This poem is the result of Blake wrestling with religious sects, denominations, and faiths. He has come to the conclusion that there is one “Poetic Genius” that is the creator of all mankind. This Poetic Genius, created all living things and mankind in his various outward forms. The Argument that begins the poem describes a scientific method of proving knowledge through experiment, but the remaining principles in the poem describe Blake’s belief that some truths cannot be proven. Blake believes that truth, in its purest form, is divinely inspired then “adapted to the weakness of every individual.” Blake believes those truths cannot be made known to man from “already acquired knowledge.” The belief in these unknowable truths proves the existence of a divine creator identified by Blake as the Poetic Genius.
Blake repeatedly mentions differences in man’s outward form, differences among each “Nation’s different reception,” and different religious testaments as coming from the same Poetic Genius. Blake also repeats mankind’s inability to know, prove, and acquire this pure truth absent their individual weaknesses. It is those individual weaknesses and the Nation’s different reception that accounts for the adaptation of a singular truth to multiple religions. Because of the weaknesses of the followers of those religions, the presence of a pure, singular truth escapes them. They each follow religions that Blake describes as branches of a single tree. Blake’s conviction, that all religions were one, would have been a highly unpopular theory in his time. As a result of that climate, Blake’s work did not bear his name. Blake finishes his work by crediting the “true Man” as the source, the Poetic Genius. Blake’s identification of the Poetic Genius as the true Man is another way of saying that the true Man is the only being capable of knowing the truth in its unadulterated form and that being is the Poetic Genius.
Reviews of this work by scholars indicate Blake made connections between the prophecies of Isaiah and the scriptures contained in Mark in the New Testament. Those connections could also explain Blake’s belief that divine truths escape the testing and knowledge of mankind limited by proven knowledge. The unproven and unknowable truths of the Poetic Genius are unreachable by man in his various forms and cannot be tested and proven using experiments. Blake would probably believe in another of Isaiah’s writings when Isaiah wrote, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) Although Blake recognized the existence of truths that escaped the limitations of the human mind, he proved the limitations of the human mind by believing all religions are really variations of the same faith.
