ABSTRACT
Compare the visionary empiricism of Abraham Tucker's Light of Nature Pursued. William Blake's anthropomorphism reflects his skeptical appreciation of the fact that, to repeat Thomas Nagel: "It is difficult to understand what could be meant by the objective character of an experience apart from the particular point of view from which its subject apprehends it. The religious cast of Blake's anthropomorphism - the positive side of his anti-Rationalism - is illuminated by Stewart Elliott Guthrie's sociology of religion in Faces in the Clouds: For many people, religious anthropomorphism consists of seeing God or gods as humanlike. After Joseph Johnson brought out a second edition of Joseph Priestley's Letters in 1787, Blake joined the debate, evidently inspired by his invention of relief etching. Like the radical young Samuel Taylor Coleridge a few years later, Blake shared Priestley's revolutionary political views but regarded his Socinianism as spiritually shallow.
