190 Ideals in the Modern World
your neck and fl ing yourself into the abyss than to harm a child. The
church, as Blake sees it, prefers the abyss to the vision of Christ
centered upon compassion. As we have seen, Jesus brings into the
Western world the doctrine of compassionate love already potently
infl uential in the East through the teachings of Confucius, Buddha,
and the Hindu sages. Committing oneself to compassion means to
Blake what it means to Jesus: every man and woman is of value, no
one is intrinsically better than anyone else. We owe each other
loving- kindness.
Blake suggests that if you want to understand the moral state of
a country, you need to look at how it deals with its children. Does
it treat them with compassion, or does it exploit them? Does it look
down on them from the perspective of the greedy and frightened
Selfhood, or regard them with the generosity of the enlightened
Soul? Blake’s verdict on his own nation is not hard to discern.
As the children suff er, the rich plunder the nation, taking all they
can get and then diving for more. The Self hood is so scared of the
future, so isolated and loveless, that it’s constantly grasping for se-
curity. Its fear makes it almost entirely without conscience. The
Self hood might surrender its aggressive individualism and seek sol-
idarity with others through compassion— but this possibility the
Self cannot and will not understand. The Self believes that if it could
only get to the next rung of wealth, the next tier of society, the next
level of recognition and success, then all would be well. So the Self-
hood pushes on in its impossible task, creating sorrow for others
and more anxious fear for itself.
Next the prophet looks out into the po liti cal world where, he says,
“the hapless Soldiers sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls” (27).
The hapless soldier, we can presume, is the fi ghting man compelled
to enter the ser vice because of his poverty or brought in through out-
right coercion. He’s been sent half a world away to defend the em-
pire, so that the burghers at home can continue to enrich themselves.