Nature and Imagination in Wordsworth's Meditation upon Mt.

Snowdon
Author(s): Newton P. Stallknecht
Source: PMLA, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Sep., 1937), pp. 835-847
Published by: Modern Language Association
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 LV
NATURE AND IMAGINATION IN WORDSWORTH'S
MEDITATION UPON MT. SNOWDON
OR Wordsworth imagination is the link between the visible and the
invisible world.' Esthetic enjoyment of things visible seems at
times to bring the very life of the invisible before us. The more freely
we plunge into the beauty of Nature, the more palpable becomes the
Spirit of Nature. The grounds for such a belief are mystical and sheerly
intuitive: we may not hope to reproduce them in argument. We can
trace, however, the ways by which Wordsworth tried to describe such
experience and to make it communicable. Throughout, he seems cer-
tain that in the apprehension of beauty, the human soul is never iso-
lated, but is in contact with a spiritual urgency, which is the origin of
beauty. On the other hand, the agony of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner,
his utter loneliness of spirit, is in diametric opposition to any love or
enjoyment of Nature. Here the mind is closed to any communion or
inspiration. It is also without imaginative enjoyment. The Mariner's
release from such isolation depends upon the reawakening of his es-
thetic sensitiveness.2 In this essay, we shall consider the relation which
seems to pertain in Wordsworth's thought between imagination and
our awareness of Nature as a mind or spirit. We shall find that for
Wordsworth, the boundaries of the finite soul are not final but seem to
expand or almost to disappear in the perception of beauty.
Consider the account of imagination and of natural beauty which
follows Wordsworth's description of the ascent of Mt. Snowdon.3 Here
is one of his profoundest meditations. Its audacious subtlety startles
us into intellectual attention, when we realize that the poet is describ-
ing imagination as a power objective in the world about us and not as
a faculty limited to our minds. He speaks of that "domination" which
Nature often
Exerts upon the outwardface of things,
So mouldsthem, and endues,abstracts,combines,
Orby abruptand unhabitualinfluence
Doth make one object so impressitself
Upon all others, and pervadethem so
That even the grossestmindsmust see and hear
And cannotchusebut feel.4
This article is supplementary to "Wordsworth and Philosophy." PMLA,xLIv, 1116-43.
2 See the author's "The Moral of the Ancient Mariner," PMLA, XLVII, 559-569.
3 The Prelude, A, xmII(1850, xiv).
4
Ibid., A, xIII, 78 ff.; also W, 66-89, where Wordsworth mentions "imaginative power"
that seems to be in Nature.

835

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836 Nature and Imagination in Wordsworth

Our admiration is the more aroused when we discover that this insight
is once more becoming significant in philosophy; for Professor White-
head has in his recent speculations caught the spirit of Wordsworth's
theory of Nature. He has discovered the theory not in its clearest state-
ment in the thirteenth book of The Prelude, but in a much obscurer
passage in the first book. In Whitehead's Science and the Modern World
occurs this brilliant comment upon Wordsworth:
It is the broodingpresenceof the hills whichhauntshim. His themeis nature
in solido, that is to say, he dwells on that mysteriouspresenceof surrounding
things,whichimposesitselfon any separateelementwhichwesetup as an individual
for its ownsake.He alwaysgraspsthewholeof natureas involvedin thetonalityof
the particularinstance.That is why he laughs with the daffodils,and finds in
the primrose"thoughtstoo deep for tears " ...
It would hardly be possible to expressmore clearly a feeling for nature, as
exhibitingentwinedprehensive unities,eachsuffusedwithmodalpresencesof others.5
These italicized, technical terms repeat the meaning that is already
expressed in the italicized passage above. The word prehensive is im-
portant: for Whitehead, objects and modes of feeling embody one
another, in so far as they are influenced by one another. The prehension
is the synthetic grasp of environment which constitutes the individual
essence or unity of an actual entity, of what Whitehead calls an oc-
casion. Nature is a "togetherness" of many occasions, present in one
another. Thus for Whitehead the structure of the world is primarily
esthetic. Then Whitehead quotes:
Ye Presencesof Nature in the sky
And on the earth!Ye Visionsof the hills!
And souls of lonely places! Can I think
A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed
Such ministry, when ye throughmany a year
Hauntingme thus among my boyish sports,
On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,
Impressedupon all forms the characters
Of danger or desire; and thus did make
The surfaceof the universalearth
With triumphand delight, with hope and fear,
Worklike a sea?6
Whitehead continues:
In thus citing Wordsworththe point whichI wish to makeis that we forgethow
strainedand paradoxicalis the view of nature which modernscience imposes
' ScienceandtheModernWorld(New York, 1926),pp. 120-122.-This passagehas been
commentedupon by Melvin M. Rader in his PresidingIdeas in Wordsworth's Poetry,
Univ. of Wash.Pub. in Lang. & Lit., v, 8, No. 2, pp. 121-216 (Seattle, 1931),pp. 164 ff.
6 ThePrelude
(1850),I, 464 ff. (A, 490 ff.).

