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Excerpts from the ltter of John Keats:
Man is originally ‘a poor forked creature’ subject to the same mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to hardships and disquietude of some kind or other [...]
The point at which Man may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate nature and no further-For instance suppose a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning it enjoys itself-but there comes a cold wind, a hot sun-it cannot escape it, it cannot destroy its annoyances-they are as native to the world as itself: no more can man be happy in spite, the worldly elements will prey upon his nature-
The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is ‘a vale of tears’ from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven-What a little circumscribed straightened notion! Call the world if you Please “The vale of Soul-making”. Then you will find out the use of the world [...]
I say ‘Soul making’ Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence- There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions-but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. I[n]telligences are atoms of perception-they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God-How then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them-so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one’s individual existence? I- low, but by the medium of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because ‘I think it a grander system of salvation than the christian religion -or rather it is a system of Spirit-creation-This is effected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of years.
These three Materials are the Intelligence-the human heart (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind) and the World or Elemental space suited for the proper action of Mind and Heart on each other for the purpose of forming the Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity [...]
I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive-and yet I think I perceive it-that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible-I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read-I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School-and I will call the Child able to -read, the Soul made from that School and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, It is the Minds Bible, it is the Minds experience, it is the teat from which the Mind or intelligence sucks its identity.
As various as the Lives of Men are-so various become their Souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the Sparks of his own essence-This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does not affront our reason and humanity-I am convinced that many difficulties which Christians labour under would vanish before it-there is one which even now Strikes me-the Salvation of Children-In them the Spark or intelligence returns to God without any identity-it having had no time to learn of and be altered by the heart-or seat of the human Passions-It is pretty generally suspected that the cbr[i]stian scheme has been coppied from the ancient persian and greek Philosophers. Why may they not have made this simple thing even more simple for common apprehension by introducing Mediators and Personages in the same manner as in the he[a]then mythology abstractions are personified-Seriously I think it probable that this System of Soul-making-may have been the Parent of all the more palpable and personal Schemes of Redemption, among the Zoroastrians the Christians and the Hindoos. For as one part of the human species must have their carved Jupiter; so another part must have the palpable and named Mediator and Saviour, their Christ their Oromanes and their Vishnu-If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will but [for put] you in the place where I began in this series of thoughts-I mean, I began by seeing how man was formed by circumstances-and what are circumstances?-but touchstones of his heart-? and what are touchstones? but proovings of his heart? and what are proovings of his heart but fortifiers or alterers of his nature?
and what is his altered nature but his Soul?-and what was his Soul before it came into the world and had these provings and alterations and perfectionings?-An intelligence-without Identity-and how is this Identity to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? And how is the heart to become this Medium but in a world of Circumstances? . . .
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[1] Article: John Keats, ‘The vale of Soul-making’
http://box5415.temp.domains/~sacreeh5/2012/04/15/the-vale-of-soul-making/
