# Thoreau: His Home, Friends and Books/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI
THOREAU'S PHILOSOPHY AND ART OF LIFE
A CHARACTER so unique as that of Thoreau always awakens current curiosity and an anecdotal reputation for the next generation. Non-conformity alone, however, will not win the serious, tenacious interest which has centred about this man during the last forty years and is vital to-day. Two reasons may be assigned for earnest study of his life and interpretation of its messages. In the first place, his strange, complex nature was more than individual; it represented the peculiar historical and literary influences of the mid-century upon a mind of strong, yet plastic, traits. Again, Thoreau not alone developed and applied a peculiar philosophy of life, but he so expressed this philosophy, in writings of signal, compulsive force, that he raised it into an art of living, an ideal and yet attainable expansion of the nobler nature of man, through pure and constant communion with the primal, creative forces of nature and truth.
Evidence of the wide-spread admiration, often akin to worship, for him as man and author, has ​been cumulative during recent years. With authentic emphasis this public interest is revealed in a letter from Miss Sophia Thoreau to the woman whom her brother had loved in quiet, steadfast repression. This excerpt is now, by kind permission, first published:
"Concord, December 20th, 1868.
"Many are the friends who have risen up to do honor to the life and genius of our dear Henry. We have been wonderfully blessed and comforted by tokens of the most sincere appreciation and affection from utter strangers. At first when Henry left us, I felt that few knew him, but was consoled by the thought that the good God who made him and helped him to live so truthful, so pure and noble a life, would not let it be wasted. Now I am greatly surprised to learn the extent of his influence. I do believe it is rare in one's own generation to receive so much homage. Strangers have passed our house with bared heads in a spirit of reverence for the departed. Men and women have come from afar in summer and in winter, to gather a blossom or dried leaf as a memento from the site of the hut on the shore of Walden. One, whose name we never learned, sent ten dollars to mother and myself as a token of respect for Henry. It is really ​pathetic the way in which regard for his memory has been manifested."
Thoreau lacked many external graces of mind and manner. He was seldom genial, seldom affable, his tenacity was often akin to obstinacy, he was too concise and frank to be always gracious. At the same time, such mere qualities of mien do not indicate lack of innate fineness or nobleness of character. All who knew him testified to the unfailing courtesy of the highest type, and his letters are further evidence of this trait. Without any foppish or exaggerated expressions of regard for women, he always gave dignified, grateful recognition of all claims of family or of friendship. His letters often show thoughtfulness and grace. In closing, he seldom omitted kind words of regard to the ladies of the family,—a slight yet significant token of the true gentleman that he was. As a friend, he was most loyal, with a dignified reserve that allowed no undue familiarity. The Scotch repression produced in him an attitude that was easily mistaken for coldness. He not alone shunned, but scorned, mere gossip or any society that lacked reverence and earnest truth. He appreciated wit and humor of a fine flavor but had proportionate impatience with the professional joker. Of such he wrote,—"One ​complains that I do not take his jokes. I took them before he had done uttering them and went my way."
In his desire to be independent and simple in tastes and relations, he was not infrequently ill-poised and combative. He lacked that grace of mien and courteous attention to strangers which characterized Emerson, whose nature was more teachable and less intense than Thoreau's. When the latter recognized that his purpose was just, he did not quietly circumvent obstacles by the way-side but "split rocks" till he attained his end. Dignity and reserve seemed to him prime requisites of true manliness. Washington was to him "a proper Puritan hero." Thoreau admired his "erectness," his simplicity and, above all, his unswerving dignity and silence. On the other hand, few passages in his journal show greater personal annoyance than the recorded visits of three ultra-reformers, with their cant and familiar "greasy kindness." With reason, he resented their tone of intimacy towards him, their lack of "healthy reserve" and their boasted ability "to dive into his inmost depths." With genuine, chivalrous reverence for all women who performed loyal, sincere service to any work of progress, he could not refrain from a mild sarcasm upon the woman lecturer, who ​confided to his pocket, for conveyance, her manuscript, carefully folded in her handkerchief, and so saturated with strong cologne that the odor long permeated his clothes.
