Sec. 7. The power, therefore, of thus fully _perceiving_ any natural
object depends on our being able to group and fasten all our fancies
about it as a centre, making a garland of thoughts for it, in which
each separate thought is subdued and shortened of its own strength,
in order to fit it for harmony with others; the intensity of our
enjoyment of the object depending, first, on its own beauty, and
then on the richness of the garland. And men who have this habit of
clustering and harmonizing their thoughts are a little too apt to
look scornfully upon the harder workers who tear the bouquet to
pieces to examine the stems. This was the chief narrowness of
Wordsworth's mind; he could not understand that to break a rock with
a hammer in search of crystal may sometimes be an act not
disgraceful to human nature, and that to dissect a flower may
sometimes be as proper as to dream over it; whereas all experience
goes to teach us, that among men of average intellect the most
useful members of society are the dissectors, not the dreamers. It
is not that they love nature or beauty less, but that they love
result, effect, and progress more; and when we glance broadly along
the starry crowd of benefactors to the human race, and guides of
human thought, we shall find that this dreaming love of natural
beauty--or at least its expression--has been more or less checked by
them all, and subordinated either to hard work or watching of
_human_ nature. Thus in all the classical and mediaeval periods, it
was, as we have seen, subordinate to agriculture, war, and religion;
and in the modern period, in which it has become far more powerful,
observe in what persons it is chiefly manifested.