312 
WALDEN. 
bottom. If be is surrounded by mountainous circum¬ 
stances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshad¬ 
ow and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a 
corresponding depth in him. But a low and smooth 
shore proves him shallow on that side. In our bodies, 
a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a cor¬ 
responding depth of thought. Also there is a bar across 
the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclina¬ 
tion ; each is our harbor for a season, in which we are 
detained and partially land-locked. These inclinations 
are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and di¬ 
rection are determined by the promontories of the shore, 
the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is gradu¬ 
ally increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a 
subsidence of the waters, so that it reaches to the sur¬ 
face, that which was at first but an inclination in the 
shore in which a thought was harbored becomes an 
individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the 
thought secures its own conditions, changes, perhaps, 
from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a 
marsh. At the advent of each individual into this life, 
may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the 
surface somewhere ? It is true, we are such poor navi¬ 
gators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and 
on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the 
bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports 
of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where 
they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents 
concur to individualize them. 
As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not dis¬ 
covered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though 
perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places 
may be found, for where the water flows into the pond 