His was the simple, dignified courtesy of a pure, earnest nature. Mr. Ricketson well described him as "the personification of civility." This friend appreciated the latent qualities of heart which Thoreau's later years especially revealed. Repressed in early manhood, these qualities opened to the world with less frankness than the traits of mind and soul. Among some letters from Mr. Ricketson to Miss Sophia Thoreau, confided to my use, is this thought,—"I do not think that Henry was fully revealed" (the word, developed, had been written, and erased in part), "and I had looked forward to the more genial years of advanced life, when the spiritual experiences of the soul should bring us nearer together. But a truer or better man I never knew, and his like I cannot hope to meet again." Thus, one may comprehend the deferential "bared-head" tribute paid to this life of purity and uprightness, to this character full of reserves of courage and inspiration.
It has been noted that Thoreau's environment was best adapted to develop and accentuate his strong, native elements. The racial traits of ​sturdiness, industry, repression, truth, commingled with fineness, vivacity, ingenuity and nature-love, became amalgamated into a character singularly simple yet paradoxical, tinctured with the extreme philosophy and culture of the New England Transcendentalists. To question the sincerity of his life in any of its expressions, the Walden incident included, is to thrust a poisoned arrow at the very basis of his character. A school friend, Mr. Joseph Hosmer, wrote,—"He was the embodiment of perfect sincerity and truth; there was no gush or glamour in his make-up." With this sincerity was an unflinching bravery of soul which knew not faltering before discouragements, misinterpretations, grief, even death itself. Call this complacency, stoicism, if you will, yet forget not the delicate sensitiveness of humanity behind the quiet, steadfast endurance. It is a common quotation, as representative of his seeming misanthropy,—"Men rarely affect me as grand or beautiful, but I know that there is a sunrise and a sunset every day." The same critics, straining the meaning of the above sentence apart from its context, overlook the sentences so happily mingling nature and humanity in mutual dependence,—"Nature must be viewed humanely to be viewed at all, that is, her senses must be associated with human affections, such as ​are associated with one's native place, for instance. She is most significant to a lover. If I have no friend, what is nature to me? She ceases to be morally significant." (Journal, June 30, 1852.) The man, shut in from the external world which had been so large a part of his life, was moved to tears and generous response by a tune of his boyhood days, played by a street musician. Such words and incidents express the latent tenderness of heart cherished and controlled, yet never crushed, coexistent with a complacency and quiet, steady growth, akin to that of nature and her laws.
​In The Harvard Magazine for May, 1862, Mr. S. S. Higginson recalled Thoreau's "elastic spirits" and sympathetic comradeship on long walks, resembling "a glorious boy" even in later life. It has been told that he would sometimes skate thirty miles in a day; such buoyant delight was echoed in the stanzas in "A Winter Walk";—
"When Winter fringes every bough With his fantastic wreath, And puts the seal of silence now Upon the leaves beneath;
"I gambol with my neighbor ice, And sympathizing quake; As each new crack darts in a trice, Across the gladsome lake."
It was this vivacity which gave such singular presence to Thoreau, for he lacked striking physique. In climbing mountains he seemed to on-lookers to float over fences in mid-air and to scale the very clouds with his long strides. His great muscular strength and mechanical skill brought him, from a stranger whom he met on a train, an offer, of a position in a factory, "stating conditions and wages, observing that I succeeded in shutting the window of a railroad car, when the other passengers had failed."