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 Newton P. Stallknecht 837

upon our thoughts. Wordsworth,to the height of genius, expressesthe concrete

facts of our apprehension,facts which are distortedin scientificanalysis...

Justified in our undertaking by the wisdom of so profound a thinker

as Professor Whitehead, let us pursue the thesis which he has ad-
vanced. How, then, does Wordsworth perceive the concretefacts of our
apprehension? On the surface, at least, the passage from The Prelude
which Whitehead quotes is obscure enough, and we may well understand
that its true import has been long passed over. But the expansion of
the idea in the thirteenth book of The Prelude, in the Mt. Snowdon
passage, is more explicit, and by reference to it we can dispel obscurity
and learn what Wordsworth means when he says that the forms of
Nature "work like a sea." Here is a point interesting for its own sake,
quite aside from interpretation of Wordsworth's thought; for it bears
significantly upon the problem of esthetic vision. When the artist tells
us that he does not add to Nature, that he "paints what he sees," he
raises in our minds questions which Wordsworth's comments may help
to answer.
We must remember that Wordsworth is describing the immediate
aspect of Nature as presented in his own experience. When he says
that objects work like a sea, he is not formulating a theory of physics
nor even of metaphysics but reporting directly what appears to his
spontaneous perception. Describing this aspect of things seems to have
given Wordsworth much difficulty. The manuscripts of The Prelude
indicate that he was a long time groping for the happy expression of
this obvious and yet unfamiliar appearance.7
The forms or objects of Nature are interfused, they exercise a mutual
domination,8 one object swaying another,9 or, better, diffusing itself
over others,10with an interchangeable supremacy," so that each object
is at once active and passive in a dynamic intercourse. This mutual
interpenetration Wordsworth calls a power12of Nature, through which
objects work upon one another as the waves of a choppy sea. In the
presence of Nature, we must acknowledge this power: we "cannot
choose but feel."'3
The sudden vision of a fresh unity in variety which recognizes this
interpenetration affords a new and profoundly satisfying wealth of
organized detail. Coleridge's distinction between fancy and imagination
seems to be implicit here, since Wordsworth tells us that the objects
7 See de Selincourt'sapparatuscriticzson ThePreludeA, xm, 66 ff. (1850,xiv, 63 ff.)
and his notes to same section.
8 The Prelude 9 Ibid., W, xII, 82.
(1850), xiv, 81. 10 Ibid., A2, xIm, 81.
n Ibid. (1850),xIv, 84. 12Ibid., A, xuII,84; (1850),xiv, 86. 13Ibid.

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838 Nature and Imagination in Wordsworth

