Comments on the Excerpt

William Blake was wrestling with the prevailing religious view of his time that the "body" is the source of sin, while "reason" is the source of all good things. If you go back and re-read the exerpt, substituting "passions" for "energies," it makes more sense. I like Blake's use of "energies" for "passions," though - it echoes Vajrayana Buddhism's view of passions as energies and not as a human characteristic to be despised.

Strange to say, growing up in the '50's things weren't much different from Blake's day - sex is bad, Church is good.

So the moral dilemma for my life has been -

can I be good, and still have sex?