and volcanoes?Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive
at earthly Happiness?The point at which Man may arrive is as far as the
paralel 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 can not escape it, it cannot destroy its annoy-
ances?they are as native to the world as itself : no more can man be happy in
6. Comns, lines 475?77. exploits are described in Robertson's America. The 7. Two books of history, Voltaire's Le Siecle de 'Monarch' is Louis XIV of France. Louis XIV (1751) and William Robertson's The 9. Bailiffs: officers of the law whose duties History of America (1777). In this second extract included making arrests for had debts. from the journal-letter, Keats is writing toward the 1. Shakespeare's King Lear 3.4.95?97. Lear savs end of April (on the 21st or 28th). of 'Poor Tom,' 'Unaccommodated man is no more 8. Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer whose but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.'
.
LETTERS / 95 1
spite, the world[l]y 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 circumscribe[d] straightened notion! Call the world if you Please 'The vale of Soul-making' Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms tor human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) 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 the till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences 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 ones individual existence? How, 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 chrysteain religion?or rather it is a system of Spirit-creation2?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 Son/ or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity. I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive?and yet 1 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 Bookused in that School?and I will call the Child ahle 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 wh[i]ch 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 christian 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 hethen mythology abstractions are personified?Seri
2. Keats is struggling for an analog)' that will that we possess at birth and thus to shape it into a embody his solution to the ancient riddle of evil, rich and coherent 'identity,' or 'soul.' This result as an alternative to what he understands to be the provides a justification ('salvation') for our suffer- Christian view: that evil exists as a test of the indi-ing in terms of our earthly life: i.e., experience is vidual's worthiness of salvation in heaven, and this its own reward. world is only a proving ground for a later and better 3. A child's primer, which used to consist of a life. Keats proposes that the function of the human sheet of paper mounted on thin wood, protected experience of sorrow and pain is to feed and dis-by a sheet of transparent horn. cipline the formless and unstocked 'intelligence'
.
95 2 / JOHN KEATS
ously 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 Mediatior and saviour, their Christ their Oromanes and their Vishnu4?If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will [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 touch stones??but proovings of his hearrt?5?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 intelligences?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?? There now I think what with Poetry and Theology you may thank your Stars that my pen is not very long winded? * * *
This is the 3d of May & every thing is in delightful forwardness; the violets are not withered, before the peeping of the first rose; You must let me know every thing, how parcels go & come, what papers you have, & what Newspapers you want, & other things?God bless you my dear Brother & Sister
Your ever Affectionate Brother
John Keats?
To Fanny Brawne
[FANNY BRAWNE AS KEATS'S 'FAIR STAR']
[July 25, 1819]
My sweet Girl,
I hope you did not blame me much for not obeying your request of a Letter on Saturday: we have had four in our small room playing at cards night and morning leaving me no undisturb'd opportunity to write. Now Bice and
