l, is to show how the higher faculty reveals a harmony which we
overlook when, with the Solitary, we

Skim along the surfaces of things.

The rightly prepared mind can recognise the divine harmony which
underlies all apparent disorder. The universe is to its perceptions like
the shell whose murmur in a child's ear seems to express a mysterious
union with the sea. But the mind must be rightly prepared. Everything
depends upon the point of view. One man, as he says in an elaborate
figure, looking upon a series of ridges in spring from their northern
side, sees a waste of snow, and from the south a continuous expanse of
green. That view, we must take it, is the right one which is illuminated
by the 'ray divine.' But we must train our eyes to recognise its
splendour; and the final answer to the Solitary is therefore embodied
in a series of narratives, showing by example how our spiritual vision
may be purified or obscured. Our philosophy must be finally based, not
upon abstract speculation and metaphysical arguments, but on the
diffused consciousness of the healthy mind. As Butler sees the universe
by the light of conscience, Wordsworth sees it through the wider
emotions of awe, reverence, and love, produced in a sound nature.

The pantheistic conception, in short, leads to an unsatisfactory
optimism in the general view of nature, and to an equal tolerance of all
passions as equally 'natural.' To escape from this difficulty we must
establish some more discriminative mode of interpreting nature. Man is
the instrument played upon by all impulses, good or bad. The music which
results may be harmonious or discordant. When the instrument is in tune,
the music will be perfect; but when is it in tune, and how are we to
know that it is in tune? That problem once solved, we can tell which are
the authentic utterances and which are the accidental discords. And by
solving it, or by saying what is the right constitution of human beings,
we shall discover which is the true philosophy of the universe, and what
are the dictates of a sound moral sense. Wordsworth implicitly answers
the question by explaining, in his favourite phrase, how we are to build
up our moral being.

The voice of nature speaks at first in vague emotions, scarcely
distinguishable from mere animal buoyancy. The boy, hooting in mimicry
of the owls, receives in his heart the voice of mountain torrents and
the solemn imagery of rocks, and woods, and stars. The spo