in Nature. He himself had caught a vision of that life, he knew it and
felt it, and it transformed the whole of existence for him. He believed
that every man could attain this vision which he so fully possessed, and
his whole life's work took the form of a minute and careful analysis of
the processes of feeling in his own nature, which he left as a guide for
those who would tread the same path. It would be correct to say that the
whole of his poetry is a series of notes and investigations devoted to
the practical and detailed explanation of how he considered this state
of vision might be reached. He disdained no experience--however trivial,
apparently--the working of the mind of a peasant child or an idiot boy,
the effect produced on his own emotions by a flower, a glowworm, a
bird's note, a girl's song; he passed by nothing which might help to
throw light on this problem. The experience which Wordsworth was so
anxious others should share was the following. He found that when his
mind was freed from pre-occupation with disturbing objects, petty cares,
"little enmities and low desires," that he could then reach a condition
of equilibrium, which he describes as a "wise passiveness," or a "happy
stillness of the mind." He believed this condition could be deliberately
induced by a kind of relaxation of the will, and by a stilling of the
busy intellect and striving desires. It is a purifying process, an
emptying out of all that is worrying, self-assertive, and self-seeking.
If we can habitually train ourselves and attune our minds to this
condition, we may at any moment come across something which will arouse
our emotions, and it is then, when our emotions--thus purified--are
excited to the point of passion, that our vision becomes sufficiently
clear to enable us to gain actual experience of the "central peace
subsisting for ever at the heart of endless agitation." Once seen, this
vision changes for us the whole of life; it reveals unity in what to our
every-day sight appears to be diversity, harmony where ordinarily we
hear but discord, and joy, overmastering joy, instead of sorrow.