Bacon, Newton, and Locke
These were three of Blake's pet peeves, one of his "Unholy Trinities". How come?
During Blake's life the British culture was in the throes of the Enlightenment, but his culture went way back before the Enlightenment into the Renaissance, and the Reformation, and the Middle Ages, and yet further and further before any of these passing scenes. People generally tend to feel that their culture is all there is or ever was-- very, very parochial. In contrast Blake was universal.
Bacon (1561–1626) was said to be the father of Empiricism, which meant in effect guided exclusively by sense-based thoughts. His attitude toward reason contributed largely to the advent of the Enlightenment, all of which Blake despised.
If Bacon inaugurated Empiricism, Newton (1642-1727) was an avid practitioner of it. Among other things he was a theologian , but his theology, with its naturalistic bent, had little to do with the theology of William Blake; one was natural; the other was divine. Under Newton's influence early 19th century English religion was dominantly Deism (God wound up the world like a clock and, losing interest in it, left it to unwind on its own).
Finally we have to look at John Locke, (1632-1704), widely known as the Father of Liberalism. Blake might well have endorsed many of Locke's liberal tendencies, but one thing about Locke completely antagonized him: the tabula rasa!
Somehow these three widely different men came to be associated in Blake's mind with what I've called an 'Unholy Trinity'. It appears many times in his writings:
http://ramhornd.blogspot.com/2011/08/bacon-newton-and-locke.html
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