Wordsworth’s claim is that he had discovered by his own experience a way to effect the necessary alteration in ourselves which will enable us to catch glimpses of the truths expressing themselves all round us.  It is a great claim, but he would seem to have justified it.

It is interesting that the steps in the ladder of perfection, as described by Wordsworth, are precisely analogous to the threefold path or “way” of the religious and philosophic mystic, an ethical system or rule of life, of which, very probably, Wordsworth had never heard.

The mystic vision was not attained by him, any more than by others, without deliberate renunciation.  He lays great stress upon this; and yet it is a point in his teaching sometimes overlooked.  He insists repeatedly upon the fact that before any one can taste of these joys of the spirit, he must be purified, disciplined, self-controlled.  He leaves us a full account of his purgative stage.  Although he started life with a naturally pure and austere temperament, yet he had deliberately to crush out certain strong passions to which he was liable, as well as all personal ambition, all love of power, all desire for fame or money; and to confine himself to the contemplation of such objects as—­

                             excite
    No morbid passions, no disquietude,
    No vengeance and no hatred.

In the Recluse he records how he deliberately fought, and bent to other uses, a certain wild passionate delight he felt in danger, a struggle or victory over a foe, in short, some of the primitive instincts of a strong, healthy animal, feelings which few would regard as reprehensible.  These natural instincts, this force and energy, good in themselves, Wordsworth did not crush, but deliberately turned into a higher channel.

At the end of the Prelude he makes his confession of the sins he did not commit.

    Never did I, in quest of right and wrong,
    Tamper with conscience from a private aim;
    Nor was in any public hope the dupe
    Of selfish passions; nor did ever yield
    Wilfully to mean cares or low pursuits.

Such a confession, or rather boast, in the mouth of almost any other man would sound hypocritical or self-complacent; but with Wordsworth, we feel it is the bare truth told us for our help and guidance, as being the necessary and preliminary step.  It is a high standard which is held up before us, even in this first stage, for it includes, not merely the avoidance of all obvious sins against man and society, but a tuning-up, a transmuting of the whole nature to high and noble endeavour.  Wordsworth found his reward, in a settled state of calm serenity, “consummate happiness,” “wide-spreading, steady, calm, contemplative,” and, as he tells us in the fourth book of the Prelude, on one evening during that summer vacation,

           Gently did my soul
    Put off her veil, and, self-transmuted, stood
    Naked, as in the presence of her God.