We need have no respect for a
state of artificial training. True health is to be able to
do without it. Shakespeare, we can imagine, might begin the
day upon a quart of ale, and yet enjoy the sunrise to the
full as much as Thoreau, and commemorate his enjoyment in
vastly better verses. A man who must separate himself from
his neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in much the
same case with one who requires to take opium for the same
purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the
world, do a man's work, and still preserve his first and pure
enjoyment of existence.
Thoreau's faculties were of a piece with his moral shyness;
for they were all delicacies. He could guide himself about
the woods on the darkest night by the touch of his feet. He
could pick up at once an exact dozen of pencils by the
feeling, pace distances with accuracy, and gauge cubic
contents by the eye. His smell was so dainty that he could
perceive the foetor of dwelling-houses as he passed them by
at night; his palate so unsophisticated that, like a child,
he disliked the taste of wine - or perhaps, living in
America, had never tasted any that was good; and his
knowledge of nature was so complete and curious that he could
have told the time of year, within a day or so, by the aspect
of the plants. In his dealings with animals, he was the
original of Hawthorne's Donatello.
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