when that which is now called science shall be ready
to put on as it were a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his
Divine spirit to aid the transformation, and will welcome the Being
thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man."
He feels that the loving and disinterested study of nature's laws must
at last issue, not in materialism, but in some high and spiritual
faith, inspired by the Word of God, who is Himself, as Erigena said,
"the Nature of all things."

In aloofness and loneliness of mind he is exceeded by no mystic of the
cloister. It may be said far more truly of him than of Milton, that
"his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." In his youth he confesses
that human beings had only a secondary interest for him;[372] and
though he says that Nature soon led him to man, it was to man as a
"unity," as "one spirit," that he was drawn, not to men as
individuals.[373] Herein he resembled many other contemplative
mystics; but it has been said truly that "it is easier to know man in
general than a man in particular.[374]" The sage who "sits in the
centre" of his being, and there "enjoys bright day,[375]" does not
really know human beings as persons.

It will be interesting to compare the steps in the ladder of
perfection, as described by Wordsworth, with the schemes of
Neoplatonism and introspective Mysticism. The three stages of the
mystical ascent have been already explained. We find that Wordsworth,
too, had his purgative, disciplinary stage. He began by deliberately
crushing, not only the ardent passions to which he tells us that he
was naturally prone, but all ambition and love of money, determining
to confine himself to "such objects as excite no morbid passions, no
disquietude, no vengeance, and no hatred," and found his reward in a
settled state of calm serenity, in which all the thoughts flow like a
clear fountain, and have forgotten how to hate and how to
despise.[376]

Wordsworth is careful to inculcate several safeguards for those who
would proceed to the contemplative life. First, there must be
strenuous aspiration to reach that infinitude which is our being's
heart and home; we must press forward, urged by "hope that can never
die, effort, and expectation, and desire, and something evermore about
to be.[377]" The mind which is set upon the unchanging will not
"praise a cloud,[378]" but will "crave objects that endure." In the
spirit of true Platonism, as contrasted with