Thoreau, with natal traits of such diverse kinds, was an apt pupil for the impulse of philosophic thought. From the first, however, his mind was ​interested in the empirical rather than the exigetical phases of past and present methods of philosophy. These tenets he studied and dissected but he collated such as appealed to his needs into an individual philosophy of life. Mr. Waldstein, in his analytic life of Ruskin, has said,—"Ruskin is a man who has dared to live his thoughts." The same words are applicable to Ruskin's antitype, Thoreau. Not alone did he formulate a philosophy to meet the exigencies of his manhood but he also adapted his life to the philosophic principles and educated his conscience, will, words and acts to embody and unfold these principles. Without difficulty one may trace the practical problems that confronted him and their gradual and consistent solution. When he entered college, with cravings for the best in literature but with limited financial resources, he met the problem of education, he recognized the defects of a college for full educement of all the faculties, and he solved the difficulty by an individual tenet. Believing that the true life must be nourished by the great thoughts and poetry of the past, he stored his mind with classic literature and such material on natural history as was then available; without defiance, but with calm judgment, he made prescribed texts subsidiary to these studies which would bring him the ​best education. In other words, he made himself forerunner of the elective system of the present. Again, he recognized and revolted from the sordid mercantile tendencies of the times; he tested and defied the narrow customs regarding conduct of life for a college-bred man. In nature and in poetry were his sources of inspiration, they should become his business, so he solved the problem of profession by becoming a naturalist and poet-philosopher. The problem of income required, as he understood the real purpose of life, only the primal creed of simplicity, the elimination of useless acquired tastes. To meet the needs of man exacted no excessive labor, only a healthy industry. He was puzzled by the question of government, its duplicity and injustice; he solved the dilemma by advocating individual conscience and refusal to support an unjust state which overturned its very foundation-stone of liberty.
One might easily expand these problems of experimental modernity and their solutions by Thoreau until he had framed for himself a program of life which seemed to embody the essential tenets of true philosophy. With this he would face life and death. Its dogmas he has expressed so forcefully that they are of vital importance to the present generation. Though sometimes his acts seemed ​inconsistent with his principles, the actual contradictions are few and, in many cases, a careful and honest study of the circumstances and motives reveals a sure, sincere accord with his basal creed. Apart, however, from the question of his practical experiences, his propositions and suggestions for modern living are of great interest and of increasing value to the thoughtful student of civilization. At Walden, as throughout life, Thoreau never advocated abstinence as regards the necessary wants of civilized life. He never urged selfish seclusion from human relations and services; rather he made his plea for temperate, careful adjustment of time and necessaries that each faculty might be duly nourished. His inheritance would forbid his acquiescence in any form of life that savored of the unclean or barbaric. Independent of fashions in dress, he was always neatly clad; indifferent to many courses of fancy viands, he was able to cook and serve plain foods with skill and taste; deploring foolish conceits and expense in architecture, he was ever careful to construct with regularity and grace. In short, as Mr. Salt has well said, he was "never a nullifier" but always "a simplifier of civilization." The deprivations due to poverty could be nullified by the doctrines of simplicity and contentment; the defects and shams of society were ​not troublous to one who found unfailing companions in nature and a few trustful friends. Since leisure to think and "saunter" was a necessary condition for sanative life, he would make his wants so few that limited labor would supply them and leave him time for soul-culture.
​ FURNITURE USED AT WALDEN Thoreau was always "a simplifier of civilization" ​Again, it is unjust to Thoreau to assert that his philosophy was only a spectacular presentation of Emerson's doctrines of individualism, already published in Nature, Self-Reliance, Friendship, and other essays. One could easily prepare a volume of considerable bulk from the strange parallelisms of thought found in the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, nor do Emerson's sentences always precede chronologically. That Thoreau was an imitator of Emerson will be denied, with proofs, in the next chapter. With similarity of mental outlook, devoted to the same forms of nature-communion and classic literature, environed by the same waves of philosophic teaching and local influence, the correlations and similitudes of thought are entirely consistent with absolute independence of character.
Unlike much effort of the time towards practical reform, Thoreau's plan was individualistic, as shown in the Walden incident. With Carlyle's respect for the hero-man versus the masses, he asks,—"When will the world learn that a million of men are of no importance compared with one man?" This underlying principle, which refuted altruism and utilitarianism, no less than communism, permeated his ideas on government, society, and religion. The individual, not the state, was his motto; self-expansion, not "doing good for others," his ideal. As ​regards nature, man is "an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society." When the question of opposition to slavery arose, his preaching was that his countrymen were men first, and Americans afterwards. Thus, through the imagery of the pure water-lily, "partner to no Missouri compromise," he urged individual "purity and courage which are immortal."
