by William Blake
There Is No Natural Religion was etched by William Blake around 1788, in the same period as All Religions Are One. Together the two tractates form Blake's earliest philosophical statement — a compressed philosophical attack on the Lockean doctrine that all knowledge derives from sensory experience. Nine copies of the work survive, held at institutions including the Fitzwilliam Museum, the British Museum, and the Library of Congress.
The work appears in two series. Series [a] builds the empiricist case against itself: if the senses are the only source of knowledge, then desire, reason, and perception are all finite and bounded — a closed loop that can only repeat what it already knows. Series [b] demolishes this case: human desire is in fact infinite; the infinite demands an infinite perceiving faculty; therefore something in the human exceeds the senses. The final line — "Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is" — is one of Blake's most compressed statements of the divine humanity.
The text is reproduced from standard scholarly transcriptions of Blake's illuminated plates, following the William Blake Archive (blakearchive.org) and the textual tradition of the Yeats-Ellis Complete Works (1893). Blake's original spelling, including "percieve" and "perciev'd," has been preserved throughout. Note that Series [b] Proposition III is absent in most known copies of the illuminated plates.
Series [a]
The Argument
Man has no notion of moral fitness but from Education. Naturally he is only a natural organ subject to Sense.
I
Man cannot naturally Percieve but through his natural or bodily organs.
II
Man by his reasoning power. can only compare & judge of what he has already perciev'd.
III
From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none could deduce a fourth or fifth
IV
None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions
V
Mans desires are limited by his perceptions. none can desire what he has not perciev'd
VI
The desires & perceptions of man untaught by any thing but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense.
Series [b]
I
Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. he percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.
II
Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not the same that it shall be when we know more.
IV
The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a univer[s]e would soon become a mill with complicated wheels.
V
If the many become the same as the few, when possess'd, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man.
VI
If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot.
VII
The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite
Application
He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only.
Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.
Colophon
William Blake (1757–1827). There Is No Natural Religion was etched in relief on copper plates by Blake around 1788 and survives in nine known copies held at institutions including the Fitzwilliam Museum, the British Museum, and the Library of Congress. The work was never conventionally published in Blake's lifetime. The text was first printed in Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake (London: Macmillan, 1863), and later in the Yeats-Ellis Complete Works (1893). This archival text follows standard scholarly transcriptions of Blake's illuminated plates, primarily as presented in the William Blake Archive (blakearchive.org). Blake's original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been preserved throughout. Proposition III of Series [b] is absent in most known copies of the illuminated plates and is therefore omitted here.
Companion text: All Religions Are One (1788).
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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