14 
WALDEN. 
incurable form of disease. We are made to exagger¬ 
ate the importance of what work we do; and yet how 
much is not done by us ! or, what if we had been 
taken sick ? How vigilant we are! determined not to 
live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the 
alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and com¬ 
mit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sin¬ 
cerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, 
and denying the possibility of change. This is the only 
way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can 
be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a mira¬ 
cle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking 
place every instant. Confucius said, “To know that we 
know what we know, and that we do not know what we 
do not know, that is true knowledge.” When one man 
has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his 
understanding, I foresee that all men will at length 
establish their lives on that basis. 
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trou¬ 
ble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and 
how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or, at least, 
careful. It would be some advantage to live a primi¬ 
tive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward 
civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessa¬ 
ries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain 
them; or even to look over the old day-books of the 
merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly 
bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what 
are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of 
ages have had but little influence on the essential 
laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, proba- 
