T MORE A U. 
1 87 
to improve and sharpen the senses. His keenest pleasures were 
sensuous, and his faculties of sight, smell and touch abnormally 
acute. But there was a deeper meaning in sensuous perception. 
“ I have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception 
to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired 
through the palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a 
hillside had fed my g°nius.” 
Thoreau’s life at Walden was not strictly secluded. He re- 
ceived a few visitors and sometimes went to Concord to get a 
little work. Of misanthropy he made no profession, though he 
“ never found the companion that was so companionable as soli- 
tude.” His hut was supposed to be a station on “ the great under 
ground railway ” for runaway slaves. The only political question 
which stirred him was abolitionism. After two years of hermit 
life Thoreau believed that its purpose was satisfied. He was no 
longer a “ parcel of vain strivings,” but had evolved a theory that 
life is not a hardship but a pastime if one lives simply, and that 
life it was which gave him content. The chief points in this 
theory were that the maintenance of life to advance in the direction 
of one’s dreams brings peace. 
His love of nature was absorbing. In wildness he saw the 
preservation of the world. His power over animals seemed 
magical, and only matched by that of St. Francis of Assisi. He 
did not regard animals as aliens, but as possessing “ the character 
and importance of another order of men.” Human sympathy 
and innocence many animals readily perceive, presumably from 
minute characteristics of behaviour, and for this reason, per- 
haps, his presence was not disturbing. Thoreau also knew how 
to sit still. Birds, reptiles, and fish would transact their busi- 
ness round him. One of his most surprising feats was to thrust 
his hand in the water and bring up fish, which lay placidly there- 
in. His hermitage was inhabited by birds, squirrels, hares and 
moles. Snakes coiled round his leg. Often he rescued and 
protected foxes from the hunt. 
His fascination over children (probably for the same reasons) 
was as complete as over -wild animals, and one of his great de- 
lights was to lead a band of boys and girls to pick huckleberries. 
A boy who stumbles and scatters his fruit he consoles by the 
explanation that nature provides such losses for next year’s 
crop. 
His view of nature -was optimistic. Everything is working 
to some wise and gracious end. Joy is the condition of life. 
No man living in the midst of nature with average senses should 
be melancholy. “ Nothing can rightly compel a simple and 
brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship 
of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to 
me.” Each individual should develop in his own place and 
under the natural conditions of that place. “ I think nothing is 
to be hoped from you,” he says, “ if this bit of mould under 
your feet is not sweeter to you than any other in this world or 
in any world.” 
