THOEEAU'S WILDNESS 201 



He perhaps never tried to ride a wild horse, but 

 such an exploit was in keeping with his genius. 



Thoreau hesitated to call himself a naturalist. That 

 was too tame ; he would perhaps have heen content 

 to have been an Indian naturalist. He says in this 

 journal, and with much truth and force, " Man can- 

 not afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature 

 directly, but only with the side of his eye. He 

 must look through and beyond her. To look at her 

 is as fatal as to look at the head of Medusa. It 

 turns the man of science to stone." When he was 

 applied to by the secretary of the Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, at Washington, for in- 

 formation as to the particular branch of science he 

 was most interested in, he confesses he was ashamed 

 to answer for fear of exciting ridicule. But he says, 

 " If it had been the secretary of an association of 

 which Plato or Aristotle was the president, I should 

 not have hesitated to describe my studies at once 

 and particularly." "The fact is, I am a mystic, 

 a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to 

 boot." Indeed, what Thoreau was finally after in 

 nature was something ulterior to science, something 

 ulterior to poetry, something ulterior to philosophy ; 

 it was that vague something which he calls "the 

 higher law," and which eludes all direct statement. 

 He went to Nature as to an oracle ; and though he 

 sometimes, indeed very often, questioned her as a 

 naturalist and a poet, yet there was always another 

 question in his mind. He ransacked the country 

 about Concord in all seasons and weathers, and at 



