What human form must all man love?

Ans. In the poem, ‘The Divine Image’ Blake presents the theme of ‘divinity’
or God. God is, in fact, the being of all virtues such as mercy, pity, love and
peace. Blake’s concept of God leads us to think that God is not a piece of
block or stone but the essence of all virtues. A man who possess the divine
virtues is on less than God. The poet reminds us of out capability of being
at the height of divinity or on an equal footing with God. God, according to
him, is not a dweller of heaven, he dwells within our heart. When one lives
up to the best that is inside him exercising the inherent divine qualities, he
becomes God.

The poet says that everyone must love the human form irrespective of their
culture of religion. Either an individual is a Heathen i. e., a person who does
not believe in Christianity and rather believes in paganism, or a Turk i.e., a
person from Turkey, a country in Middle East of a Jew i.e., the one who
follows Judaism. Every man must love the human form as God dwells
within the human race. Hence, Blake is basically trying to assert that all the
human beings must love one another irrespective of their nation, culture of
religion. Blake has very beautifully tried to assert that the entire human race
must exists in a state of togetherness irrespective of religious, cultural of
national differences. Universal Fraternity will ultimately lead to the
propagation of peace, harmony and bliss.

12. How do the qualities of Mercy, pity, peace and Love embody both
God and man?

Ans: The poem “The Divine Image” by Blake is primarily centred on his
concept of God. According to Blake, God is the essence of divine virtues
like Mercy, pity, peace and Love. A human being who possesses these
divine virtues is no less than God. Through this poem, Blake has tried to
remind the human beings Blake has tried to assert that God dwells within
the hearts of human beings. This means that when human beings begin to
exercise their divine virtues, then the human beings tend to become
equivalent to God. The poet begins the verse by staying the four divine
virtues, that is, “Mercy, pity peace and Love”. According to Blake, these
virtues and representative of God. The poet states that human beings pray
to these virtues in times of distress of discomfort. Human beings also pray
to these virtues in order to express their thankfulness for the blessings that
are bestowed upon them by God.

The poet then continues to say that the four divine virtues, that is, Mercy,
pity, peace and Love are possessed by God who is the father of the entire
human race. These divine virtues are also inherited by the human beings
as they are the children of God. Further, the poet tried to showcase the way
in which the four divine virtues and possessed by human beings. Mercy is
found in the human heart, pity can be witnessed in the human face, love
can be seen in the ‘form’ of a human being and peace can be seen in the
garments or dress of human beings. Precisely, human beings are
facsimiles of God. Through the poem, the poet is trying to establish the fact
that since the four divine virtues of God are possessed by the human
beings as well, therefore, human beings are basically equivalent to God.

This means that all prayers to Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love are directed
not only also to God but also to the “human form divine”, the poet is trying
to establish the fact that since the four divine virtues of God are possessed
by the human beings as well, therefore, human beings are basically
equivalent to God. This means that all prayers to Mercy Pity, Peace and
Love are directed not only to God but also to the “human form divine”, that
is, to human beings.

13. What is the significance of the expression ‘In Heathen, Turk, or

Jew’?

Ans: In the final stanza of the poem, “The Divine Image”, Blake explains
how all forms of humanity should be cherished. The lyrical voice mentions
that “all must love the human form; In heathen, Turk or Jew”. This is
because all forms of humanity are linked to divinity and, consequently, they
are all important. Finally, the lyrical voice finished the poem by saying that
three of these virtues coexist with God together: “Where Mercy, Love, and
Pity dwell; There God is dwelling too”. This highlights this idea of
inseparability between God and man, presented in the previous quatrains.
Here, Blake is referring towards equality of all human beings. As all the
human forms seek the same virtues, everyone is same and equal. It does
not matter if one is heathen, Turk or Jew, all that matters is that one is
human.

Love is present everywhere and is equal for all races and forms of human
beings. So, the poet encourages us that we should also love everyone as
loving each other is same as loving ourselves. The poet still emphasises on
Love, Mercy, and Pity, and says that where these attributes are present,
God is there too. God is with the person who exercises these qualities and
has special regard for this type of human. The thing to notice in last stanza
is that with Love, Mercy and Pity, poet does not mention Peace this time. It
can be for mocking the present human race, as there is very little peace
present among us and everyone, every state and race has hatred for each
other. It can also mean that if human beings take up the values of Love,
Mercy and Pity in their living, Peace will automatically manifest itself in the
human society.

