Blake's line, which Neville uses in about eight lectures as the whole of his answer to moral outrage. We see the garment and we think it's the man. He applies it to the worst cases he can name and does not blunt it: a Hitler, a Stalin, or others not yet recorded in the world - all will be hatched out, and they were never Stalin, they were never Hitler; these are only garments that they wore in the cyclic motion of human history. So when we come out we are never these garments that we wore. It is the doctrine of states stated as a failure of perception rather than as a metaphysic, and the failure is attributed to Satan, who is called a dunce for it - not wicked but stupid, unable to make a distinction that the rest of the poem takes for granted. Neville pairs it with the promise that the most horrible beast in the world is God being hatched out, and with the moment at the apex where you see you were never this thing at all.