not see somewhat deeper into himself and things than the
average human being, never among the sacred band of lyric souls can he
find a lasting place. Philosophy is the propaedeutic of poetry. But
surely, it may be urged, the book of nature is open to every one, and a
poet's soul may sing of that without any need of the philosopher's
interpretation. Has not some of the sublimest verse been Nature
poetry? True, but this undoubted fact only confirms our statement.
When Wordsworth interprets nature in song, he is borrowing from a
philosopher; he is reading the thoughts of an intelligence other than
his own. He is revealing to you the innermost thoughts of that supreme
Mind, who conceived the beautiful whole, and made it to be a thought of
himself. The deepest thinker is he who thinks his thoughts into deeds.
There is a First Philosopher as there is a First Poet or Maker, and
because we are in our innermost selves of his kindred, we have the
power to think his thoughts again, and create an ideal world which
shall be the counterpart of his own. Men may be philosophers and poets
because the First Poet and First Thinker is their Parent.

This is not mysticism, still less imagination, but the soberest of
realities. In it you read the interpretation of the indisputable fact
that the world's greatest poets were men of intensely religious
feeling. They come so near to the Supreme Poet that their sense of the
Infinite is extraordinarily developed. It is gravely questionable
whether a man can be a great poet unless the influence of his great
prototype be a power in his life; unless his religious instincts be
reverently cultivated. A religious sense is needful to the highest
flights. Go over the greatest names of the past and present and you
will see how "the Over-soul" has been the truest source of inspiration.
The unknown singers of the Vedic hymns, Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,
Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, and in our days,
Tennyson and Browning--in them all the religious sense, the instinct of
communion with the unseen world, is a distinguishing mark and
characteristic. A name here and there may be quoted on the other side,
but as far as my memory serves me for the moment, it would appear on
closer examination that such were exceptions only in appearance. An
excess, not a defect, of reverential feeling is often the explanation
of such non-manifestation of religious emotion as we may notice. With
Goethe