Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/275

 an:. 35.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 251

No wonder that, out of such a union, not as end, but as accompaniment, comes the undying race of man. The womb is a most fertile soil.

Some have asked if the stock of men could not be improved, if they could not be bred as cattle. Let Love be purified, and all the rest will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the panacea for all the ills of the world.

The only excuse for reproduction is improve ment. Nature abhors repetition. Beasts merely propagate their kind ; but the offspring of noble men and women will be superior to themselves, as their aspirations are. By their fruits ye shall know them.

TO HARRISON BLAKE (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, February 27, 1853.

MR. BLAKE, I have not answered your letter before, because I have been almost constantly in the fields surveying of late. It is long since I have spent many days so profitably in a pecuni ary sense ; so unprofitably, it seems to me, in a more important sense. I have earned just a dollar a day for seventy-six days past; for, though I charge at a higher rate for the days which are seen to be spent, yet so many more are spent than appears. This is instead of lec turing, which has not offered, to pay for that book which I printed. 1 I have not only cheap i The Week.