This individualistic philosophy, with its corollary of self-improvement, has given a narrow, seemingly selfish tone to many of his words. The idea, however, must be considered in its entirety and logical sequence, to be justly understood. His own life and his most earnest words proclaim that self-expansion should prove preparatory to the highest service for mankind and society in generic form. The latter should be constructed to assist, not to retard, the noblest development of each man and woman. At present the individual is compelled to suppress his nature-given faculties that he may conform to the usages of society. Robert Louis Stevenson, though he failed to understand many of Thoreau's traits, because he accepted some false guides, said forcefully of the Walden seclusion and Thoreau's later life,—"The secret of his retirement lies not in misanthropy, of which he had no tincture, but part in his engrossing design of self-improvement ​and part, in the real deficiencies of social intercourse." Thoreau once explained his isolation as "a desire to soar" and, in the process, he found his companions becoming rapidly less. In exploiting and applying his philosophy of self-culture, he was often indifferent to the world and its real merits, he often showed a lack of true altruism. One must, however, distinguish carefully in both his teaching and its exposition. Indifferent, even defiant, to petty rules and conventions, which preclude the natural cultivation of all faculties, he is emphatically desirous that life, when expanded in the individual, should share its fruitage with mankind. After expansion, comes unfolding and expression. In one of his personal explanations, he wrote;—"I would fain communicate the wealth of my life to men, would really give them what is most precious in my gift. . . . I will sift the sunbeams for the public good. I know no riches I would keep back." Again, after a longing for a life of seclusion with nature, he rebuked such desire and emphasized rather the need of "dropping the plummet where you are," of present duty and faithfulness; thus, will one live a "purer, a more thoughtful and laborious life, more true to your friends and neighbors, more noble and magnanimous, and that will be better than a wild walk."
​Thoreau had trifling patience with showy charity or with long-faced, cantish reformers. Distinguishing between philanthropy, in its restricted sense, and true service to humanity in the broad way, he wrote,—"I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind." Again, in characteristic form, is his creed of unpretentious service,—"Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings." In his exposition of such principles in real life, he was ever ready with loving service. Among examples is the story of his devotion to a fugitive slave who rested for a day at the Thoreau home, probably the incident mentioned in his journal, for October 1, 1851. A friend, who was then a visitor in the family, relates Thoreau's tender care for the slave, his personal attentions to his food and rest, even bathing the poor, tired feet and, as a crowning self-abnegation, renouncing his afternoon walk to stand guard over the fugitive all day. In the historical collection at Concord, in the Thoreau room, stands a crude and striking piece of china. It is one of those unique statues of "Uncle Tom" holding Eva upon his knee; one of many odd devices of picture and cast brought into temporary vogue by the popularity of Mrs. Stowe's novel.
​Mr. Tolman, the custodian of the treasure-house, who was once resident in the Thoreau house, relates that this memento was bought for Thoreau by this slave whom he had so lovingly tended. Returning from Canada to Boston, the negro spent his last penny for the gift, and walked from Boston to Concord to give it to his friend. Thoreau was deeply appreciative of the gratitude and always treasured the gift and its association.
Another anecdote recently told in print indicated his readiness to aid any person in real need. Walking with a friend in a street near the station, he saw a poor woman with a heavy child in her arms, hurrying to reach the train that was about to depart. Without a moment's hesitation, Thoreau jumped the intervening fence, took the child from the tired mother, and striding forward, persuaded,—or compelled,—the engineer to wait until the woman could arrive. All the strenuous words and acts of his later years in behalf of John Brown and freedom, testify to his zeal in service for a large cause.
