Only half a dozen
or so have died since the world began." Such passages as this
reveal a very different Thoreau from the Thoreau who is supposed
to have spent his days in the company of swamp-blackbirds and
woodchucks. He had, in fact, one of the highest qualifications
for human society, an absolute honesty of mind. "We select
granite," he says, "for the underpinning of our houses and barns;
we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an
underpinning of granite truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our
sills are rotten . . . . In proportion as our inward life fails,
we go more constantly and desperately to the postoffice. You may
depend upon it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the
greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive
correspondence, has not heard from himself this long time."
This hard, basic individualism was for Thoreau the foundation of
all enduring social relations, and the dullest observer of
twentieth century America can see that Thoreau's doctrine is
needed as much as ever. His sharp-edged personality provokes
curiosity and pricks the reader into dissent or emulation as the
case may be, but its chief ethical value to our generation lies
in the fact that here was a Transcendentalist who stressed, not
the life of the senses, though he was well aware of their
seductiveness, but the stubborn energy of the will.
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