The child is the father of the man
The line of Wordsworth is often misinterpreted as a paradoxical statement of a simple truth ‘child is the man in miniature’. This is to say he is an undeveloped man in miniature or he is an undeveloped man, a little savage, a rude barbarian waiting to be polished and refined by education, and developed into a perfect human being. They have also been equated with Milton’s lines: The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day. But this is far from what Wordsworth meant to say. He was not trying to say in a paradox what everyone else could say simply. He was stating his inmost belief in the simplest possible manner. His conception of the child’s capacity and knowledge was quite different from that of Milton or Pope. He had a higher opinion of his faculties, his innocence, and wisdom, as is clear from these lines: The child is the father of man/And I could wish my days to be/ Bound each to each by natural piety. Here Wordsworth is emphasizing piety. This subject is treated in great detail in ‘By the Sea’ and ‘Ode on the Intimations of immorality’, where he talks of ‘the purity and wisdom’ of the child as contrasted with man. The child ‘worships at the temple’s inner shrine where a grown-up man is not allowed to enter because he has lost his purity of his increased association with the world. That is not all. The child is not only pious, he also knows more than the grown-up man (not about the world but about God)—Heaven lies about us in our infancy. The child is a ‘Mighty Prophet, seer blest.’ This is enough to show that Wordsworth is talking about the greater innocence and wisdom of a child and not of predicting manhood from childhood. He is placing the child in the category of a seer (Yogi) and not calling him an undeveloped man. Just as a yogi or seer or father deserves our respect, in the same way the child also deserves our respect rather than our contempt. We should give him his due. We should not teach but learn from him. It is in this sense that Wordsworth calls the child ‘father of the man’.
