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Wordsworth and Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Newton P. Stallknecht
Newton P. Stallknecht*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Suggestions Concerning the Source of the Poet's Doctrines and the Nature of His Mystical Experience

“. . . . his eyes

Have read the book of wisdom in the sun,

And after dark deciphered it on earth“—E. A. Robinson

To Call Wordsworth a great philosopher would, I suppose, if we put the word to its customary use, be extravagant. For he left the world no synthesis of doctrine that could be called his own. And yet his philosophy is a fascinating study, for although many may have understood with greater acuteness the numerous doctrines that appear in his poems, none could feel with an intensity greater than his, their human significance and value. Wordsworth's interests led him to demand more of philosophy than do most reflective men ; besides seeking a criterion of the good and probing into the problem of human freedom, he looked for an explanation of his own strange communion with Nature. Thus his philosophical life, proving as it did the source of some of the finest metaphysical and religious poetry in literature, was a deep and a rich one. It led him to absorb the teachings of many thinkers and to incorporate their doctrines in his poems.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 1116 - 1143
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 1116 Prelude, I, 571 ff. I have used the text of the 1805 MS, except where occasionally I quote a passage that is entirely omitted from that draft. I do this because of certain philosophical alterations that occur in the later texts.

Note 2 in page 1117 Ibid., III, 110 ff.

Note 3 in page 1117 Prelude, X, 877 ff.

Note 4 in page 1117 Ibid., X, 889 ff.

Note 5 in page 1118 Prelude, XI, Ed. 1850, 309 ff.

Note 6 in page 1118 Ibid., XI, Ed. 1850, 319 ff.

Note 7 in page 1118 William Godwin, Enquiry concerning Political Justice, Dublin 1793, VI, 235. For a fuller account of Wordsworth in relation to Godwin, see Legouis, The Early Life of Wm. Wordsworth, tr. J. W. Matthews, London 1921, p. 259-267.

Note 8 in page 1119 Op. cit., V, I, 330.

Note 9 in page 1119 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, New York, 1911, p. 24.

Note 10 in page 1120 Ibid., pp. 25, 89, 284 and elsewhere.

Note 11 in page 1120 John A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato, London, 1905, p. 39.

Note 12 in page 1120 Rufus Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, London, 1919, p. xxi.

Note 13 in page 1120 To my Sister. These poems, especially the lines concerning an “impulse from a vernal wood” have been interpreted to refer to the sense philosophy of Hartley and Locke. Professor Beatty sees in it a pragmatic meaning. According to his interpretation, Wordsworth is telling us that we must abstain from theorising and keep our attention upon the facts of existence. (Arthur Beatty, Wm. Wordsworth his doctrine and art in their historical relations. Madison, 1922, p. 115). With this I am, of course, compelled to disagree. The relation between the plain data of the sense and an impulse from a vernal wood I find difficulty in grasping. Besides, after a study of The Prelude it becomes, I think, obvious that Wordsworth is here describing his own mystical experience. The influence of Hartley, if it is to be found in these lines, must be traced through his statements concerning the love of God. But I think it very indirect in this case, being rather one of attitude than of doctrine. (See further note 49 below.) An influence of Hartley upon Wordsworth undeniably exists, to be sure: the latter's esthetic doctrine of unity and variety as well as his interest in the association of ideas which the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads manifests had its origin in the Observations on Man. But we must remember that Wordsworth was a mystic in heart. And no true follower of John Locke could satisfy a mystic's demand for a theory of knowledge. Wordsworth's mystical philosophy is founded upon belief in an all pervasive World-Soul, and this led him to a philosophy more idealistic than either Locke's or Hartley's.

Note 14 in page 1121 Letter to George Beaumont, written while Wordsworth was at work on the Recluse. See Professor de Sélincourt's edition of The Prelude p. 608.

Note 15 in page 1122 Eolian Harp, 44 ff.

Note 16 in page 1122 Paragraph 152.

Note 17 in page 1122 Siris, paragraph 276-277. Paragraph 341.

Note 18 in page 1122 Perhaps the source of Wordsworth's “Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe.”

Note 19 in page 1123 Chapter 9.

Note 20 in page 1123 Clement Carlyon, Early years and Late Reflections, London 1856, vol. 1, 193 ff.

Note 21 in page 1123 David Hartley, Observations on Man., etc., Part II, prop. LXXI.

Note 22 in page 1124 Prelude, VI, 538 ff. For an account of this dynamic experience and its relation to the awareness of simultaneity see Evelyn Underhill op. cit. ch. II, in particular, pp. 43 ff.; also F. von Hügel, Eternal Life, Edinburgh, 1912, pp. 231, 386.

Note 23 in page 1124 Prelude, XIII, 69.

Note 24 in page 1124 Prelude, Ed. 1850, XIV 68 ff.

Note 25 in page 1125 John Watson, Schelling's Transcendental Idealism, Chicago, 1882, pp. 92-97.

Note 26 in page 1126 For a digest of the literature regarding Coleridge's dependence upon Schelling see Max Herzberg, “William Wordsworth and German Literature,” PMLA, XL (1925), 302 ff.

Note 27 in page 1126 Erdman, History of Philosophy, I, 234, 3.

Note 28 in page 1126 Boehme defines a being's “counterstroke” in this very paragraph as “a likeness, wherein it works.”

Note 29 in page 1126 On the Divine Intuition, I, 29, J. R. Earle's translation. Six Theosophic Points and Other Writings by Jacob Boehme, London, 1919.

