Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/29

18 though unpopular lessons of integrity and hardihood which form the moral of Walden, pointing out, with all the incisiveness of speech and felicity of illustration for which his style is conspicuous, the follies and sophisms which underlie the worldly wisdom on which much of our civilized life is based—the useless toil which is dignified with the name of industry; the degradation and loss of freedom by which a so-called "independency" is too often purchased; the immorality of the various methods of trading and money-making, respectable or the contrary; the hollowness of much that passes as science or religion; and the ineptitudes and frivolities of social intercourse, which can corrupt and weaken the strength and sanctity of the mind. The conclusion of the whole matter brings us back to the lesson which Thoreau is never tired of repeating—the need of individuality and real personal development. "It is for want of a man," he tells us, in one of his epigrammatic, paradoxical utterances, "that there are so many men." Thoreau's gospel of social reform may perhaps be not unfairly summed up in one word—simplicity. He would have each individual test for himself the advantages or disadvantages of the various customs and appliances which have gradually been amassed in a complex and artificial state of society, and make sure that in continuing to employ them he does so from an actual preference, and not from mere force of habit and tradition.

It has been wittily said of Thoreau, by Dr. O. W. Holmes, that he was a would-be "nullifier of civilization, who insisted on nibbling his asparagus at the wrong end." But in reality there is no such conflict between