so united "sway" one another. The interfusion seems to be imaginative

and not fanciful.14
Wordsworth is quite certain that this interpenetration of natural
forms does not appear as a static pattern. Interfused objects work one
upon another, and Wordsworth insists that this energy is Nature's. He
does not for a moment consider that the motion which seems to
unite objects in esthetic synthesis and alters them by so doing may be
only the passage of ideas in our consciousness. So far removed is he
from a purely associationist or a sensationalist philosophy.l5 When we
witness this dynamic interpenetration, we are aware of the power with
which Nature dominates the "outward face of things," the surface
where beauty takes shape. We may interpret this as follows: In the
apprehension of beauty, we witness the birth of beauty. We see, or
we feel, the mutual influence of elements which produces or sustains
esthetic value. For Wordsworth, this production seems, somehow, an
act embodied in the tissue of the concrete world.
It is interesting to contrast this feeling of Wordsworth's with the
discussion of the finality (teleology) of natural beauty so labored by
Kant in the Critique of Judgment.
The powerof judgmentis reflective,not determinant,and prescribesto itself the
conceptionof purposivenessin nature,as if, naturein all its variety had had a
unity imposedupon it by an Intelligencesuch as to conformto our cognition.l6
Kant's cautious connecting of the problems of esthetics and of teleology
in Nature indicates that he was not unaware of the experience which
Wordsworth so vividly describes. Where Kant tentatively advances a
suggestion, Wordsworth, more robust in immediate insight and far
poorer in logical rigor, rushes to a triumphant conclusion. But we ought
not to risk the statement that Wordsworth was, when writing the first
draft of The Prelude, aware of Kant's theory of beauty. Certainly
there seems to be no suggestion of a Kantian verbal echo in the Mt.
Snowdon passage. Nor can we say that the idea expressed is such that
its recognition is impossible without a knowledge of Kant's teachings.
Furthermore, the belief that in esthetic creation the mind merges with
14Table Talk, June 23, 1834,also Biographia
Literaria,end of Chapterxinr.See Rader,
op. cit., p. 166.-Compare ProfessorMather'sstatement:"If (the artist) puts naturefirst,
he willlookat his ownpositionas ambassadorial; he has the proudfunctionof representing
and extollingher.If he puts himselffirst,his duty is solely that of self-expression
with such
aid or hindranceas inferiornaturemay provide.In the formercase, whilehe thinkshe is
imitating nature, he will instinctively so transformthe appearancethat he will find a
style that is his own;in the latter case, he will consciouslyexploithis own idiosyncracies,
and the result will be not style but mannerism."(ConcerningBeauty [Princeton,1935],
pp. 204-205.) '6 " ... abrupt and unhabitual influence," ThePrelude, A, xm, 80.
16Bosanquet,Historyof Esthetic
(London,1904), p. 261.

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 Newton P. Stallknecht 839

Nature's inmost self, a doctrine which, as we shall see shortly, Words-

worth connects with this account of man and Nature, is quite beyond
Kant.
The theory of Nature's power over objects may have been, in part,
suggestedto Wordsworth by Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and
Principles of Taste, which was first published in 1790. Wordsworth,
however, goes far beyond Alison when he includes in his theory the
mystical doctrine of Coleridge's Eolian Harp, whereby the mind of
man is said to receive inspiration, in esthetic activity, from an all-
embracing world-soul. In the conclusion of his book17Alison presents a
doctrine, drawn from Reid's "invaluable work On the Intellectual Powers
of Man," to the effect that "matter is not beautiful in itself but de-
rives its beauty from the expression of mind." Alison does not mean
that we actually and validly recognize the presence of mind in Nature,
but that Nature in some of its forms subtly suggests through various
means a power or affection of mind, i.e., a type of purposive action or of
emotional response. Alison is not a mystic, but a fairly cautious
eighteenth-century psychologist of the associationist school. He be-
lieves, to be sure, that we feel ourselves to be immediately aware of
God's wisdom and power of invention when we contemplate the works
of Nature and their intricacy of design. And he believes:
there is no man of genuinetaste, who has not often felt, in the lone majesty of
Nature, some unseenspirit to dwell, which in his happierhours,touched,as if
with magic hand, all the springsof his moral sensibility,and rekindledin his
heart those original conceptionsof the moral or intellectualexcellenceof his
nature, which it is the melancholytendency of the vulgar pursuitsof life to
diminish,if not altogetherto destroy.
This is remarkably Wordsworthian in sentiment, but Alison's explana-
tion is not mystical. He insists that such sentiment is owing to the fact
that the forms of Nature express (i.e., powerfully suggest) animation,
which appears for instance in the sun as the "cheerfulness of his morn-
ing," the "splendor of his noon-day" and the "tenderness of his eve-
ning light." Now, Wordsworth does not stop at the suggestion or ex-
pression of animation but boldly insists that "the forms of Nature have
a passion in themselves." On the other hand, Alison insists that it is
in the human form and countenance that we most perfectly sympathize
with the object of our contemplation.
Despite these important differences of interpretation, there can be
no doubt that Alison is describing experience remarkably similar to
Wordsworth's and that Wordsworth may have drawn many important
suggestions from him, suggestions which may well have illuminated the
17
Essay II, chapter6, section 6.

