Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/209

 CHARACTER so unique as that of Thoreau always awakens current curiosity and an anecdotal reputation for the next generation. Non-conformity alone, however, will not win the serious, tenacious interest which has centred about this man during the last forty years and is vital to-day. Two reasons may be assigned for earnest study of his life and interpretation of its messages. In the first place, his strange, complex nature was more than individual; it represented the peculiar historical and literary influences of the mid-century upon a mind of strong, yet plastic, traits. Again, Thoreau not alone developed and applied a peculiar philosophy of life, but he so expressed this philosophy, in writings of signal, compulsive force, that he raised it into an art of living, an ideal and yet attainable expansion of the nobler nature of man, through pure and constant communion with the primal, creative forces of nature and truth.

Evidence of the wide-spread admiration, often akin to worship, for him as man and author, has