MANIFOLD NATURE 



taken himself out of the category of natural things, 

 both in his origin and in his destiny. Such a gulf 

 separates him from all other creatures, and his mas- 

 tery over them is so complete that he looks upon 

 himself as exceptional, and as belonging to another 

 order. Nature is only his stepmother, and treats 

 him with the harshness and indifference that often 

 characterize that relation. 



When Wordsworth declared himself a worshiper 

 of Nature, was he thinking of Nature as a whole, or 

 only of an abridged and expurgated Nature — Na- 

 ture in her milder and more beneficent aspects? Was 

 it not the Westmoreland Nature of which he was 

 a worshiper? — a sweet rural Nature, with grassy 

 fells and murmuring streams and bird-haunted soli- 

 tudes? What would have been his emotion in the 

 desert, in the arctic snows, or in the pestilential for- 

 ests and jungles of the tropics? Very likely, just 

 what the emotion of most of us would be — a feeling 

 that here are the savage and forbidding and hostile 

 aspects of Nature against which we need to be on 

 our guard. That creative eye and ear to which 

 Wordsworth refers is what mainly distinguishes the 

 attitude of the modern poet toward Nature from 

 the ancient. Sympathy is always creative — 

 "thanks to the human heart by which we live." 



The Wordsworthian Nature was of the subjective 

 order; he found it in his own heart, in his dreams by 

 his own fireside, in moments of soul dilation on his 



21 



