Now
Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like
a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish
solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly,
something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with
dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the
world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish
virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into
a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake
of certain virtuous self-indulgences. It is true that his
tastes were noble; that his ruling passion was to keep
himself unspotted from the world; and that his luxuries were
all of the same healthy order as cold tubs and early rising.
But a man may be both coldly cruel in the pursuit of
goodness, and morbid even in the pursuit of health. I cannot
lay my hands on the passage in which he explains his
abstinence from tea and coffee, but I am sure I have the
meaning correctly. It is this; He thought it bad economy and
worthy of no true virtuoso to spoil the natural rapture of
the morning with such muddy stimulants; let him but see the
sun rise, and he was already sufficiently inspirited for the
labours of the day. That may be reason good enough to
abstain from tea; but when we go on to find the same man, on
the same or similar grounds, abstain from nearly everything
that his neighbours innocently and pleasurably use, and from
the rubs and trials of human society itself into the bargain,
we recognise that valetudinarian healthfulness which is more
delicate than sickness itself.
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