That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness--call it solitude,
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea, or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly thro' the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

In the controversy as to the origin of the worship of inanimate
objects, or of the powers of Nature, this passage might fairly be
cited as an example of the manner in which those objects, or those
powers, can impress the mind with that awe which is the foundation
of savage creeds, while yet they are not identified with any human
intelligence, such as the spirits of ancestors or the like, nor even
supposed to operate according to any human, analogy.

Up to this point Wordsworth's reminiscences may seem simply to
illustrate the conclusions which science reaches by other roads. But
he is not content with merely recording and analyzing his childish
impressions; he implies, or even asserts, that these "fancies from
afar are brought"--that the child's view of the world reveals to him
truths which the man with difficulty retains or recovers. This is
not the usual teaching of science, yet it would be hard to assert
that it is absolutely impossible. The child's instincts may well be
supposed to partake in larger measure of the general instincts of
the race, in smaller measure of the special instincts of his own
country and century, than is the case with the man. Now the feelings