simplicity of living and the higher civilization—indeed, a true refinement will never be realized until men have learned the wisdom and pleasure of the course which Thoreau inculcates. It is important to emphasize the fact that it is not civilization in general, but the particular vices incidental to civilization, against which his censure is directed. While recognising that the civilized state is preferable to the uncivilized, he yet maintains that the latter is free from certain evils by which the former is afflicted, and urges that "we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage" of organized society. "To combine the hardiness of the savage with the intellectualness of the civilized man" was the problem to which Thoreau invited the attention of a self-indulgent and luxurious age, and in pursuing this course he did not scruple to avow his contempt for many of the pious fictions of conventional life. The "Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers," apart from their worth as literature, afford a valuable corrective of the erroneous notion that the man who preached this gospel of simplicity was unable to sympathize with the higher interests and aspirations of mankind. Not such was the opinion of those who had the best opportunity of judging him, as may be seen from the following memorial lines,[1] which convey no empty panegyric, but a faithful tribute to the character of one of the justest and humanest of the real men of genius whom America has yet produced:—
- ↑ A. Bronson Alcott's "Sonnets and Canzonets."
