348 
WALDEN. 
they ever got up early enough. “ They pretend,” as I 
hear, “that the verses of Kabir have four different 
senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doc¬ 
trine of the Yedas;” but in this part of the world it is 
considered a ground for complaint if a man’s writings 
admit of more than one interpretation. While England 
endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor 
to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more 
widely and fatally? 
I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, 
but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found 
with my pages on this score than was found with the 
Walden ice. Southern customers objected to its blue 
color, which is the evidence of its purity, as if it were 
muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white, 
but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like the 
mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure 
ether beyond. 
Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, 
and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared 
with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But 
what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better 
than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself be¬ 
cause he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the 
biggest pygmy that he can ? Let every one mind his 
own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. 
Why should we be in such desperate haste to suc¬ 
ceed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man 
does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is 
because he hears a different drummer. Let him step 
to the music which he hears, however measured or 
far away. It is not important that he should mature 
as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his 
