VI 
INTRODUCTORY. 
nary, which fully possessed him, — an ambition 
to obey his purest instincts, to follow implicitly 
the finest intimations of his genius, to secure 
thus the fullest and freest life of which he was 
capable. He chose to lay emphasis on his rela¬ 
tions to nature and the universe rather than 
on those he bore to the ant-hill of society, not 
to be merely another wheel in the social ma¬ 
chine. He felt that the present is only one 
among the possible forms of civilization, and so 
preferred not to commit himself to it. Herein 
lies the secret of that love of the wild which 
was so prominent a trait in his character. 
It is evident that the main object of society 
now is to provide for our material wants, and 
still more and more luxuriously for them, while 
the higher wants of our nature are made secon¬ 
dary, put off for some Sunday service and future 
leisure. A great lesson of Thoreau’s life is that 
all this must be reversed, that whatever relates 
to the supply of inferior wants must be simpli¬ 
fied, in order that the higher life may be en¬ 
riched, though he desired no servile imitation 
of his own methods, for perhaps the highest les¬ 
son of all to be learnt from him is that the only 
way of salvation lies in the strictest fidelity to 
one’s own genius. 
A late English reviewer, who shows in many 
respects a very just appreciation of Thoreau, 
