Blake presents creation as an alternative to intellectual dependence. To “Create a System” means developing an original imaginative framework rather than accepting another person’s assumptions as authoritative. His language of enslavement emphasises the danger he sees in allowing inherited systems of thought to determine how an individual understands the world.

The second line contrasts creation with continually reasoning and comparing within frameworks established by others. Blake is not simply rejecting thought or rational inquiry; elsewhere in his work he repeatedly uses argument and comparison. Here, the emphasis is on the limits of imitation and on the need for imaginative independence.

Within Jerusalem, the statement is closely connected with Blake’s conception of artistic creation and the imagination. It can therefore be read as a declaration of creative autonomy: genuine authorship requires constructing rather than merely adopting a system of ideas.