18 
WALDEN. 
even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live 
according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independ¬ 
ence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of 
the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practi¬ 
cally. The success of great scholars and thinkers is 
commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. 
They make shift to live merely by conformity, practi¬ 
cally as their fathers did, and are in no sense the pro¬ 
genitors of a nobler race of men. But why do men 
degenerate ever ? What makes families run out ? 
What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and 
destroys nations ? Are we sure that there is none of it 
in our own lives ? The philosopher is in advance of his 
age even in the outward form of his life. He is not 
fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. 
How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his 
vital heat by better methods than other men ? 
When a man is warmed by the several modes which 
I have described, what does he want next ? Surely not 
more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer 
food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more 
abundant clothing, more numerous incessant and hotter 
fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things 
which are necessary to life, there is another alternative 
than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adven¬ 
ture on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having 
commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, 
for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now 
send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has 
man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he 
may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above ? 
— for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they 
bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and 
