The early thinking of both Wordsworth and Coleridge centered about one idea which was, if not the psychological origin, at least the logical culmination of their humanitarian, esthetic, and religious doctrines. This notion we may designate as the theory of imaginative love. We find this hidden in the allegory of the Ancient Mariner and more clearly stated in the philosophical passages of The Prelude. It contains the explanation which Wordsworth offers of the spiritual efficacy of “natural piety” and of his mystical love of beauty. It is, in short, the keystone of that heroic system of natural religion which the two poets constructed during the period of mutually inspiring companionship when they walked together upon “Quantock's airy ridge.” They believed that creative and appreciative imagination engenders a love of nature and a love of man, and they did not hesitate to affirm that this love is a profoundly religious experience which owes its power to the mystical communion with a cosmic spirit. This last belief was essentially a faith in an animate Nature and it served them both as the justification of their worship of woodlands and hillsides from which they drew such spiritual strength. This idea, however, was not by any means a mere doctrine with which they defended their peculiar religious position; it hovered over their thinking, “a master o'er a slave,” and found expression again and again in their most successful utterances.