## Metadata - Author: [[Northrop Frye]] - Full Title: Fearful Symmetry - Category: #books ## Highlights - To Blake, the spiritual world was a continuous source of energy: he harnessed spiritual power as an engineer harnesses water power and used it to drive his inspiration: he was a spiritual utilitarian. He had the complete pragmatism of the artist, who, as artist, believes nothing but is looking only for what he can use. ([Location 257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00C7MEV7W&location=257)) - The unit of this mental existence Blake calls indifferently a “form” or an “image.” If there is such a thing as a key to Blake’s thought, it is the fact that these two words mean the same thing to him. ([Location 380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00C7MEV7W&location=380)) - The first point in Blake to get clear, then, is the infinite superiority of the distinct perception of things to the attempt of the memory to classify them into general principles: ([Location 413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00C7MEV7W&location=413)) - The imaginative mind, therefore, is the one which has realized its own freedom and understood that perception is self-development. ([Location 545](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00C7MEV7W&location=545)) - Perceptions form part of a logically unfolding organic unit, and just as an acorn will develop only into an oak, and not just any oak but the particular oak implicit in it, so the human being starts at birth to perceive in a characteristic and consistent way, relating his perception to his unique imaginative pattern. This is what Blake means when he explodes against the denial of innate ideas with which Locke’s book opens: ([Location 550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00C7MEV7W&location=550)) - The wise man will choose what he wants to do with his perceptions just as he will choose the books he wants to read, and his perceptions will thus be charged with an intelligible and coherent meaning. ([Location 565](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00C7MEV7W&location=565)) - It appears, then, that there are not only two worlds, but three: the world of vision, the world of sight and the world of memory: the world we create, the world we live in and the world we run away to. ([Location 607](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00C7MEV7W&location=607))