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The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how
they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did
not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause
of imposition.
Isaiah answer'd: 'I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical
perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in everything, and as I
was then persuaded, and remain confirm'd, that the voice of honest
indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote.'
Then I asked: 'Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?'
He replied: 'All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination
this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm
persuasion of anything.'
Then Ezekiel said: 'The philosophy of the East taught the first
principles of human perception. Some nations held one principle for the
origin, and some another: we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you
now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative,
which was the cause of our despising the Priests and Philosophers of other
countries, and prophesying that all Gods would at last be proved to
originate in ours and to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius. It was
this that our great poet, King David, desired so fervently and invokes so
pathetically, saying by this he conquers enemies and governs kingdoms; and
we so loved our God, that we cursed in his name all the Deities of
surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled. From these
opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject
to the Jews.'
'This,' said he, 'like all firm persuasions, is come to pass; for all
nations believe the Jews' code and worship the Jews' god, and what greater
subjection can be?'
I heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction.
After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works; he said
none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his.
I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years. He
answer'd: 'The same that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian.'
I then asked Ezekiel why he ate dung, and lay so long on his right
and left side. He answer'd, 'The desire of raising other men into a
perception of the infinite: this the North American tribes practise, and is
he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present
ease or gratification?'
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