In Thoreau's philosophy of self-development as preparatory for service, certain basal tenets are involved. Preeminent are the coeval necessities of industry and leisure. Emerson said of him,—"A very industrious man, and setting, like all ​highly-organized men, a high value on his time, he seemed the only man of leisure in the town, always ready for any excursion that promised well, or for conversation prolonged into late hours." Again, Channing bore testimony to the ultimate end of Thoreau's life as "work." In modern life we need to ponder well Thoreau's thoughts on these two necessities for true growth. If leisure, the essential for real expansion of mind and soul, is fast becoming obsolete in this "nation in a hurry," so work, in Thoreau's use of the term, is being supplemented by nervous competition. "Work as a healthful, joyous expression of life is allied to poetry. Forty years ago he drew sharp antitheses between this true industry and the peace-destroying, soul-sapping excitements of commercialism. His readers, perforce, wonder what polemics he would have uttered against the tyrannous, nervous methods of current life. Among the most spicy passages in "Walden" is a tirade against such kind of activity, which he calls "Saint Vitus's Dance." Against the threatening national tendency to "rush," now a sad, pervasive symptom in all places, he wrote with warning,—"Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow."
​As workman and writer he was always methodical and intense. He measured the height of the toadstool and the Highland Lighthouse. He always worked with concentration, yet never with such haste as to prevent the full enjoyment of the work. He applied his own advice to keep all the faculties in repose save the one in use. We hear much to-day of the interrelations of brain and manual work and the best means of associating both with nature. Thoreau in America, as Ruskin and Jefferies in England, early advocated this alliance of outdoor tasks and sanative studies. In his bean-field at Walden, on his botanical excursions, in surveying and fence-building, in writing and studying, he met the requisite demands of both work and leisure. Like many salient dogmas of the best creeds, this combination is not always possible; Thoreau's independent circumstances enabled him to appropriate more leisure than others could afford. The doctrine, however, is true and deserves all the emulation which environment can be forced to yield.
Industry and leisure, if rightly related in kind and measure, will develop contentment and cheer, the ultimate end in all philosophy of experimental trend. Thoreau suggests a vital and universal truth when he says of himself, that "enthusiasm ​in youth" became "temperament" in manhood. At Walden his enthusiasm was symbolized by chanticleer, to "wake his neighbors up." This gleeful enjoyment of nature and life found more serene, yet no less emphatic, statements in the temperamental writings of more mature years. "Life is not for complaint but for satisfaction." . . . "Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever-glorious morning." Thoreau realized that to maintain the equable division of work and leisure, to attain contentment and cheer, there must be readjustment of the standards of civilization. In other words, he based his philosophy on the transcendental doctrine of the simplification of life. In looking at society, he found commercialism and anxiety, sham and artifice, injustice and suffering, and these contending armies seemed called into battle by the complex demands of modern life. To "reduce life to its lowest terms," to separate the essential from the artificial, to satisfy the natural cravings of senses, brain, and heart, and preclude the merely acquired tastes from becoming tyrannous,—such formed the pivotal point of his creed. "Probe the earth and see where your main roots run." Walden tested and proved the doctrine ​of simplicity to the satisfaction of Thoreau,—and his later life, though it brought somewhat broader opportunities and enticements to complex life, did not swerve him from his fixed aim. What began as a philosophic ideal, became an art of living. "My greatest skill has been to want but little." Like Euskin, he waged continual warfare upon the common desire "to get on in the world," substituting the mere "trappings of life" for the true joy of living.
