Indeed, he describes them exactly.
My later manifestations of _isolement_ were similar to my first,
though not so vivid. As I write at the age of sixty-two, my impression
is that the last occasion on which I experienced the sense of
_isolement_ was about twenty years ago. How welcome would be a
repetition! I do not, however, expect another ecstasy, any more than did
Wordsworth, and for very much the same reasons. I do not think that the
vision was due to any morbid or irregular working of the brain, or to
any other pathological or corporeal mal-functioning. I believe that the
experience was purely an experience of the spirit. That is why I
attribute to it a psychological and even metaphysical value.
At any rate, it corresponds with my personal metaphysic of existence.
Further, I think with Wordsworth that in all probability the fact that
it was most vivid in early childhood and gradually ceased when I grew
up, is a proof that in some way or other it was based on a spiritual
memory. Wordsworth, after the description I have already given, goes
on:--
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised;
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us--cherish--and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence; truths that wake
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
That seems to me the explanation which can most reasonably be applied to
the mental phenomena which I have described.
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