John Keats (1795-1821)There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions...
Call the world if you Please "The vale of Soul-making" .... I say "Soul making'' Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence-There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions--but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. I[n]telligences are atoms of perception --they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God --how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them--so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each ones individual existence? How, but by the medium of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion -- or rather it is a system of Spirit-creation--This is effected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of years--These three Materials are the Intelligence--the human heart (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind) and the World or Elemental space suited for the proper action of Mind and Heart on each other for the purpose of forming theSoul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity. . . . I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read--I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School--and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul! A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! . . . As various as the Lives of Men are--so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence--This appears to me faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does not affront our reason and humanity.