Two thoughts are significant in connection with Thoreau's doctrine of simplification of life. One has already been emphasized,—his careful distinction between savagery and civilization. The superfluities of modern habits, never the real necessities of pure, uplifting life, represented his fractions to be eliminated. He always admired such accessories of modern life and invention as contributed to the aid and development of man. His thoughts often contemplated with pleasure the great medium of commerce by ships or railways. He would have welcomed the modern devices for agriculture, unknown in his day, which minimize the farmer's drudgery and lessen his hours of labor. Merely acquired tastes, from continued indulgence, seem to us necessities; such he would reduce, that living might become more easeful and restful. From the ​midst of our crowded life to-day, multiform in acquired tastes since the days of Thoreau, we go away for a few weeks of simple, direct contact with nature in her wildness and her peace. We supply only needs; we rejoice in temporary non-conformity; we read Thoreau and his successors in nature-communion; we resolve to follow his plan for simplification, "instead of three meals a day if it be necessary, eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion." On return, we make one or two spasmodic efforts to simplify but we lose courage at some neighbor's amaze and sarcasm. Though the brief experience has shown us that Thoreau found the true secret of growth for mind and soul, that he knew how to win contentment, yet we abandon his ideas again and fall into "this chopping sea of civilized life." We enter again with weak, dejected souls the competition, and "rush" from hour to hour, breathlessly demanding the "latest edition" and feeling a momentary satisfaction when we get "the six o'clock latest" four hours before it is due. At such times, one realizes with new force the manliness and soul-courage of Thoreau who "dared to live his thoughts."
In the second place, this creed of simplification did not imply resignation. Recall his own words ​in "Walden";—"I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary." Wealth and poverty are entirely relative concepts. The omission of the artificial seemed to him merely a reasonable and advantageous reform which brought contentment, not resignation. A critic has well said,—"Thoreau represents himself as an epicure rather than an ascetic." He weighed the wealth-acquiring habit against the commensurate deprivations of freedom and leisure, time to enjoy nature and books, and to him the student, supplying physical wants and cultivating mind and soul, seemed the true man of wealth. He was to be envied,—perhaps he is,—by his brother plodding among the flesh-pots of Egypt. His text was akin to the couplet of Young;
"Who lives to nature rarely can be poor; Who lives to fancy never can be rich."
Emerson said of Thoreau,—"He knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance." Thoreau would, indeed, combat that term, "poor"; his philosophy had taught him that "a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."
If simplicity, sincerity, leisure, industry, ​contentment, were at the roots of his philosophy, its branches were truth, purity, justice and faith. It would be tautologic to example these traits in Thoreau's life. They were its firm, increasing elements, they became the motors of steadfast, noble acts and words. Truth was the beacon of his character, and its full glare he turned upon his ideals, his deeds and his faith. Like all men of poetic nature, he often felt that he failed to attain his most desired aspirations. In his journals, he reiterates his failures; in answer to the possible charge of egotism in thought, though it was often present in manner, he confesses a consciousness of his own unworthiness and declares that none can esteem him so faulty as does his own conscience. Though dogmatic in announcing the details of his principles for conduct, he was always humble in comments on his ideals and their application;—"Be resolutely and faithfully what you are, be humbly what you aspire to be."
Literature cannot show example of a man of greater purity of thought and deed than was Thoreau. He recognized in nature the constant query,—"Are you virtuous? Then you may behold me." Any lapse from absolute cleanliness of thought or word met his instant, vehement denunciation, any coarseness or vulgarity he could never endure. His ​religion was of the intellect and the soul rather than of the emotions, except where his poetic sense made appeal. Rejecting narrow, sectarian formulas, satirizing the churches of his day as hospitals for sick souls, he was from first to last a Deist and a Pantheist. As his studies of various religious increased he became, like Emerson and many others of that age, broadly religious, always emphasizing the beauties and morality of the world's religions. Never did he lose faith in one Power, in Jesus, and in immortality. Reference to his Pantheism recalls Thoreau's difference with Lowell which, doubtless, affected the tone of the latter's essay in "My Study Windows." While Lowell was editor of The Atlantic, Thoreau sent to the magazine his papers on "Chesuncook," later a part of "The Maine Woods." In a sentence descriptive of a lofty pine the author said, partly in pantheistic fervor, partly in that humorous hyperbole which was his wont,—"It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still." Lowell, fearful of the result of such doctrine upon some of his readers, suppressed this portion of the paragraph, without consulting Thoreau. Such a deed was so hateful to the principles of freedom and justice in the author's nature that he recalled the rest of the essays. He ​referred to the matter in his journal and letters as "a liberty for which the gold of California could not requite me."
