This is from The Wishing-Gate Destroyed, a late poem, not published till 1842, when Wordsworth was seventy-two years old. It is his Nicene and Apostles’ Creed and Thirty-Nine Articles. Trust, with no credentials but its own existence, and yet they are indisputable.

‘Is it that Man is soon deprest?
A thoughtless Thing ! who, once unblest,
Does little on his memory rest,
Or on his reason.’
T 0 the Daisy.

An example of Wordsworth’s wisdom disclosing itself in his simplest pieces. For one sad conclusion to which the reason leads us, the uncontrolled, baseless procedure in the brain which we call thinking, but is really day-dreaming, leads us to a score. Reason on the whole is sanative.

‘ Blest Statesman He, whose Mind’s unselfish will Leaves him at ease among grand thoughts : whose eye Sees that, apart from magnanimity, Wisdom exists not, nor the humbler skill Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill With patient care.’

Exist not. We are befooled by words. We conceive wisdom, prudence, and magnanimity as distinct entities, without intercommunication. If we could but see things as they are without the tyranny of definitionl

Wordsworth has a singular power of expressing articulately that which would be mere mist without him, but is of vital importance.

GODWIN AND WORDSWORTH

(Reprinted from The Pilot, 20th April 1901.
With added postscript.)

DR. EMILE LEGOUIS, in his singularly interesting book, La jeuncsse do I/Villz'rzm I'Vordsworl/z, well translated into English by Mr. T. W. Matthews (Dent and C0., 1897), calls attention to the influence on \Vordsworth in his early years of Godwin’s Political justice. On reading Political justice now, it is difficult to understand why Wordsworth should have been so much affected by it. Its philosophy, if philosophy it can be called, is Simply the denial of any rule of conduct or of any belief which the understanding cannot prove, and the inclusion of man in the necessity which controls inanimate nature. ‘All vice is nothing more than error and mistake’ (i. 31).1 ‘ We differ from the inferior animals in the greater facility with which we arrange our sensa

tions, and compare, prefer, and judge’ (i. 57). ‘Justice . . . is coincident with utility’ (i. 121). ‘If my mother were in a house on fire, and I had a ladder outside with which I could save her, she would not, because she was my mother, have any greater claim than the other inmates on my exertions' (i. 83). ‘But,’ says an objector, ‘your mother nourished you in the helplessness of infancy.’ ‘ When she first subjected herself,’ replies Godwin, ‘ to the necessity of these cares, she was probably influenced by no particular motives of benevolence to her future offspring. . . . It is the disposition of the mind . . . that entitles to respect,’ and consequently justice demands that I should rescue the most meritorious person first. ‘All moral science may be reduced to this one head, calculation of the future ’ (ii. 468), and consequently a promise is not an obligation. The statement that it is essential that we should be able to depend on engagements ‘would be somewhat more accurate if we said “that it was essential to various circumstances of human intercourse, that we should be known to bestow a steady attention upon the quantities of convenience or inconvenience, of good or evil, that might arise to others from our conduct’“ (i. 156). The understanding is supreme in us, and ‘depravity would have gained little ground in the world, if every man had been in the exercise of his independent judgment ’ (i. 174). Reason (the Godwinian Reason) is sufficient to control. or even extinguish the strongest of all passions. Marriage having been denounced as ‘the most odious of all monopolies’ (ii. 850), Godwin is reminded that half a dozen men perhaps might feel for a woman ‘the same preference that I do.’ ‘This,’ says he, ‘will create no difliculty. We may all enjoy her conversation; and we shall be wise enough to consider the sensual intercourse as a very trivial object.’ It was impossible not to acknowledge that the understanding often finds the problem rather abstruse of deciding whether an action will or will not secure ultimately the largest balance of happiness. Calvin was no fool, and yet he deliberately came to the conclusion that in burning Servetus he was promoting the welfare of mankind; but ‘ Calvin was unacquainted with the principles of justice, and therefore could not practise them. The duty of no man can exceed his capacity’ (i. 102). As to Godwin’s necessarianism, it is perhaps hardly worth while