![]() ![]() Through experience, Blake suggests, innocence is replaced by fear and inhibition. Rather, innocence is lost by experiencing the social, ethical, and political corruption of institutions like the Church, the government, and the ruling class. However, unlike in Milton, it is not pride or folly that causes a person to lose the paradise of innocence. Childhood is not sin, Blake suggests, but a kind of protected innocence not unlike the Paradise of Milton's Paradise Lost. ![]() For Blake, innocence and experience are the "two contrary states of the soul," and differ greatly from the prevailing Christian idea that children are born into "original sin" but can later achieve "salvation" through the Church. Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a two-volume illustrated book of poetry published in 17 by the English poet and painter William Blake. ![]()
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