With this inflatus, too, I prayed."
How strong throughout the activity of the soul--culminating in
prayer! And by "prayer," Jefferies distinctly states that he
means, not "a request for anything preferred to a deity," but
intense soul-emotion, intense aspiration, intense desire for fuller
soul-life--all the marks of the highest forms of mysticism, and
proportionately strengthened soul-activities.
And what, then, shall be said of Wordsworth?
"I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed these minds of ours
In a wise passiveness.
Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for over speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking."
Is not this, it may be asked, in harmony with the older doctrine?
Not so. There is a rightful and wholesome insistence on the
necessity for a receptive attitude of mind. Jefferies, too, was
intensely receptive as well as intensely active. But Wordsworth
is contrasting concentration of the mind on definite studies and
on book-lore with the laying of it open to the influences of
nature. He calls this latter a "wise passiveness"--a "dreaming":
but is nevertheless an active passivity--a waking dream. All the
senses are to be in healthy working order; a deep consciousness
is to be gently playing over the material which nature so
spontaneously supplies. And so it comes that he can tell of
"A Presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts.
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