Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/365

Rh books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all." "Books should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land." Like the most potent literary prophets of to-day he urged primal study of the great books of the past, the human, vital world-books. Again, with predictive insight he made a strong plea for the study of all the scriptures, in a broad sense, the ethics and religion of Hebrews, Hindoos, Persians, Chinese; to him these were of as great interest as they are to the modern student of comparative religions.

To his exhaustive literary fund, he added a branch of research that was distinctly American. Interested from a lad in Indian customs, he made careful study of the race on his excursions, both from the standpoint of ethnology and sociology. Through interchange of facts with his famous guide, Joe Polis, in the Maine woods, he gained an insight, free from rhapsodic sentiment. He well distinguished their mental traits from those of the white man;—"The constitution of the Indian mind appears to be the very opposite of the white man's. He is acquainted with a different side of nature. He measures his life by winters, not summers. His