Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/370

334 preference for mental and spiritual growth, but from which he often emerged to mingle in broader affairs. We have seen the man in Maine woods and in Lyceum, in Walden retirement and fronting the crisis of the Abolition movement. While self-improvement was his primal aim, one must not forget its corollary,—“I believe in the inﬁnite joy and satisfaction of helping myself and others to the extent of my ability.” Self-expansion was the preliminary step to true service. He mingled rigid, elementary simplicity of life with a poetry and idealism wholly unsurpassed. So, in his literature, his themes and treatment may seem egotistic and constrained, sometimes trivial; but his aims are lofty, his conclusions are of universal import. Few characters offer more enticements for censure, even for caricature, on the externals of presence and actions. His nature was too complex to be consistent in every iota of progress, but the trend was unswerving and the life-expression was consistent in all large manifestations. His ideals were too high to adapt themselves to the restless conditions of modern life but they suffered neither vacillation nor compromise. With many defects of temperament and lack of amenities and graces of mien, with ﬂaws of prejudice and perversity in mental as well as social nature, Thoreau was yet one of the large