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840 Nature and Imagination in Wordsworth

poet's experience and sharpened his insight. Consider, with reference

to what we have called objective metaphor, the following passage. The
expression of mental qualities in Nature may be drawn
fromanalogyor resemblance;fromthat resemblancewhichhas everywherebeen
felt betweenthe qualitiesof matter and of mind, and by which the formerbe-
comes so powerfullyexpressiveto us of the latter. It is thus, that the colours,
the sounds,the forms,and above all, perhaps,the motionsof inanimateobjects,
are so universallyfelt as resemblingpeculiar qualities or affectionsof mind,
and when thus felt, are so productiveof the analogousemotion;that the per-
sonificationof matter is so stronglymarkedin every period of the history of
human thought; and that the poet, while he gives life and animationto every
thing aroundhim, is not displayinghis own invention,but only obeyingone of
the most powerfullaws which regulatethe imaginationof man.
The last sentence indicates the important difference of interpretation
that distinguishes the poet from the psychologist. Dean Sperry, in his
recent volume Wordsworth'sAnti-Climax, has wisely emphasized the
importance of Alison's work for interpreting Wordsworth, but he fails
to notice in this connection that for all the many points of interesting
resemblance, Wordsworth is a romantic mystic and Alison an eighteenth-
century associationist, that for Wordsworth the imaginative act really
constitutes the momentary identity of man and the world-soul, while
for Alison imagination consists in the "indulgence of a train of thought,"
subject to the laws of association.
Here then in Wordsworth's account of beauty, his faith in the "mo-
tion and the spirit that impells all thinking things, all objects of all
thought" is manifest. In such a statement,L7Wordsworth is thinking
quite as much of the power that seems to throb in the life of natural
beauty as of any force which holds the physical world together. For
this reason I am hesitant to accept entirely the interesting and unex-
pected conclusions which Mr. Dunn has drawn concerning Wordsworth's
"power" of Nature and Sir Isaac Newton's "active principle."18The
latter concept refers to God's omnipresent will, which as the cause of
actio ad distans holds the world in its proper dynamic structure. The
verbal echoes, particularly in the passages from The Excursion (at the
very opening of the ninth book) seem to me very impressive. And there
can be no doubt that Wordsworth held Newton's name in the highest
esteem. Furthermore, Mr. Dunn's suggestion that in The Excursion
Wordsworth is seeking a terminology clear of pantheistic entangle-
ments seems very reasonable. But we must remember that in The Prel-
ude the power of Nature is not described solely as the cause of physical
18 S. G.
Dunn, "A Note on Wordsworth'sMetaphysicalSystem,"Essays and Studies
(1932).

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 Newton P. Stallknecht 841

order. It is also, as we have shown, the source of beauty. Now, even in

The Excursion where the active principles of the universe are men-
tioned in Newtonian terms, we are told that this agency is felt by the
mind of man, and most keenly in childhood.'9 The theory is thus an
adaptation of Newton's thought rather than an acceptance. Of course,
it is true that Wordsworth always adapted to his own needs ideas drawn
from other thinkers, for instance, from Spinoza. But it is clear from
what we have shown that in the case of Newton the adaptation is a
very free one.
In this connection we are also reminded of Cudworth's doctrine of
the Plastic Nature, the vital principle which orders and animates the
world. I owe this latter reference to Professor Beach who has presented
a case for the influence of the Cambridge Platonists' doctrine of Plastic
Nature upon Wordsworth and Coleridge.20The term plastic refers in
Cudworth and in Coleridge to the harmonizing power of Nature whereby
life is maintained and order supplied to the material universe. Further-
more, Wordsworth speaks of his own plastic power in describing the
early appearance of his poetic genius.21 With this we must compare
Coleridge's esemplastic power of the imagination. Apparently both
Wordsworth and Coleridge saw in the harmonizing power of earlier
speculations an archetype of human creative imagination. Cudworth had
himself seen something of the same thing. The clatter of natural proc-
ess, so pointless to the unawakened soul becomes, in the ear of rational
man, the music of Pan and his pipes, the creative beauty of an active
Nature, manifest to the man who can grasp the subtler relations be-
tween objects.22 It seems very likely that in this matter Wordsworth
has drawn something from the Cambridge Platonists. But we must re-
member that in so far as Wordsworth remains a pantheist, refraining
from recognizing a God apartfrom or above the plastic power of Nature,
he remains closer to Spinoza than to Cudworth.2
19The Excursion, ri, 20 and 40.
20
JosephW. Beach,The Conceptof Naturein Nineteenth-Century
EnglishPoetry(New
York, 1936). 21 The Prelude, A, II, 381.
22Eternaland Immutable
Morality,Vol. in of Cudworth'sIntellectualSystem(London,
1845), p. 600. See also The Prelude, A, TI,431.
23
Again the ethics involved in the conclusion of The Prelude and so intimately con-
nected with the theory of imagination is not at all similar to that of the Cambridge Plato-
nists. Cudworth and More believed that the standards of morals are to be interpreted as
Platonic Ideas, apprehended as we are said to apprehend the axioms of arithmetic and
geometry. This is the eternal and immutable morality of Cudworth In The Prelude Words-
worth is searching for a less formalist doctrine, being eager to derive the criterion of moral
right and wrong from the union of imaginative understanding and desire, rather than from
a direct apprehension of eternal duty. Thus his views have some Spinozian notions worked
into them (see Wordsworth and Philosophy, 1127-34) whereas this moral theory is far

