The totality of imaginative power, of which the matrix is art, is what we ordinarily call culture or civilization. Everything worth doing and done well is an art, whether love, conversation, religion, education, sport, cookery or commerce. Because the world is fallen we think of art as ornament succeeding necessities; but all life moves upward to achieve ornament, for ornament is free and necessities are necessary:
The Bible says That Cultivated Life Existed First. Uncultivated Life comes afterwards from Satan’s Hirelings. Necessaries, Accomodations & Ornaments are the whole of Life. Satan took away Ornament First. Next he took away Accomodations, & Then he became Lord & Master of Necessaries.*
And this culture is what maintains all order and security in society. Reason and order being “the bound or outward circumference of Energy,” the imagination is always constructive, and all interference or anarchy is of the Selfhood.
[*The source of the quotation is Blake’s marginalia to Reynolds.]