14. Bring out the central idea of the poem ‘The Divine Image’ by
William Blake.

Ans: The central idea of the poem, “The Divine Image” as manifested by
Blake is the relationship between divinity and human. Blake presented four
abstract qualities; Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love as the epitome of both
divine and human entities. The relationship between Love, Mercy, Pity,
Peace, equality and the connection of a human being with its creator, God
seems to e the central focus of Blake in the poem. Blake has tried to give
message of love and humanity through this poem and have made readers
imagine a world full of equality and peace. Blake has also expressed the
importance of turning towards God for every matter and strengthening our
relationship with him. The poem’s speaker says that humanity was made in God’s
own image, but that doesn’t mean that the human shape physically resembles God.
Rather, it means that people embody God’s powerful goodness: his “Mercy, Pity,
Peace, and Love” are expressed on earth through people. And this connection
between humanity and God, the speaker insists, also connects human beings to
each other: every person expresses the goodness of God, and every living person is
thus holy. All people, whatever their background, are thus united by their shared
divinity. To this speaker, “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love” aren’t just attributes of
God, they are God, “our father dear” himself. And, at the exact same time, they’re
“Man, [God’s] child”; that is, all of these qualities are embodied by human beings.
Mercy, for instance, “has a human heart”: it’s through real, live human hearts that
the divine quality of mercy appears on earth. In other words, humanity expresses
God.

Since God’s virtues appear on earth in human form, it follows that everyone carries
God with them, just by virtue of being a person. God’s “divine image” lives on
earth, the speaker argues, through “the human form divine.” When people “pray in
their distress” to God, they’re thus also praying to the goodness and kindness of
humanity. If God lives in the “human form,” the speaker proclaims, and then
people don’t just need to remember that they can seek and express God’s goodness
in themselves. They need to remember that God’s goodness lives in every person.
That truth cuts across false distinctions between religions and cultures: addressing
a predominantly Christian audience, this speaker reminds readers that God lives in
“heathen, Turk, or Jew,” not just in Christians. All people must love every single
“human form” for this very reason. Through “Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,” then,
God lives in every “human form” and unites all people.
15. How does the poem ‘The Divine Image’ by William Blake illustrate the biblical
adage “God created man in his own image”?

Ans: The personified figures of Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love are presented as the
four “virtues of delight.” The speaker states that all people pray to these in times of
distress and thank them for blessings because they represent “God, our father
dear.” They are also, however, the characteristics of Man: Mercy is found in the
human heart, Pity in the human face; Peace is a garment that envelops humans, and
Love exists in the human “form” or body. Therefore, all prayers to Mercy, Pity,
Peace, and Love are directed not just to God but to “the human form divine,”
which all people must love and respect regardless of their religion or culture.

Throughout the poem, the speaker praises both God and man while asserting an
identity between the two. “The Divine Image” thus differs from most of the other
Songs of Innocence, which deal with the emotional power of conventional
Christian faith, and the innocent belief in a supreme, benevolent, and protective
God, rather than with the parallels between these transcendent realms and the
realm of man. The poem uses personification to dramatise Christ’s mediation
between God and Man. Beginning with abstract qualities viz., the four virtues of
Mercy, pity, peace, and Love, the poem makes these abstractions the object of
human prayer and piety. The second stanza explains this somewhat strange notion
by equating the virtues with God himself. But the idea is still slightly unorthodox,
suggesting as it does that we pray to these abstract virtues because they are God,
rather than praying to God because he these sympathetic qualities.

The poem seems to emphasise that Mercy, pity, peace, and Love are not God’s
characteristics but his substance and that they are precisely what we mean when we
speak of God. The speaker then claims that Mercy, pity peace, Love are also
equivalent to Man as it is in humans that these qualities find a kind of embodiment,
and they become recognizable because their features are basically human. Thus,
when we think of God, we are modelling him after these ideal human qualities.
And when people pray, regardless of who or where they are, to what God they
think they are praying, they actually worship “the human form divine”; what is
ideal, or most godly, in human beings.

The implication that God is a mental creation reflects Blake’s belief that “all
deities reside in the human breast.” The poem does not explicitly mention Christ,
but the four virtues that Blake assigns alternately to man and God are the ones
conventionally associated with Jesus. Because Christ was both God and man, he
becomes the vehicle for Blake’s mediation between the two. But the fact that he is
given an abstract rather than a human figuration underscores the elaborate
intellectual izat ion involved in Christian doctrine. Blake himself favours a more
direct identification between what is human and what is divine. Thus, the
companion poem in Songs of Experience, “the Human Abstract,”goes further
toward exposing the elaborate institutions of religion as mental confabulations that
obscure rather than honour the true identity of God and man.