Soul, seed, species: William Blake and the language of preformationist biology by Lee, T

“…Working against recent criticism, this thesis aligns Blake with preformationist thinkers such as Charles Bonnet and Johann Kaspar Lavater. Insisting on the importance of reading Blake's organic symbolism in the context of his unorthodox Christian views, it argues that Blake saw epigenesis as a materialist conception of life masquerading as a vitalist one, and saw preformation as a model more sympathetic to his spiritual conception of vitality.…”