ABSTRACT
The soul is being born out of the collapse of literalism. Indeed, it seems that, historically speaking, the whole point of religious literalism was that it would eventually collapse, thus revealing the wealth of the human soul that it had systematically disguised. The soul of humanity has not fully emerged; it is a slow and gradual birth, and painful too, like any birth. From the depths of the God-shaped hole a new image of God will emerge. This image will be shorn of its literalistic and dogmatic trappings. Blake is affirming a divine life in the soul, and this life is necessarily "shaped" by human agency, even though it cannot be reduced to such agency. Psychology is the threshold where science and religion meet. It is ironic that science, which played a role in bringing about the collapse of religion, might play another role in bringing religion to a new stage of realization.
