dation should be laid for that
spiritual relationship with Nature which Wordsworth has presented in his
great autobiographic poem, 'The Prelude.' Such relationship but very few
could realize in themselves as the great high priest of Nature realized
it; but all could be brought into a more intimate spiritual relationship
with Nature than is favored and promoted, at present, by home influences
and by school studies. The latter, when prematurely analytical, and
brain slaughtering, tend rather to shut off such relationship.

What is understood as a scientific observation of nature, is not its
highest form, so far, at least, as spiritual culture is concerned. It is
almost exclusively an analytic observation, in which the conscious
intellect plays the chief part. It is study, not spiritual communion.
The highest form of observation (if observation it can strictly be
called, which is to so great an extent a rapture of necessity and
spontaneity) is that which results from the synthetic play of the
spiritual faculties, and brings the outer world and all its minutest
features into relation with the inner world of man's spirit, and makes
him feel his great allies. It is this kind of observation rather than
the other, which 'adds a precious seeing to the eye,' and gives to a man
some measure of 'the vision and the faculty divine,' and enables him to
know something of the fields that are his own; but from which spiritual
torpor may alienate him.

'I, long before the blissful hour arrives,' writes Wordsworth, meaning
when the discerning intellect of man shall be wedded to this goodly
universe in love and holy passion, and shall find the ideal forms of
Poets, a simple produce of the common day,

I, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation;--and, by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,

that is, what we really or potentially are,

Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted:--and how exquisitely, too--
Theme this but little heard of among men--
The external world is fitted to the mind; etc.

The system of general spiritual education which is both explicitly and
implicitly