INTRODUCTORY. 
Y 
themes, and no one has written with a finer ap¬ 
preciation of it. Still, in ordinary society, he 
found it so difficult to reach essential humanity: 
through the civilized and conventional, that he 
turned to nature, who was ever ready to meet 
his highest mood. From the haunts of business 
and the common intercourse of men he went 
into the woods and fields as from a solitary 
desert into society. He might have said with 
another, — he did virtually ay, — u If we go sol¬ 
itary to streams and mountains, it is to meet 
man there where he is more than ever man.” 
But while I have sought in these selections to 
represent the progressive life of nature, I have 
also been careful to give Thoreau’s thoughts, 
because though his personality is in a striking 
degree single, he being ever the same man in 
his conversation, letters, books, and the details 
of his life, though his observation is imbedded 
in his philosophy (“how to observe is how to 
behave,” etc.), yet if any distinction may be 
made, his thoughts or philosophy seem to me 
incomparably the more interesting and impor¬ 
tant. He declined from the first to live for 
the common prizes of society, for wealth or even 
what is called a competence, for professional, 
social, political, or even literary success ; and 
this not from a want of ambition or a purpose, 
but from an ambition far higher than the ordi- 
