States of Mind: Enlightenment and Natural Philosophy

The relationship between mind and body provides graphic political images of knowledge and power. The slogans composed by Blake and Bentham in the early 1790s are good examples of this imagery. Blake wrote against “the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul.” He said that this false notion bred a self-imposed imprisonment of the mind: “man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” Political liberty went hand in hand with spiritual liberty. The destruction of the Bastille was figured as the action of liberating energies in the human mind.