C xix -2 



them at rare intervals to get confirmation for some 

 of his scientific observations, but he queries, "What 

 right have mortals to parade these things on their legs 

 again, with their wires, and, when heaven has decreed 

 that they shall return to dust again, to return them to 

 sawdust?" and he afiirms, "I have had my right-per- 

 ceiving senses so disturbed in these haunts as to mis- 

 take a veritable living man for a stuffed specimen, 

 and surveyed him with dumb wonder as the strangest 

 of the whole collection." Thoreau was a naturalist of 

 the best type^but he wa s no "collector." In Emer- 

 son's phrase, he "named all the birds without a gun, 

 loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk." Once 

 when a farmer came to him and offered to him as a nat- 

 uralist a two-headed calf which his cow had brought 

 forth, Thoreau was utterly disgusted and began to 

 catechize himself, asking what enormity he had com- 

 mitted that such an offer should be made to him! 



And not merely life, but human life was the thing 

 of greatest concern in his estimation, around which 

 everything else must revolve. "Nature must be 

 viewed humanly to be viewed at all," he declares; 

 "that is, her scenes must be associated with humane 

 affections, such as are associated with one's native 

 place, for instance. A lover of Nature is preeminently 

 a lover of man." "I am not interested in mere phe- 

 nomena, though it were the explosion of a planet, only 

 as it may have lain in the experience of a human 

 being." And once.more: "Nature is beautiful only as 



