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liss / That flesh can know’; and moral judgements are defined by the ‘pure source’ and originate onlyin God, rather than through the judgements of men of higher minds.A comparison of the two texts reveals the extent to which Stoic principles were laterabandoned in favour of more humble claims as Wordsworth acknowledges that the ideals he wasprepared to argue for in 1805, and even 1815, are unattainable. The 1805 text suggests thatWordsworth still considered it within his ability to attain to the highest form of consciousness, withNature’s help, and become one with Nature as a ‘higher mind’:Oh! who is he that hath his whole long lifePreserved, enlarged, this freedom in himself?For this alone is genuine liberty (XIII 120-2)But the 1850 text is less sanguine, and acknowledges the impossibility of achieving that ideal state ofmind. Wordsworth expresses his more realistic acknowledgement of the situation in words that echoCicero’s critique of the claims made by the Stoics that they could achieve their absolute commitmentto the pursuit of virtue. The 1850 text qualifies the claims that Wordsworth had achieved anything like‘genuine liberty’ and asks firstly:Where is the favoured being who hath heldThat course unchecked, unerring, and untiredIn one perpetual progress smooth and bright? (1850 XIV 133-5)Mindful of meeker Christian sympathies, the 1850 text has the line, ‘A humbler destiny have weretraced…’ The optimistic hopes of the 1805 text are replaced by an acknowledgement thatWordsworth’s actual path was one of ‘lapse and hesitating choice’, of ‘backward wanderings alongthorny ways’ (1850 XIV 133-6). There follows, in both texts, a declaration of his moral integrity,relating that he had always upheld divine ideals and had not pursued selfish or vulgar ends. Taught bythe basic principles of fear and love, and the realisation that love casts out fear, he then defines aclassic taxonomy of good and bad, defined by feelings of emotion. Strong feelings of love –experienced in the presence of sublime and lovely forms – drive out fear; and ‘pain’ is also recognisedas something of a teacher, not as an ‘evil’. The distinction is repeated in the 1850 text, however,showing that Wordsworth was still prepared to accept Nature as a teacher, and to refuse orthodoxChristian doctrine that would propose more absolute principles of good and evil. As a child it was the‘Presences of nature’ that had ‘Impressed upon all forms the characters / Of danger and desire’ (I 490-8).In the following lines a distinction is made between ‘merely’ human love and a higher form oflove that is divine. In the 1850 text the distinction between these two forms of love is stated in clearlydualistic terms and the revisions, made in 1816, express pious Christian sentiments that describehuman love needing to be ‘hallowed’ by a ‘love that breathes not without awe’. A ‘love that adores,but on the knees of prayer / By heaven inspired’, that ascends on the ‘wings of praise’ and pays ‘Amutual tribute to the Almighty’s Throne’. No such sentiments intrude on the 1805 text, which asserts120