12 
WALDEN. 
advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, 
and probably cannot tell me any thing, to the purpose. 
Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by 
me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If 
I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure 
to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about. 
One farmer says to me, “ You cannot live on vegeta¬ 
ble food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones 
with ; ” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to 
supplying his system with the raw material of bones; 
walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, 
with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumber¬ 
ing plough along in spite of every obstacle. Some 
things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the 
most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries 
merely, and in others still are entirely unknown. 
The whole ground of human life seems to some to 
have been gone over by their predecessors, both the 
heights and the valleys, and all things to have been 
cared for. According to Evelyn, “ the wise Solomon 
prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; 
and the Roman praetors have decided how often you 
may go into your neighbor’s land to gather the acorns 
which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs 
to that neighbor.” Hippocrates has even left directions 
how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends 
of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubted¬ 
ly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have 
exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as 
Adam. But man’s capacities have never been meas¬ 
ured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by 
any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever 
have been thy failures hitherto, “be not afflicted, my 
