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when ruling out the use of rhetoric in ‘scientific’ discussion; they acknowledged and feared its(dangerous) power. Nineteenth century thinkers dismissed rhetorical argumentation altogether whileapproving of poetic language, when used in its ‘proper’ place. The ethical aspect of poetic art wasreplaced by a delight in aesthetic form, something that would lead, in time, to the arguments of the‘new criticism’.Wordsworth has been misrepresented by traditional criticism because the critical traditiondeveloped by Coleridge was unsympathetic to the ‘rhetorical’ forms of reasoning based onAristotelian forms of argument from probability. Coleridge’s approach to reasoning, influenced byKant’s ‘critical’ philosophy, was based on a method that was intended to replace the classical forms ofethical argumentation that Wordsworth continued to use, and which was not based on the logicalpremises that Coleridge hoped to establish. Coleridge was in the vanguard of a new ‘modern’approach to philosophy, while Wordsworth continued to side with the ancients. The rise of‘Romanticism’ – and the complete decline of classical rhetoric – over the course of the nineteenthcentury,gradually displaced the classical paradigm that had defined the concepts expressed byWordsworth’s late eighteenth-century mind. German academic thinking influenced by Kant led, inturn, to Hegelian forms of dialectic rather than Aristotelian ones. Romantic attitudes of mind led to theprivileging of Platonic idealism in classical studies, overturning the Aristotelian values that haddefined the classical humanism of the eighteenth century. Stoic philosophy, which had continued toplay a significant part in eighteenth-century thinking, was perceived as secondary and derivative. Asthose German ideals, which had been introduced into Britain by such romantically-mindedintellectuals as Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Wilson and Crabb Robinson were taken up by thefollowing generation, the values that had informed Wordsworth’s eighteenth-century classicalhumanist mind were gradually eclipsed. Most significantly the form of rhetorical or ethicalargumentation favoured by Aristotle for philosophical debate, a rhetorical dialectic, was graduallyreplaced by more ‘scientific’, positivist, approaches, and the use of applied logic. 48By the beginning of the twentieth century, Wordsworth’s particular method of ‘doing’philosophy by ‘inventing’ arguments that led to a detailed discussion of issues was no longerrecognised as a valid form of enquiry. The discipline of Philosophy had also abandoned dialogicalmethods in favour of the kind of logical analysis originally proposed by Gottlob Frege, and laterapplied by Bertrand Russell in Britain, and then by the Logical Positivists in Vienna. LudwigWittgenstein is a key figure in this process of changing paradigms, managing to pursue a career thatwas equally influential in, firstly, defining the importance of logic, and then declaring its inadequacyas he then focussed on the role of language. As a philosopher, his life demonstrated the Aristotelian48 Aristotle defines ‘ethical reasoning’ about ‘things that are variable and change with circumstances’ in hisNichomachean Ethics 1094b, as he introduces the scope of his study of ethics, which he also called a study of‘political science’. This approach differs from that of ‘scientific reasoning’ or ‘demonstration’, which isbased on premises known to be true. Coleridge set himself up as a philosopher who argued from ‘firstprinciples’ that he claimed to be ‘proven’. Wordsworth argued from a Socratic/Aristotelian position based ongenerally accepted opinions (doxa) ‘held by the majority of the wise’ Topica 100b 22-24. See DouglasWalton, Ethical Argumentation.42