CHAPTER III

WORDSWORTH: FREEDOM AND MYSTICISM.

I.

By the volitional intensity and the innerness of the experience of recollection, Wordsworth produced in himself a deep strain of the mystical. But when he connected outward sense perceptions to the memory of childhood experiences there was present a still deeper strain of the mystical; and when he attached a moral value to this double experience of memory and sense, as in “Tintern Abbey," the full tide of the mystical was on.

The general outline of thought in "Tintern Abbey" is as follows:-First, the picture of the mind is revived. The landscape, the plots of cottage-ground, the orchardtufts, the groves and copses, the hedge rows, "little lines of sportive wood run wild," the pastoral farms, the wreathes of smoke,-all these beauteous forms, through a long absence, had not been to the poet as a landscape to a blind man's eye, but had frequently been partially revived in his mind. But now, as he stood in the very presence of the beauteous forms themselves, the memory of them was revived in full measure. Secondly, there is a development of immediate sense perceptions—perceptions of

The meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth, of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear,-both what they half create,
And what perceive.

And thirdly, a moral value is given to this double experience of memory and sense perceptions. "Therefore am I," he says,

Well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

It will be remembered that in the crisis following his overwrought interest in the Revolution, Wordsworth considered that his soul had attained its "last and lowest ebb" when, "wearied out with contrarieties," he "yielded up moral questions in despair." But it is fair to ask whether Wordsworth actually gave up moral questions completely. It is to be suspected rather that his nature so imperatively demanded moral solace that he could not give up the moral problem at all. No doubt for a time he made conscious efforts to avoid the contrarieties of moral issues; but even "The Borderers," which was written in his despondency, is much greater as a study in the moral nature of man than as a play. He makes Marmaduke, the young hero of the play, say to Oswald, his tempter:

Young as I am, I might go forth a teacher,

And you should see how deeply I could reason
Of love in all its shapes, beginnings, ends;
Of moral qualities in their diverse aspects;
Of actions, and their laws and tendencies.

And so Wordsworth really never ceased reasoning about love in all its shapes, of moral qualities, and of actions; and the poems written immediately after his recovery

are steeped in moral sentiment. In the poem "To my Sister" the mind is made to "drink at every pore the spirit of the season" and the heart to take its temper from the day, and both heart and mind are attuned to the highest law of morals-the law of love. In "Expostulation and Reply" the powers of nature-"this mighty sum of things forever speaking”—give energy and self-control to the mind that submits to them in a wise passiveness. And in "The Tables Turned" Nature blesses our hearts and minds with spontaneous wisdom and with truth. Thus these poems all possess an unmistakable moral temper, and the source of their strength lies in their extracting moral nurture from the "blessed power that rolls about, below, above," from drawing upon the "ready wealth" of nature and allowing her to be the teacher. It may be, as Morley would have it, that to some persons impulses from vernal woods cannot teach anything of moral evil or of good; but they greatly err who maintain that Wordsworth did not find this the prime source of moral strength. What happened to Wordsworth, then, is not that he gave up the consideration of moral questions, which was impossible to a nature like his, but that he ceased to look for moral strength in the social and political philosophies of his day. And, thrown back upon the dignity and strength of his own inner life, he revived the memories of childhood, joined them to outward sense perceptions, and in that double process, rediscovered himself-his moral nature.

From thenceforth those memory and sense impressions became the vehicle of expression for his inner moral life. It was through his reaction, therefore, on the French Revolution that Wordsworth's eyes were opened, and that his peculiar moral principles were formulated. And, carrying the revolutionary method and spirit with

him, he would teach men the new principles. He would readjust society on a new and simple basis, on the basis of the primal affections and moral strength derived through memory and sense from the powers of nature. Thus, with the intensity and whole-heartedness characteristic of Revolutionary leaders, Wordsworth became the prophet and leader of a new moral and revolutionary movement.

But this synthesis of memory images, sense perceptions, and a moral idea by a mind that is volitional and passionate, is eminently productive of a mystical state of mind. When the inner moral world, exalted under the influence of memory, is voluntarily drawn into unity with the outer world the mystical always results. The reason is that this activity of the mind produces a sense of innerness and intensity, and a sense of spiritual freedom; and these qualities are the life of mysticism. There are therefore some mystical tendencies in every human being; but they are more marked in some individuals than in others. In Wordsworth they were by nature unusually strong. The native powers of his mind-sensitiveness, passion, and volition-were well fitted to develop the mystical. In his earliest childhood, too, he unwittingly made elaborate preparations to bring on the mystical state.

Again, in some periods of history more than in others. the spirit of the times favors the development of the mystical. The age of Pope, for example, with its aversion to passion, and to any union of the inner and the outer life, was decidedly unfavorable to its development. If, in that age, a young person were possessed by nature with strong mystical tendencies the spirit of the times would help him to hush them up, would deaden them for him, and finally destroy them. This is why no great

mystic appeared in the age of Pope. The age of Wordsworth, on the contrary, with its revolutionary tendencies, with its efforts at the readjustment of society in new and strange ways, with its insistence on personal freedom, and with its powerful emphasis on personal convictions, was emphatically favorable to the development of the mystical. What the spirit of the times did for Wordsworth was to encourage him to bring to light and to perfect the elaborate mystical practices of his childhood. In tracing their development, then, we must recur again to the experiences of his childhood.

One precaution, however, is necessary at this point. It is not profitable to trace this development closely in the sequence of time. For the mystical proper, that is, the pure mystical state, is not developed gradually in the mind and then permanently possessed. It is rather a state of mind that is arrived at occasionally, and held transitorily, and with irregular recurrence. It is altogether too intense and strained to be permanently possessed. What is more important, therefore, is to note in its development, the degree of intensity it has reached at any given point, and the different stages of its development marked by those degrees of intensity.

The simplest rudiment of mystical experience is based upon the most common experiences of humanity, and is developed out of them. It deals with

Unshaped half-human thoughts

Which solitary Nature feeds

'Mid summer storms or winter's ice.1

Strange, unshaped, half-human thoughts come to all of us and out of them the will builds its mystic temple. The

"Peter Bell."