Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/83

Rh active population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants, to draw out the great resources of the country.&quot; But what are the &quot;artificial wants&quot; to be encouraged, and the &quot;great resources&quot; of a country? surely not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves of his native (?) Virginia, or that fertility of soil which produces these. The chief want is ever a life of deep experiences, i. e., character, which alone draws out &quot;the great resources&quot; of Nature. When our wants cease to be chiefly superficial and trivial, which is commonly meant by artificial, and begin to be wants of character, then the great resources of a country are taxed and drawn out, and the result, the staple production, is poetry. Have the great resources of Virginia been drawn out by such artificial wants as there exist? Was that country really designed by its maker to produce slaves and tobacco? or something more than freemen, and food for freemen? Wants of character, aspirations, this is what is wanted, but what is called civilization does not always substitute this for the barren simplicity of the savage.

June 8, 1860. 2 To Well Meadow via Walden. Within a day or two has begun that season of summer when you see afternoon showers—perhaps with thunder—or the threat of them dark in the horizon, and are uncertain