Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/51

Rh Some modern psychologists declare that too great emphasis has been laid upon heredity and environment, that each person is architect of his own character to a far greater degree than is commonly granted, and that many evolutions of later traits are wholly distinct from influences of birth or early training. General readers, however, still prefer to retrace personality to the intermixture of racial qualities which have been expanded or suppressed by environment. In a study of Thoreau such method brings ample returns. Many contradictory traits are reflex expressions of complex inheritance. In subtle humor, not unmixed with earnest aspiration, he once suggested that his family name might be derived from "Thorer, the dog-footed," of Scandinavian myth, the strongest man of his age. In tracing the mythical genealogy, he says,—"So it seems that from one branch of the family were descended the kings of England, and from the other, myself." With characteristic accuracy, however, he traced his French and Scotch parental ancestry and the Anglo-Saxon Puritanism inherited from his mother's family.

The grandfather, John Thoreau, was born at St. Heliers on the Isle of Jersey and, when a boy just entering manhood, came to America on a privateer in 1773. In his journal, June 11, 1853, Henry