[plates 12-13]
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 whatever they did
not think at the time that they would be so misunderstood,& 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
every thing, and as I was then persuaded,& 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 perswasion that a
thing is so, make it so? ' He replied: ' All poets believe that it does,&
in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many
are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing. ' Then Ezekiel said:
'The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human
perception: some nations held one principle for the origin,& some
another; we 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 & philosophers of other countries, and
prophecying that all gods would at last be proved to originate in ours &
to be tributaries of the poetic genius; it was this that our great poet
king David desired so fervently & invokes so pathetic'ly, saying this he
conquers enemies & 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 this opinions the vulgar came to thin that
all nations would at last be subjected to the Jews. 'This' he said 'like
all firm perswasions, is come to pass; for all nations belive the Jews'
code and worship the Jews' God, and what the greater subjection can be? 'I
heard this with some wonder,& must confess my own convivtion. After dinner
I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works; he said none of