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842 Nature and Imagination in Wordsworth

Let us call this esthetic aspect of Nature, which Wordsworth de-

scribes, objectivemetaphor.Let us refrain from thinking of it as objectified
metaphor, lest we find ourselves hastily substituting the concept of
pathetic fallacy for something quite different and much more significant.
To be sure, in the realms of discourse open to the science of physics or
geology, mountains do not "upheave their dusky backs"24through seas
removed from Cambridge Platonism. If we are to look for English sources of this ethic,
we might turn to Shaftesbury, but certainly not to Cudworth or More. But I have not
come upon any verbal echoes from Shaftesbury. The reader must remember that this
attempt to minimize the importance of the Cambridge Platonists applies only to the syn-
thesis of doctrine presented at the close of The Prelude. They cannot, as Professor Beach
has shown, be excluded entirely.
No more, incidentally, can the ancient Neo-Platonists be ignored. In fact, Words-
worth's statement of the interpenetration of objects offered in the eighth book of The
Prelude seems to be a verbal echo of a passage from Coleridge's beloved Plotinus. Compare
The pulse of Being everywhere was felt,
When all the several frames of things, like stars
Through every magnitude distinguishable,
Were half confounded in each other's blaze,
One galaxy of life and joy. (A, vin, 626 ff.)
with Plotinus'
... for all is transparent, nothing dark, nothing impenetrable; every being is lucid to every
other, light manifest to light. And each of them contains all within itself and sees all in
every other, so that everywhere there is all, and each is all, and infinite the glory! Each
of them is great: the small is great; the sun There is all the stars; and every star, again, is
all the stars and sun; each is mirrored in every other. (Enneads v, viii, 4)
Wordsworth continues
Then rose
Man, inwardly contemplated, and present
In my own being, to a loftier height;
As of all visible creatures crown . ..

As, more than anything we know instinct

With Godhead...
Compare this with Plotinus' comments which follow the passage already quoted. The
lover of beauty is rendered truly divine.
Thus a man filled with a God holds his vision of the Divine Being within himself if he but
have the strength. Anyone possessed by God has but to bring that Divine-within before
his consciousness and at once he sees an image of himself lifted to a better beauty-(v,
viii, 10-11).
There seems little ground for doubting that Wordsworth has caught a verbal echo of
Plotinus from Coleridge's inspired conversation. But Wordsworth's thought is not strictly
Neo-Platonic. The Neo-Platonic beautiful world where such interpenetration is main-
tained is not as with Wordsworth the concrete world in which we live and move. This
beautiful world, like the Platonic Ideas, is a transcendent realm which only the God-like
man may enter. Wordsworth's thought is at this point tangent to Plotinus' philosophy but
not coincident with it. On the other hand, Wordsworth's apprehension of the substantial
and indivisible unity of the concreteworld fits easily enough into a Spinozian world-scheme.
24 See The
Prelude, A, xm, 45 (1850), xiv, 43.-While completing this study of Words-
worth's theory of "objective metaphor," I have been fascinated by Professor Frank Jewett
Mather's theory of correspondences of rhythm which he has presented in his recent volume,

