ABSTRACT

John Locke was the philosopher of the Newtonian cosmology, while the chief modern exponent of the immaterialist philosophy was Berkeley, who himself is rooted in the Neoplatonic and Hermetic tradition to which William Blake also turned, Blake's debt to Berkeley can be traced in the details of his vocabulary and arguments, as will be shown. Thomas Taylor equals Blake in his enthusiasm for those whom he calls "the ancients" and in his contempt for "the moderns"-that is, for Locke and the mechanical and experimental scientists. Blake, by the addition of the word "holy," transforms Berkeley's argument that senses of infinite acuteness will perceive an infinite object, from a quantitative to a qualitative concept. The guarantee of the truth of man's deepest thoughts is man's nature itself-too simple and too bold an answer for Locke's century or Blake's.