Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/150

 Life witJioiit Principle. 139 great resources of a couutr}^ ^^ that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these. The chief want^ in every State that I have been into_, was a high and earnest pur-' pose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out " the great resources^' of Nature, and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man naturally dies out of her. When we want culture more than potatoes^ and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but meii, — those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.

In short, as a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

AVhat is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairlv recoofnized that it concerns me at all. The news- papers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge ; and this, one would say, is all that saves it ; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. 1 do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much. I have not got to answer for having read a sino'le President's Messa^-e. A strauore ao^e of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to- a private mans door, and utter their com- plaints at his elbow ! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed^ and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the