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 NewtonP. Stallknecht 843

of mist; but in the realm of objectivity open to the esthetic experience

such is sometimes the case. We have just heard Professor Whitehead
assert that Wordsworth apprehends the truly concrete. We might
venture, on such authority, to suggest that the esthetic object is the
genuinely concrete, and the scientific object an abstration, withdrawn
from the fullness of real things and their concrete fusion of interrela-
tions. Thus we do not pretend that the mountains are alive. As concrete,
esthetic objects the mountains have embodied in them characteristics
which, in other realms of discourse, belong only to certain quadrupeds.
As esthetic objects, the mountains and the animals influence one another.
They share an "ideal form" whose presence in both is their interfusion,
animals thus becoming mountainous and mountains animate.
We have seen that Wordsworth's experience helped him to think of
Nature as an animate power. Nature and not our faculty of comparison
makes one object suffuse another. After all, no matter how acute one's
taste, natural beauty does appear to be a gift, not a creation of our own.
Nature seems to be the artist, we the spectator. Wordsworth insists
that Nature, "unaided by the human mind" thrusts beauty upon our
notice.25 This is not an arbitrary statement, but a recording of vivid
experience. For Wordsworth, Nature seems actively to penetrate the
human mind and to act upon it, being the underpresence26of mind,
the "dark abyss" over which the rapt soul broods,27and from which it
seems to receive those "Eolian visitations,"28 flashes of illuminating
influence, which conduct us from mere sense to ideal form,29thus car-
rying us deeper into the concreteness of things. Nature works upon her
objects but also upon our minds. Toward this Eolian influence, Words-
worth has advised us to maintain a "wise passiveness" and to restrain
the "meddling intellect."30 If we confront Nature with a classification
and hold to it throughout our observation, we withdraw ourselves from
the fullness of the concrete. We tend to ignore all aspects of things but
those pertinent to the classification. To overcome this, to "come forth
into the light of things," we must be wisely passive, inviting Nature
by withholding our minds from consciously planned division and
Concerning Beauty(Princeton,1935).His contributionmust be studiedas a whole.But let
me quote these strikingsentences:"Everything[the artist] experiencestends to organize
itself by analogy and correspondenceinto groups, and these groupsgenerallydevelop
unexpectedinterrelations.He lives in constantexpectationof the extensionsof such cor-
relationsin a worldthat, being always open and flexible,is progressivelybecomingof a
wider and richerorderliness"(p. 187).
25Ibid., W. See de Selincourt'snotes, p. 602; also A, II, 347-348.
26
Ibid., A, xm, 71. 27 Ibid. (1850), xiv, 72.
28 Ibid., A, I, 104; (1850), 96. 29Ibid. (1850), xiv, 76.
30Expostulationand Reply,and The TablesTurned.

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844 Nature and Imagination in Wordsworth

