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virtù. 19 This Stoic belief in the existence of divine ‘seeds’ or ‘sparks’, that guide the infant mind in theWordsworth utilises this understanding, most obviously, in the ‘Ode. Intimations ofImmortality’ in which references to the ‘fountain light’ and ‘master light’ that guides the infant andyouth, relate to the Stoic ‘sparks of the divinity’. In this instance the infant, growing up in a propitiousnatural environment with loving parents, has received Nature’s gift. But at a certain stage the youthmust abandon his reliance on natural reason in order to develop his own ability to reason for himself.If he makes wise choices and pursues the life of virtue, as defined by Socrates and the Stoics, he willthen have the possibility of attaining to a higher state of communion with Nature again – his ownmind having the potential to become divine. This ideal developmental course is not made explicit inthe ‘Ode’, but what is stressed is the necessary loss of ‘the visionary gleam’. In early youth Nature canstill be a guiding light, but the transition to manhood requires the loss of this guidance, as a ‘man’must learn to reason for himself: 18The Youth, who daily farther from the EastMust travel, still is Nature’s Priest,And by the vision splendidIs on his way attended;At length the Man perceives it die away,And fade into the light of common day.The character of ‘the Youth’ and that of ‘the Man’ differ, and ‘the Man’ must necessarily lose hisinstinctive connection with Nature in order to develop his own wisdom. The aim, the ‘virtue’ of ‘theYouth’, is that he should become a virtuous ‘Man’, and this requires a necessary loss of innate‘vision’, something that he has to rediscover by the exercise of his own will through the pursuit ofright reason. Ideally, in a civic humanist context such a man will become a noble embodiment of civicperiod before it can reason for itself, is often referred to as ‘the Stoic cradle argument’. Wordsworthconstructed the narrative of The Prelude utilising this Stoic concept of human development, whichCicero set out in detail in De Finibus III. In The Prelude Wordsworth relates how he had felt himself tobe guided by Nature in his childhood, and then how he had later continued to rely too heavily onNature’s guidance as he approached manhood. By idealising his strong feelings of a connection withNature in his youth, and believing himself to be a ‘chosen son’ (Nature’s Priest), he had unwittinglyfailed to develop his own capacity to reason. His youthful poetic enthusiasm developed into a politicalenthusiasm while he was in France in 1791, and he believed that he had been granted something of aprophetic insight into the events of the times. His over-enthusiastic engagement with the Frenchrevolutionarily cause was later identified as a form of madness – something he admits to in Book X of18 In ‘Lines Written above Tintern Abbey’ Wordsworth is announcing that he has crossed the threshold into‘manhood’. Dorothy, in contrast, has not yet achieved this ‘mature’ perspective.19 Cicero’s representation of the stoic ὰφορμαί ,is also reproduced in the descriptions of the growth ofnoblemen’ minds in Castiglione’s The Courtier when nature is described as having sown ‘seeds’ of virtue inmen’s souls. Spencer inherits the tradition, and so too does Shakespeare in his discussion of Art and Naturein the Last Plays. In Cymbeline, Belarius, referring to Cymbeline’s children, exclaims ‘How hard it is to hidethe sparks of nature’ (III iii 79). See Frank Kermode’s sections on ‘Nature’, ‘Art’ and ‘Art and Nature’ in hisIntroduction to The Tempest in the Arden Shakespeare.81