It is what
he is here for, and only so can he bring help and light to his
fellow-men.[51] And Carlyle, with Browning, believes that it is not the
actual deeds accomplished that matter, no man may judge of these, for
"man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became."
Chapter V
Devotional and Religious Mystics
All mystics are devotional and all are religious in the truest sense of
the terms. Yet it seems legitimate to group under this special heading
those writers whose views are expressed largely in the language of the
Christian religion, as is the case with our earliest mystics, with
Crashaw and Francis Thompson and it applies in some measure to Blake.
But beyond this, it seems, in more general terms, to apply specially to
those who are so conscious of God that they seem to live in His
presence, and who are chiefly concerned with approaching Him, not by way
of Love, Beauty, Wisdom, or Nature, but directly, through purgation and
adoration.
This description, it is obvious, though it fits fairly well the other
writers here included, by no means suffices for Blake. For he possessed
in addition a philosophy, a system, and a profound scheme of the
universe revealed to him in vision.
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