With such independence and self-reliance, that sometimes savored of hauteur, with his broad, scholarly, religious speculations, he showed throughout life a childlike faith as perfect as that of Browning or Whittier. In his first book is included the poem of trust, deemed worthy a place in Mr. Stedman's Anthology, with its simple expression of faith,—
"I will not doubt the love untold, Which not my worth or want hath bought; Which wooed me young and wooes me old, And to this evening hath me brought."
​Thoreau's philosophy, lived and tested as an art, was fitted to his sickness and to his health, and endured triumphant to the end. In the primeval life at Walden, in the full vigor of mountain excursion, in the study, in the lecture-hall, in the sick-room, he was able to live his ideas and to fulfil his creed. He had maintained that life was a battle, "on a bed of sickness or in the tented field." He had urged courage to the very end, for "despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat." With a temperament at once fine and strong, with a dauntless will trained by years of simple, courageous life, he lived his philosophy to the last day of his life. His simple tastes, his sincere words, his constant industry, his needful leisure, his unswerving contentment and joy, his perfect faith in the future,—these tenets were maintained, even exampled, to the finish of the brave life. And this is the man that Stevenson calls a "Skulker"!
While all must recognize the merits and practical consistency of Thoreau's philosophy, it is impossible to defend it from the charges of narrowness and prejudice. Like Carlyle, he refused to bring all matters within his focus for a clear, sure vision. He exaggerated the defects, even as he minimized the benefits of society. He had lofty ideals of friendship and many devoted friends but for society ​as a unit he had little sympathy and much unjust criticism. He was not misanthropic but rather ultra-individualistic. Against newspapers as exponents of trivialities, of the sensational and the superficial, he was denunciatory, often fractious. He queried if it were wise for him to read even one newspaper a week; what anathemas would he have breathed against this era of sensational journalism and its supremacy? For his own self-improvement he deemed further contact with the world, through social clubs or travel, not alone unwise but deleterious. He did not assume, however, that such complete isolation would be a uniyersal benefit. In truth, he compared himself to a man whose temperament could not endure much wine, so his nature found much society a distraction, even an injury. He reiterates, however,—"But I say that I have no scheme about it,—no designs on man at all."
With that inexplicable pleasure in futile speculations, that characterizes some minds, the question has been raised regarding the probable effects of travel and more society upon Thoreau's nature. If he had survived the war, would he have maintained the interest in national affairs which he disclosed as life was ending? Would not contact with broader and more varied minds have changed his eccentricities into strong, yet gracious, influences? Such ​questions are of no avail. Personalities, when changed by individual imaginations or desires, lose their identity; they must be considered as they actually existed. Poe, with poise and restraint, would not have been the visionary poet of "Ulalume" and "The Raven." De Quincey, unallured by drugs and dreams, would not have been the author of the matchless "Confessions." Abraham Lincoln, with broad refinement, would no longer be the same unique, paradoxical, intrepid statesman. Thoreau, under widening influences and distractions, would have lost force and depth. Thoreau's philosophy, his life, his writings, are of lasting interest and value because they are so intensive, so focalized, yet reflective of the passing phases of the mental period in which he lived, and prophetic of the threatening dangers revealed to his soul in its seclusion and serenity. Mr. Burroughs has said,—"An extreme product of civilization and of modern culture, he was yet as untouched by the worldly and commercial spirit of his age and country as any red man that ever haunted the shores of his native stream." Such analogous comment is misleading. Thoreau was not "untouched" by these tendencies but he was, more truly, untainted by them. He knew well the elements which corrupt and degrade society, he felt their effect at times with deep ​regret, but he became master of circumstances, and he made himself exempt from their control.
As if in answer to the suggested effect of broadening his sympathies, is the significant passage in the journal for November 12, 1853, now included in "Autumn":—"I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have had the steering of me, that by want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed down to this native region so long and so steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature."