"Tintern Abbey" and Wordsworth's Philosophy

The main problems for Wordsworth are the unity of consciousness and how man attains to conscious knowledge. His explanations to these problems are essentially in line with the general tradition of English philosophy found in John Locke and David Hartley. For John Locke, thought originates in experience (i.e., we are born with a blank slate or tabula rasa upon which experience is written). Out of the product of sensation, or experience, ideas and the more complex forms of mentality develop. For David Hartley, there are no innate ideas; all mental states are derived from sensation. These sensations are the facts of our mental life and are the result of our direct contact with external things. Through the power of association, these sensations are transformed into complex mental forms which succeed those that partake of the simplicity and directness of sensation.

Hartley's Hierarchy of Mental Complexes

Sensations, which arise from impressions from external objects
Simple ideas of sensations (i.e., ideas surviving sensations after the objects which caused them have been removed). These are scarcely distinguishable from the actual sensations.
Complex ideas (i.e., the intellectual ideas compounded from simpler ideas under the power of association)

Hartley does not look upon man as a mere machine for registering the impressions of external nature. There is from the very earliest and simplest sensation an activity of the human soul, or spirit, which transmutes these experiences into their appropriate personal values, which are classified under pleasure and pain.

Wordsworth and the Three Ages of Man

"Tintern Abbey" is a psychological autobiography, the forerunner of The Prelude, of which it may be called a preliminary outline or short summary. Wordsworth presents the history of the mind's development as occurring in three stages. The first part of the poem furnishes us with an analysis of his present consciousness, together with a theory of the processes by which it was produced (23-50), an aspect of the subject which is resumed later (103-12). Upon this follows an address to his sister, Dorothy.

How the three periods are characterized

Childhood (67-75): the unreflecting period of life when there is no conscious reaction to experience and nature (coarser pleasure and "glad animal movements").
Youth (76-83): marked by mental as well as bodily activity; direct emotional responses to life without any translation into thought.
Maturity (83-102): the period of thought; in this period, the immediate joy of sensation has gone, but as an "abundant recompense" comes the deeper and more profound outlook on life, with "thought" which alone satisfies.

In "Tintern Abbey," we find the first clear indication of the Wordsworthian method of poetic practice (i.e., the method of reminiscence or retrospect combined with philosophy of the three ages of man).

[Drawn from Arthur Beatty, William Wordsworth: His Doctrine and Art in Their Historical Relations. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1922; rpt 1962.]