Note 30 in page 1126 Ibid., III, 10.

Note 31 in page 1127 I append a summary of the evidence for Coleridge's knowledge of Spinoza: In Biographia Literaria., Coleridge writes (Chapter 10) that while he was living by the Quantock Hills, (the time of his closest intimacy with Wordsworth) his head was with Spinoza but his heart with Paul and John. In later life he spoke with respect of Spinoza, placing his Ethics, with the Novum Organum and the Critique of Pure Reason, as one of the three great works that have appeared since the introduction of Christianity (B. L. ch. 9, note 16). That Coleridge's conversation was full of Spinoza around 1798 and later is very probable. While in Germany at this period we know that he conversed frequently of Spinozism, giving the following concentrated definition thereof: “Each thing has a life of its own, and we are all one life.” (See note 20 and text.) Then there is the famous anecdote, to be found in Chapter 10 of Biographia Literaria, in which Coleridge and Wordsworth are overheard discussing one Spy Nozy, during their stay on the Quantock Hills.

Note 32 in page 1127 Spinoza uses “imagination” as a synonym for “mere experience;” Wordsworth for “intuition.”

Note 33 in page 1127 Ethics, II, 40, n. 2; Short Treatise Concerning God, Man and His Happiness, tr. Al Wolf, London, 1910, p. 69 ff. It is only with the Ethics that Wordsworth could have been acquainted. The Short Treatise existed at the time only in manuscript. It reveals, however, in certain passages so striking a resemblance between the two points of view that the student should not fail to consult it.

Note 34 in page 1128 Ethics, V, 3 and Col.; Short Treatise, MS, p. 131 ff.

Note 35 in page 1128 Ethics, I, 17, col. 2, n.

Note 36 in page 1129 Ethics, V, 32.

Note 37 in page 1129 Ethics, V, 36.

Note 38 in page 1129 Ethics, V, 36, n.

Note 39 in page 1130 Ethics, V, 20, n.

Note 40 in page 1130 Ethics, V, 23, n.

Note 41 in page 1130 Sir Frederick Pollock, (Spinoza, His Life and Philosophy, London 1899, p. 376) writing of Spinoza's influence, mentions the possibility of Coleridge's having made a Spinozist of Wordsworth. He is aware of the artistic potentialities of Spinozism, but is inclined to doubt that Wordsworth borrowed doctrines from Spinoza. He even asserts that Wordsworth's more or less systematic views of man and of the world are wholly different from Spinoza's. But he says nothing of Wordsworth's interest in the intellectual love that I hope to show casts such a Spinozian color upon one period of his thought.

Note 42 in page 1131 Prelude, XIII, 168 ff.

Note 43 in page 1131 Short Treatise, p. 69.

Note 44 in page 1132 Ethics, II, 47, n.

Note 45 in page 1132 Cf. Spinoza, Ethics, II, 33 : “There is nothing positive in ideas which causes them to be called false.”

Note 46 in page 1132 Prelude, XII, 289 ff.

Note 47 in page 1132 Prelude, XIII, 185 ff., see also 166 ff.

Note 48 in page 1132 Prelude, XIII, 84-210, Ed. of 1850, XIV, 86-231.

Note 49 in page 1133 This doctrine is somewhat similar to Hartley's conception of the religious life. Hartley speaks of the gradual strengthening through association of the comfortable sense that we live in the presence and under the protection of God. But he denies the life of imagination any eudaemonistic or religious value. This sharply distinguishes him from Wordsworth, who regards imagination as the keystone of his natural religion. (See Hartley: Observations on Man, Part II, prop. lxxi and prop. LIX.)

Note 50 in page 1133 Image, thought, impression. These are perhaps Wordsworth's renderings of Spinoza's intuition, reason, imagination.

Note 51 in page 1133 Prelude, XIII, 105 ff.

Note 52 in page 1134 Prelude, XIII, 141 ff.

Note 53 in page 1134 Prelude, XII, 367.

Note 54 in page 1135 Prelude, XIII, 183.

Note 55 in page 1136 Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a picture of Peele Castle in a storm.

Note 56 in page 1136 Prelude, XIII, 115.

Note 57 in page 1137 Introd. to The Excursion.

Note 58 in page 1137 Excursion, IV, 10 ff.

Note 59 in page 1137 Ibid., IV, 320 ff.

Note 60 in page 1137 Ibid., IV, 968 ff.

Note 61 in page 1138 Metaphysics of Morals, p. 13 ff.

Note 62 in page 1138 Ibid., p. 22, circa.

Note 63 in page 1138 Ibid., p. 78, circa.

Note 64 in page 1139 Ibid., p. 63, 64-67.

Note 65 in page 1140 Critique of Practical Reason, Bk. 2, Chap. 2, V.

Note 66 in page 1140 Excursion, IV, 1126 ff.

Note 67 in page 1140 de Sélincourt's edition of The Prelude, note to XIII, 161 on p. 605, also note to XIII, 183 on p. 607.

Note 68 in page 1141 Excursion, IX, 1-15.

Note 69 in page 1141 Ibid., IV, 140 ff.

Note 70 in page 1141 Ibid., IV, 69 ff.

Note 71 in page 1142 Ibid., IV, 806 ff. and IX, 126 ff.

Note 72 in page 1142 Ibid., IV, 224 ff.

Note 73 in page 1142 Excursion, IX, 106 ff.