346 
WALDEN. 
distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen 
into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the 
earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so 
with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and 
dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep 
the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to 
take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast 
and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see 
the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to 
go below now. 
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one 
advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and 
endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will 
meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He 
will put some things behind, will pass an invisible bound¬ 
ary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin 
to establish themselves around and within him; or the 
old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a 
more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of 
a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simpli¬ 
fies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less 
complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty 
poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built 
castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is 
where they should be. How put the foundations under 
them. 
It is a ridiculous demand which England and Amer¬ 
ica make, that you shall speak so that they can under¬ 
stand you. Neither men nor toad-stools grow so. As 
if that were important, and there were not enough to 
understand you without them. As if Nature could 
support but one order of understandings, could not sus¬ 
tain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creep- 
