Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/28

Rh and more comfortable to swim with the tide, and to avoid placing themselves in antagonism to that "public opinion" which, in America, even more than in England, is so tremendous a power. The charge of indifferentism is therefore a perfectly vague and pointless one, unless it be shown that the indifference complained of relates to matters of real and vital import; to be unconcerned about trifles is one thing, to neglect matters of conscience is another. Now Thoreau, as we learn from the statements of those who knew him intimately, was absolutely indifferent to many things which the man of the world holds dear; he did not care for money, or personal comforts, or fine clothes, or success in business, or the innumerable cumbersome trappings, physical and intellectual, which are foolishly supposed, by those who have never tried to dispense with them, to be an essential part of modern civilization. It was his opinion that "a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone"; and his general attitude on this point may be gathered from that typical reply of his, when he was asked which dish he would prefer at table—"The nearest."

But in all cases where principle was at stake, Thoreau's will was as inflexible as the cast iron to which Hawthorne compared him; herein contrasting sharply with the mental and moral pliability of the ordinary member of society. "No man," he says, "ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience." In his fine essay on "Life without Principle," he re-enforces those salutary C