analysis. This does not mean merely that we must be impartial, un-
prejudiced observers; there lies a great difference between John Locke
on the one hand and Wordsworth on the other. Wordsworth is not talk-
ing about faithful scientific observation,31he is trying to tell us how to
invite inspiration. He seems convinced that the power which conducts
from sense to ideal form, which brings us into the presence of significant
images, i.e. of objects' "mutual domination," obeys supra-personal
laws of its own. Wordsworth seems to have felt that this power is ani-
mate, and that its action is often a welling up into our consciousness of
another mind, somewhat like the "intellectual breeze" of Coleridge's
conversation poem.
Imagination is an "element of Nature's inner self."32 This self is
probably what Wordsworth means by the mind's "underpresence."33
Wordsworth seemed convinced that in genuine love of beauty, we put
away our old self altogether.
... Then will come
Anothersoul, spring,centreof his being,
And that is Nature.34
Now, there can be no doubt that Wordsworth was profoundly im-
pressed by what we might call the passivity of the creative mind. This
seems also to have impressed Shelley. Indeed, according to Professor
Gingerich's interpretation, this had much to do with Shelley's disposi-
tion toward necessitarianism. Certainly, the Hynm to Intellectual Beauty
reflects such an attitude.
The awfulshadowof some unseenPower
Floats-though unseenamongus.3"
Yet Shelley, like Wordsworth, seems to transcend this belief. We need
not always be wholly dependent upon an unseen power. "Make me thy
31 For the oppositeview see ArthurBeatty, WilliamWordsworth: his doctrineand art
in theirhistoricalrelations(Madison,1922),p. 115.ProfessorBeatty'sinterpretationleaves
no roomfor the mystical utterancesof Wordsworth.See my Wordsworth andPhilosophy,
p. 1120. See also for an examinationof Beatty's argumentsconcerningthe influenceof
sensationalistwriters upon Wordsworth,Rader, "The Transcendentalismof William
Wordsworth," MP, xxvi (1928), 169-190. 32 The Prelude, A, vIII, 513.
33Ibid., A, XIII,71. See Rader,PresidingIdeas, p. 168.
34Ibid., Y. See de Selincourt'snotes, p. 556.
35Comparethe followingfrom a fragmentof Goethe's.See the Goethe-Jahrbuch, xII
(1891), 1-12: Wirhabenoben gesagt, dai3alle lebendigexistirendeDinge ihr VerhiltniI3
in sich haben,den Eindruckalso den sie so wohleinzelnals in Verbindungmit andernauf
uns machen,wen er nur aus ihremvolstindigenDaseyn entspringt,nennenwir wahrund
wen dieses Daseyn theils auf eine solche Weise beschrancktist dai3wir es leicht faf3en
konnenund in einemsolchenVerhaltnif3zu unssrerNatur stehet dafi wires gem ergreifen
mogen, nennen wir den Gegenstandsch6n. Ein gleiches geschieht wen sich Menschen

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 Newton P. Stallknecht 845

lyre even as the forest is" is only the beginning of a supplication which
culminates with the words "Be thou me, impetuous one." If this prayer
is at all significant, i.e., if Shelley believes in the possibility of its reali-
zation, he clearly transcends necessitarian doctrine. And for Words-
worth, the enjoyment of beauty is not always the soul's involuntary
submission to usurpation.
It is perhaps true that the marked moral individualism of Words-
worth's early thinking-the individualism of The Prelude-withholds
him from doing full justice to the inspiration which engendered the
theory of imagination above described. At any rate, there are for
Wordsworth "higher minds" whose creative power seems to resemble
Nature's own domination. These minds can initiate creative activity.
They are Powers, concerning whom Wordsworth makes some of his
boldest assertions. These minds participate in a most intimate manner
with the Spirit that rolls through all things. They actively participate
in the "active universe."36They are "natural beings in the strength of
Nature,"37 creators and receivers both.36
The "active" mind receives from without, as does the lower, but also
gives in return. This is apparently the import of the lines from the
The Recluse, published in the Preface to The Excursion.
How exquisitelythe individualmind
(And the progressivepowersperhapsno less
nachihrerFahigkeitein Ganzes,es sey so reichoderarmals es wolle,von demZusammen-
hange der Dinge gebildetund nunmehrden Kreif3zugeschloi3enhaben. Sie werdendas-
jenige was sie am bequemstendencken,worin sie einen GenuI3findenk6nnen,fur das
gewileste und sicherste halten, ja man wird meistentheilsbemerckendalf sie andere
welchesich nicht so leicht beruhigenund mehr Verhialtniite gotlicherund menschlicher
Dinge aufzusuchenund zu erkennenstreben,mit einemzufriedenenMitleidansehenund
bey jederGelegenheitbescheidentrotzigmerckenlatiendali sie im WahreneineSicherheit
gefundenwelche iiber alien Beweili und Verstanderhabensey. Sie k6nnennicht genug
ihre inere beneidenswertheRuhe und Freuderiuhmenund diese Gliickseeligkeiteinem
jedenals das letzte Ziel andeuten.Da sie aberwederklarzu entdeckenimstandesind auf
welchemWegsie zu dieserUeberzeugung gelangen,nochwas eigendlichder Grundderselb-
igen sey, sondernbloB von Gewissheitals Gewissheitsprechen,so bleibt auch dem lehr-
begierigenwenigTrost bey ihnenindemer immerh6renmui3,das Gemiihtmiif3eimmer
einfaltigerund einfaltigerwerden,sich nurauf einemPunckthinrichten,sich allermanig-
faltigenVerwirrenden Verhaltnii3eentschlagenund nur alsdennk6nneman aberauchum
desto sichererin einem Zustandesein Gliick finden der ein freywilligesGeschenckund
eine besondereGabeGottes sey. Nun mogtenwir zwarnachuni3rerArt zu denckendiese
Beschriinckungkeine Gabe nennen well ein Mangel nicht als eine Gnade der Natur
ansehendafi sie, da der Menschnur meist zu unvolstandigenBegriffenzu gelangenim-
stande ist, sie ihn doch mit einer solchenZufriedenheitin seinerEnge versorgthat.
36ThePrelude,A, II, 266.-For the theory of the "higherminds"see furthermy essay
"The Doctrine of Coleridge'sDejectionand its relation to Wordsworth'sPhilosophy,"
PMLA, XLIX, 196-207. 37Ibid., A, II, 194; (1850) II, 196.

