He understood murder uncomfortably well, though.
He wondered if,
in the great body of humankind, in the minds of men set on civilization, the vicious urges we control in ourselves and the dark instinctive knowledge of those urges function like the crippled virus the body arms against.
He wondered if old, awful urges are the virus that makes vaccine.
Yes, he had been wrong about Shiloh. Shiloh isn’t haunted—men are haunted.
Shiloh doesn’t care.
And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to
know madness and folly:
I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
—ECCLESIASTES
1 After Blake’s death, this poem was found with prints from the plates of Songs of Experience. It appears only in posthumous editions.