After dinner

I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works; he said none of

equal value was lost. Ezekiel the same of his. I also asked Isaiah what

made him go naked and bare foot three years? He answer'd: 'The same that

made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian. 'I then asked Ezekiel why he eat

dung,& lay so long on his right & left side? He answer'd 'The desire of

raising other men into perception of the infinite: this the North American

tribes practise,& is he honest who resists his genius or conscience for

this sake of present ease or gratification? (plate 14) The ancient

tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six

thousand years is true, as I have heard from hell. For the Cherub with his

flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and

when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and

holy, whereas it now appears finite & corrupt. This will come to pass by

an improvement of sensual enjoyment, but first the notion that man has a

body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing

in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in hell are salutary and in

medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite

which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would

appear to man as it is. Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he

sees things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern