what is the meaning of William Blake's Poem: "Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau"?

Question

what is the meaning of William Blake's Poem: "Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau"? all answers will be appreciated.

does anyone understand the meaning of the lines or can annotate these because i am having trouble trying to figure out what they mean:

And every sand becomes a gem
Reflectd in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

Answer 1

William Blake was very conflicted. Well O.K., he had a touch of madness. His "Tyger, tyger" reflects his seeking to see the Creator, yet he is dismayed by the influence of the Holy Church in "The Garden of Love". In another poem, his angel who steals a peach and calmly has sex with the lithe lady discloses a deep cynicism about religion. Yet when he sees Voltaire and Rousseau belittling religion, he feels called to come to its defense. In fact, however, Voltaire was not hostile to God but to the abuses of organized religion, as Blake was. In "Mock on," Blake tries to belittle the skepticism he sees in Voltaire yet the record shows that Voltaire wrote more words against atheism than he wrote against the church.

Thus, Blake and Voltaire should have been allies. Blake apparently failed to recognize their affinity. A cultural gap, perhaps, since they were separated by the Channel.

Answer 2

Voltaire and Rousseau were early rationalists and questioned many of the then current ideas in politics and religion in the first half of the 18th century. They made fun of them at times. Blake was an early romantic which is to say an irrationalist. His poem was in reaction to them. The rationalist movements peaked in the years just before the French Revolution and was one of the factors that led to it. The Romantic movement began in the late 18th - early 19th century. It culminated in Adolf Hitler.

In another sphere rationalism took chemistry from a series of unconnected facts with no theory (except a pretty dubious one - the phlogiston theory) to a good explanation of combustion by about 1780 and the modern atomic theory in the 1790s. At the same time others were sorting out electricity, developing better pottery and inventing steam engines, among many other things.