"
This is in many respects the same type of experience as that
described by Plotinus--"the life of the gods, and of divine and
happy men"--but shorn of its needless degradation of the
body and the senses, which, with Wordsworth are still and
transcended, but remain as a foundation for all the rest. There is
yet another and very significant point of difference. Porphyry, a
disciple of Plotinus, tells us that his master attained to the
ecstatic condition four times only in the six years which he
spent in his company. How often Wordsworth attained to his
form of ecstasy we do not know. But there is the little word
"we" which occurs throughout his description: and this
evidently links the past on to his readers. That is to say, he does
not sever his experience from that which is open to ordinary
humanity. He called for and anticipated genuine sympathy. Nor
was he wrong in making this demand, for there are few
sensitive lovers of nature who are not able to parallel, in some
degree, what the English high-priest of Nature Mysticism has so
wonderfully described. And as for the lower and simpler grades
of feeling for nature, given that the conditions of life are
"natural," they are practically universal, though often
inarticulate.
CHAPTER VI
DEVELOPMENT AND DISCIPLINE OF INTUITION
Although the outstanding mark of intuition is its immediacy,
that does not imply that it is independent of mental
development, of culture, or of discipline.
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