Reverence and Wisdom through Harmlessness

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Blake On Religion

If I would take a summary of Blake and tell you what I get out of it, I would say tell your children while they are little tots and teach them: never unnecessarily hurt a creature or desecrate a flower. That is the beginning of reverence, and reverence is the beginning of wisdom. If you couldn’t hurt a flower, you couldn’t desecrate it. You see little children — not knowing what they are doing but in the presence of adults who should know better — and they will take a lovely rose and tear it and desecrate it. If the parent at that moment (or the adult, whether he is the parent or not) would stop the child and explain not at any time to unnecessarily hurt a creature, take the wings from a butterfly. I did it myself. To take the wings from a fly, to take the wings from something else. No reason for it, but I did it as a child. But I did it when possibly there was no one around like my father or mother to stop me in the act. But I know today from experience: you can take a child in its youth, in its infancy, teach it never unnecessarily to hurt a creature or desecrate a flower. That would be to it the beginning of reverence, and reverence is the beginning of wisdom. Take George Washington Carver, who would take a flower in his hands and talk to it. The man couldn’t hurt it, he was incapable of hurt. He would talk to a sick flower and ask the flower what was wrong with it and try to tell him, that he in turn may bring in the solution to that rose bush — which he did. And he gave us, because he couldn’t hurt, this synthetic world of ours. He took the ordinary little peanut. He talked to the peanut and wondered “What are you for why did God make you? He made you for a purpose.” And then the peanut communed with George Washington Carver. And today we have 300 by-products from the peanut and hundreds of by-products from the southern pines, and from other things. All that goes back to a man who couldn’t hurt. And he was born a slave (I think he was sold for a horse or something). So we have to redeem him. Here was a man born into slavery who couldn’t hurt, and he is one of the mental, spiritual giants of the world. If you met him beyond the grave you would see a glorious being like a Blake, because he couldn’t hurt. So I would say to everyone here who is in contact with tomorrow’s children: start it. If you start and tell the children never hurt unnecessarily. By that I mean if a horse breaks its foot then you have to destroy it. You can’t mend it and the merciful thing to do would be to blow its brains out. That would be a merciful act, but then you would do it not unnecessarily.

Neville conveys Blake's teaching that the foundation of reverence and wisdom lies in never unnecessarily hurting any creature or desecrating a flower. He illustrates this through the example of George Washington Carver, whose inability to harm led to profound communion with nature and significant scientific breakthroughs, demonstrating that a virtuous, harmless nature unlocks deeper understanding and creative power.

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