"Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau"

A Poem for Our Times

(Portrait of William Blake by Thomas Philips)

Poem, Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau, by William Blake

Lately I have been re-reading and re-memorizing various poems that I love.  One of those poems was The Unknown Citizen by W. H. Auden, which I wrote about in a previous post. Another is Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau by William Blake. As it was with Auden’s poem so it is with Blake’s; both speak to their own times as well as to our society’s current circumstances.

By way of background, Voltaire and Rousseau were eighteenth century philosophes, or, what we would now called educated social commentators, or, pundits.  Newton was, of course, an eighteenth-century scientist, who among other things, studied the nature of light. All three of them could be called “deists”, i.e., believers in a god who created the universe according to discernible and rational principles and laws but who does not intervene in human history. The writings of all three have been used to undermine belief in Judeo-Christian views of revelation, miracles, and history. Democritus, lived much earlier than Voltaire, Rousseau and Newton, circa 460-370 B.C., and is most known for his theory that matter is composed of atoms. It is clear that Blake sees these four writers as representatives of a scientific worldview antagonistic to a particularly Judeao-Christian religious worldview.

In his poem, Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau, Blake addresses the mockery of Voltaire and Rousseau with mockery in return, suggesting, in fact, that the mockery of Voltaire and Rousseau is all in vain. Likewise, Blake suggests that the scientific theories and discoveries of Newton and Democritus are insignificant when contrasted with the truths of Judeo-Christian faith, represented by “Israel”.

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau:

Mock on, mock on: ‘tis all in vain!

You throw the sand against the wind,

And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a Gem,

Reflected in the beam divine;

Blown back they blind the mocking Eye,

But still in Israel’s paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus

And the Newton’s Particles of Light

Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,

Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright

I see this poem as reflective of today in that it informs the tremendous antagonism of “woke” culture to Christianity and to Judaism. Time and time again, over the past three years, we have been told to follow the “science”, “science” being a combination of actual science, bad science, vested interests and the abuse of political power. Time and time again, the principal opponents of the deification of politicized science (i.e., “science”), and of the attempts to make the state and its “science” supreme over religious belief and practice, have been faithful Christians and Jews.

In reality there is, and can never be, an opposition between real science and the Judeo-Christian worldview. There is, and, can only be, one truth. The whole tradition of Enlightenment and “woke” rationalism is derived from a Judeo-Christian worldview that sees the world as having been created by a rational God speaking rationality into the world.  This was a popular and common theme of Pope Benedict, summarized in his Regensburg Lecture.  Both Enlightenment and “woke” rationalism ultimately fail and return to the philosophical view that “might is right” (currently presented as “everything  in society, including religion, is political,” and, “everything is reducible to power struggles”), which is why we in the “rational” West, are now endlessly debating whether men can become women. It is why there are great political battles being waged to make the belief that men can become women, and vice versa, enforceable at law.

The current prevalence of “woke” irrationalism in our western world is, in one way, confirmation of Blake’s belief, that the beliefs of Voltaire, Rousseau, Newton, Democritus, and, their intellectual, philosophical, and theological offspring are ultimately, “sands upon the Red Sea shore where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.” The faith of Israel has survived the rise and fall of empire upon empire without diminishment. One could safely say that a modern proponent of Blake’s mystical view is Jordan Peterson, who is constantly pointing out the sand of which modern “wokism” is made, and who is constantly seeing the most profound meaning in the most ordinary of things.

Throughout his poem, Blake makes reference to light. The theme of light in Blake’s poem has three aspects. The first is natural light. It is a natural wonder which the human intellect is capable of studying. As a created thing, it is good. Thus, Blake speaks of “Newton’s particles of light” and of a gem reflecting beams. The second aspect is intellectual light. This too is good, but not the only, or, greatest good. By intellectual light we come to understand better the world around us. By such light we make a car or a computer and by such light we navigate to the moon. Thus the discoveries and theories of Newton and Democritus added to our knowledge of the workings of the universe.

Greater than either of these lights is spiritual light, i.e., an awareness of the source, place, meaning and true value of things and persons. Some call this wisdom. Again, Jordan Peterson beautifully exemplifies a searcher after wisdom, while his opponents truly exemplify the acquisition of knowledge without value.

This leads to one last reflection on the poem and on Blake. Blake was a mystic who saw the presence of God in all things. Thus his world is one of brilliant and endlessly varied colour. Compared to his world, the worlds of Voltaire, Rousseau, Newton and Democritus are bland and colourless, devoid of profound beauty and meaning. Applying this to current social and political movements, “wokeism,” despite its repulsive emphasis on the colour of people’s skin, and, despite its ubiquitous use of the rainbow image, is profoundly dull, monochrome and colourless. Spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, “wokism” it is uniformly boring and soul-destroyingly grey like the housing developments of East Berlin or Moscow under the Soviets. Contrast this with even a minute of one of Jordan Peterson’s public utterances to which the mind, focussed on spiritual light, responds in a kaleidoscope, a rainbow-tinted cascade of meaning and purpose, of insight and value, of preciousness and of interrelated beauty, of glory and love divine. “And every sand becomes a Gem, reflected in the beam divine; blown back they blind the mocking eye, but still in Israel’s path they shine.”