Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/220

194 not troublous to one who found unfailing companions in nature and a few trustful friends. Since leisure to think and "saunter" was a necessary condition for sanative life, he would make his wants so few that limited labor would supply them and leave him time for soul-culture.

Here is no assumption that these principles, as emphasized by Thoreau, were to any extent original. He was, in one sense, the most mimetic of men in his mental processes. He had assimilated much of the philosophy of Kant and his school, of Rousseau, of Coleridge, of Carlyle and of Emerson. The friendship of such men as Brownson, Alcott and Lane, contact and discussions with varied scholars, authors, and men of simple agrarian tastes,—all such influences gave him nucleus for many thoughts which his lucid and propulsive mind could amplify, combine, and apply. He would test these principles as creed for daily life. In him the practical sagacity and strong sense of proportion, which combined with his poetry and philosophy, saved him from the vague mysticism and pure ideality of Alcott, Ellery Channing and other friends among the Transcendentalists. He did, however, fully incorporate in his creed the basal aim of their teaching,—the substitution of inward light for outward law in the entire evolution and expression of his principles.