Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/31

Rh a key to the young man's view of life, a passage may be taken from Thoreau's &quot;Part&quot; at his college commencement, August 16, 1837. He was one of two to hold what was called a &quot;Conference&quot; on &quot;The Commercial Spirit,&quot;—his alternative or opponent in the dispute being Henry Vose, also of Concord, who, in later years, was a Massachusetts judge. Henry Thoreau, then just twenty, said:—

&quot;The characteristic of our epoch is perfect freedom,—freedom of thought and action. The indignant Greek, the oppressed Pole, the jealous American assert it. The skeptic no less than the believer, the heretic no less than the faithful child of the Church, have begun to enjoy it. It has generated an unusual degree of energy and activity; it has generated the commercial spirit. Man thinks faster and freer than ever before. He, moreover, moves faster and freer. He is more restless, because he is more independent than ever. The winds and the waves are not enough for him; he must needs ransack the bowels of the earth, that he may make for himself a highway of iron over its surface.

&quot;Indeed, could one examine this beehive of