In nature this life manifests
itself most directly, clothed in its own proper dignity and peace. But
it may be discovered in the humanity that is most close to nature, in
the avocations of plain and simple people, and the unsophisticated
delights of children; and, with the perspective of contemplation, even
"among the multitudes of that huge city."

So Wordsworth is rendering a true account of his own experience of
reality when, as in "The Prelude," he says unequivocally:

"A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides,
And in the heart of man; invisibly
It comes to works of unreproved delight,
And tendency benign; directing those
Who care not, know not, think not, what they do."

Wordsworth is not a philosopher-poet because by searching his pages we
can find an explicit philosophical creed such as this, but because all
the joys of which his poet-soul compels him to sing have their peculiar
note, and compose their peculiar harmony, by virtue of such an
indwelling consciousness. Here is one who is a philosopher in and
through his poetry. He is a philosopher in so far as the detail of his
appreciation finds fundamental justification in a world-view. From the
immanence of "the universal heart" there follows, not through any
mediate reasoning, but by the immediate experience of its propriety, a
conception of that which is of supreme worth in life. The highest and
best of which life is capable is contemplation, or the consciousness of
the universal indwelling of God. Of those who fail to live thus
fittingly in the midst of the divine life, Walter Pater speaks for
Wordsworth as follows:

"To higher or lower ends they move too often with something of
a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming,
unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear
grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even
great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in
spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in
the world at its very sources."[42:3]

The quiet and worshipful spirit, won by the cultivation of the emotions
appropriate to the presence of nature and society, is the mark of the
completest life and the most acceptable service. Thus for Wordsworth the
meaning of life is inseparable from the meaning of the universe. In
apprehending that which is good and beautiful in human experience, he
was attended by a vision of