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moral elevation and his intellectual insight. The artificiality and 

 mannerism, the haste and distraction, of our modern life, with its 

 many prolix ceremonies, prevents the simple raJ>port of the mind 

 with Nature, in which all natural poetry is born. Furthermore, 

 tlie marriage of the soul with nature is a union of equals ; and its 

 result is a realisation of that other or higher self, our alter ego in 

 nature, not (as I have already said) as an idealisation of the mind, 

 but as a reality of mental vision. Transcending all subjective 

 bonds, we enter a region 'where time and space are not,' — a world 

 of higher apperception, in which the unity of self and not-self, of 

 the mind within and the universe without, is clearly understood, — 

 while neither the one nor the other is overborne, but their funda- 

 mental separateness preserved. 



Too much stress cannot be laid upon another feature kindred 

 to this, in the teaching of Wordsworth. It is Nature's office to 

 cure us of morbidity and melancholy, as well as of artificiality ; 

 its healing and restoring function calming us, reanimating and 

 reassuring us. He shows, as few teachers have shown, that while 

 full of sympathy with us. Nature will not abide, our sadnesses. 

 She feels them to be an intrusion on her peace, her immense latent 

 life, out of which all that allays them proceeds. Our introspec- 

 tiveness and self-consciousness are rebuked by Nature, whenever 

 we are alone with her, and open to her influences : and it is as 

 necessary that these should be taken out of us, as the conceit that 

 we have fathomed her ways and processes of work. She reveals 

 an impersonal Order as well as a personal power, a transcendant 

 and \itterly mysterious life, with which v/e may not presume to be 

 too familiar ; and it is merely this side that is turned towards us, — 

 the seemingly stony and unresponsive side,- — -when we complain 

 of her mysteriousne.ss. But who will say, that, in this, she does 

 not educate us also '? 



In the same connection, I claim for Wordsworth a clear 

 knowledge of the profoundest problems, with which the human 

 mind has grappled, from Heraclitus to Immanuel Kant.* He 



* It is for this reason that a knowledge of Wordsworth is one of the very 

 best introductions to the Platonic (or any other) Philosophy. There are 



