Page:The writings of Henry David Thoreau, v6.djvu/18

vi nature an observer, as making no discoveries, as being surprised by phenomena familiar to other people, though he adds that this "is one of his chief charms as a writer," since "everything grows fresh under his hand." Another, whose criticism is generally very favorable, says he was too much occupied with himself, not simple enough to be a good observer, that "he did not love nature for her own sake," "with an unmixed, disinterested love, as Gilbert White did, for instance," even "cannot say that there was any felicitous" "seeing." This last statement seems surprising. Still another is puzzled to explain how a man who was so bent upon self-improvement, who could so little forget himself and the conventions of society, could yet study nature so intelligently. But the very fact that Thoreau "did not love nature for her own sake" "with an unmixed, disinterested love," rather looked beyond and above, whither she points, to "a far Azore," to

and was not specially bent upon being an intelligent student of nature, an accurate scientific observer or natural historian, but sometimes lamented that his observation was taking too exclusively that turn; the very fact that he aimed rather at self-improvement, if one pleases to call