If we could but see things as they are without the tyranny of
definition!
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 Jeunesse
de William Wordsworth, well translated into English by Mr. T. W.
Matthews (Dent and Co., 1897), calls attention to the influence on
Wordsworth 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).
{205} 'We differ from the inferior animals in the greater facility
with which we arrange our sensations, and compare, prefer, and
judge' (i.
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