Humble rustic life
A selection from the simple purified language of men
Imagination colouring experience
Emotions recollected in tranquillity
His faculty for drawing inspiration from everyday life and objects led him to a sort of mystic belief, whereby man and nature were different but inseparable parts of a whole universe, created by God.
In his opinion nature had a sort of spirit, a living presence of its own and it could speak to all who entered in contact with it
The poet with a higher degree of sensitiveness than other men
It was through a fusion with nature and the contemplation of its beauty that man becomes aware of his own inner life.
The mission of the poet, like that of a prophet or a priest, was therefore to open men’s souls to the inner reality of Nature and to the calm meditative joy she can offer us
He was influenced by D. Hartley with ‘The Observation on man’
No ideas are innate in man
They derive from impressions of external objects
Groups of vibrations becomes associated with simple ideas
The 3 stages of the mind’s development are: Sensations
Simple ideas
Complex or organized ideas
They correspond to the 3 ages of man
Childhood, in which there are only sensations from the external world
Youth in which sensations give rise to emotions and simple ideas
Manhood in which man organizes his ideas through rational thinking
