Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/223

Rh Again, it is unjust to Thoreau to assert that his philosophy was only a spectacular presentation of Emerson's doctrines of individualism, already published in Nature, Self-Reliance, Friendship, and other essays. One could easily prepare a volume of considerable bulk from the strange parallelisms of thought found in the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, nor do Emerson's sentences always precede chronologically. That Thoreau was an imitator of Emerson will be denied, with proofs, in the next chapter. With similarity of mental outlook, devoted to the same forms of nature-communion and classic literature, environed by the same waves of philosophic teaching and local influence, the correlations and similitudes of thought are entirely consistent with absolute independence of character.

Unlike much effort of the time towards practical reform, Thoreau's plan was individualistic, as shown in the Walden incident. With Carlyle's respect for the hero-man versus the masses, he asks,—"When will the world learn that a million of men are of no importance compared with one man?" This underlying principle, which refuted altruism and utilitarianism, no less than communism, permeated his ideas on government, society, and religion. The individual, not the state, was his motto; self-expansion, not "doing good for others," his ideal. As