333. I shall not attempt an anthology of such passages. We all know that their general tone supports, as far as it goes, the thesis here advanced: - namely, that moments of poetical inspiration are apt to be moments also of some sense of insight or entrance into a supernal world. Most poets have been Platonists; their influence tends to swell that ancient stream of idealistic thought which lies at the root of all civilised religions.

For our present purposes, however, one single poet - almost one single poem - will practically suffice. In whatever rank Wordsworth may be placed as an artist in language, there can be no doubt as to his conscientious veracity as an introspective psychologist. "The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind," has been regarded by some critics as a tedious and egotistical poem. But whether or not it is suited to give wide poetic pleasure, its value as a " human document" is, for our present purposes, I venture to say, unique. In Goethe indeed, in Browning, in Tennyson above all, we find introspective passages of extreme interest and beauty. But no one save Wordsworth - not even Goethe - has treated his own faculties so seriously or on so ample a scale. The " Prelude" is a deliberate, persistent attempt to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about exactly those emotions and intuitions which differentiate the poet from common men. And it must be added, as a judgment established above the ebb and flow of popular criticism, that Wordsworth had a valid right to deal thus with himself as a kind of typical poet.

Whether recognised coldly or enthusiastically, his position is secure.

It must be remembered, too, that Wordsworth was not only particularly anxious to tell the truth about himself, but particularly capable of doing so. His self-esteem never took the form of making him wish to appear other than he was. As he genuinely was, so did he clearly see himself; and although both his experierice and his appreciativeness had serious limitations, yet, from a psychological point of view, his limitations were rather advantages. What can we want more than this kind of sworn and unbiassed deposition as to the growth and content of a mind which in sheer force of what we call original genius - as distinguished from subtlety, acquirement, universality, and so forth - has hardly ever been surpassed ? Here was a great motor force in the world of mind; how was that force worked from inside?

Let us begin with the strictly limited inquiry from which we started, and let us consider merely the description given by this one poet of the apparent content of moments of profound inspiration. We find Wordsworth insisting, in the first place, upon the distinctive character of this subliminal uprush.

He speaks of the "haze within," which becomes "A tempest, a redundant energy Vexing its own creation".

Of "imagination" he says (Book VI.): -

"That awful Power rose from the mind's abyss, Like an unfathomed vapour that enwraps, At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost; Halted without an effort to break through; But to my conscious soul I now can say - 'I recognise thy glory;' in such strength Of usurpation, when the light of sense Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed The invisible world, doth greatness make abode".

This passage expresses in the language of poetry the very relations between the supraliminal and the subliminal on which I have in this chapter dwelt.

The influence rises from no discoverable source; for a moment it may startle or bewilder the conscious mind; then it is recognised as a source of knowledge, arriving through inner vision; while the action of the senses is suspended in a kind of momentary trance. The knowledge gained, however, is simply a perception of "the invisible world"; there is no claim to any more definite revelation.

Concordant with this passage are other descriptions of " these fleeting moods of shadowy exultation"; they bear an unmistakable, though hardly a translatable message. Of childish hours the poet says (Book I.): -

" Even then I felt Gleams like the flashing of a shield; the earth And common face of Nature spake to me Rememberable things".

And since it is mainly by inward vision that these rememberable things are in truth discerned, there is a growing fusion between subjective and objective; between that which is generated in the seer himself and that of which the visible universe conveys the half-caught intimation (Book II.): -

" An auxiliar light Came from my mind, which on the setting sun Bestowed new splendour".

Or at a still further stage (Book II.): -

" Bodily eyes Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw Appeared like something in myself, a dream, A prospect in the mind".

Thus it fares, Wordsworth repeats in a later passage (Book XIV.), with minds sustained by recognition of transcendent power: -

"In a world of life they live, By sensible impressions not enthralled, But by their quickening impulse made more prompt To hold fit converse with the spiritual world".

334. Vague though these passages (and others like them) may be, they nevertheless carry more conviction than do the more definite visions of the saints and illumines of various creeds. The sane simplicity of Wordsworth has been subject to less of prepossession; he, if any man, has kept his mind, as Bacon advised, concentric to the universe; and there is nothing in his revelation which any other revelation can invalidate or contradict.

A vague but genuine consciousness of the spiritual environment; that (it seems) is the degree of revelation which artistic or philosophic genius is capable of conferring. Subliminal uprushes, in other words, so far as they are intellectual, tend to become teloesthetic. They bring with them indefinite intimations of what I hold to be the great truth that the human spirit is essentially capable of a deeper than sensorial perception, of a direct knowledge of facts of the universe outside the range of any specialised organ or of any planetary view.