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846 Nature and Imagination in Wordsworth

Of the whole species)to the externalworld

Is fitted:-and how exquisitely,too-
Theme this but little heardof amongmen-
The externalworldis fitted to the mind;
And the creation(by no lower name
Can it be called) which they with blendedmight
Accomplish;-this is our high argument.
In the lower forms of inspiration Nature works upon the mind, in the
higher the mind is united with Nature. Inspired men realize this truth.
They possess "consciousness of Whom they are."38The capitalization
of Whom in the 1850 version leaves no doubt as to the meaning.
I have elsewhere suggested that Wordsworth drew much from Cole-
ridge's knowledge of Spinoza. It is interesting to observe that Words-
worth's most Spinozian passages, which assert the "active" mind's
union with God and eternity are introduced with reference to the higher,
creative minds of the Mt. Snowdon meditation. It is here that Words-
worth links imagination and its mystical sense of communion with
Spinoza's intellectual love39 of the mind toward God. Wordsworth
seems to have held for a time a moral philosophy and a natural religion
deeply influenced by the Jewish philosopher.
According to Spinoza, when our minds are most thoroughly active,
their operations are identical with God's infinite intellect, which is
God's intuition of all things. Fullest mental activity means, for Spinoza,
intuitive grasping of a situation seen altogether in its complexity, the
mind concentrating the vision into one pulse of thought without having
to advance step by step in a discursive construction.40 Here is the im-
mediate compresence of unity and variety which Wordsworth and
Coleridge found to be so significant in describing imagination. Spinoza
does not apply this doctrine to esthetics. But that Wordsworth tended
to consider active thought and esthetic enjoyment closely allied is evi-
dent when he writes:
the Poet . . .rejoices in the presenceof truth as our visible friendand hourly
companion.Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge;it is the im-
passionedexpressionwhich is in the countenanceof all science.41
It is also to be inferred from the happy description of mathematical
thinking in The Prelude.42
Such mental life, whether cognitive or esthetic, sometimes carries
with it for sensitive minds a solemn sense of divine presence and of
38 Ibid., A, xmii,108-109;(1850), xiv, 115.
89 Ibid.,A, xm, 185
ff.; (1850),xiv,206ff. 40Ethics,n, 40,note2.
41Prefaceto LyricalBallads. 4TThePrelude,A, vi, 135 ff.

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 NewtonP. Stallknecht 847

our own intimate relation to God, who rejoices in our power as we re-
joice in Him. This particular form of mysticism is recognized by many
writers.43 Thus Wordsworth's feeling that the mind's highest activity
merges with Nature's inmost self brings him into sympathy with
Spinoza. Henri Bergson has well rendered the significance of Spinoza's
religion as follows:
II etait reservea Spinozade montrerque la connaissanceinterieurede la verite
coincide avec l'acte intemporelpar lequel la verite se pose et de nous faire
"sentir et eprouvernotre eternite."44
Where for Spinoza we read truth, for Wordsworth let us read beauty,
and we begin to understand the foundations of his natural religion.
NEWTONP. STALLKNECHT
Bowdoin College

and Philosophy,"1121-22,for mentionof some out-

43 See the author's"Wordsworth
standingliterature
on thistopic.
44Archivede No. 26 (1927), pp. 202-203, quotedfromHallett, Aeter-
lettresfranqaises,
nitas (Oxford,1930),p. xi.

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