Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/240

questions are of no avail. Personalities, when changed by individual imaginations or desires, lose their identity; they must be considered as they actually existed. Poe, with poise and restraint, would not have been the visionary poet of "Ulalume" and "The Raven." De Quincey, unallured by drugs and dreams, would not have been the author of the matchless "Confessions." Abraham Lincoln, with broad refinement, would no longer be the same unique, paradoxical, intrepid statesman. Thoreau, under widening influences and distractions, would have lost force and depth. Thoreau's philosophy, his life, his writings, are of lasting interest and value because they are so intensive, so focalized, yet reflective of the passing phases of the mental period in which he lived, and prophetic of the threatening dangers revealed to his soul in its seclusion and serenity. Mr. Burroughs has said,—"An extreme product of civilization and of modern culture, he was yet as untouched by the worldly and commercial spirit of his age and country as any red man that ever haunted the shores of his native stream." Such analogous comment is misleading. Thoreau was not "untouched" by these tendencies but he was, more truly, untainted by them. He knew well the elements which corrupt and degrade society, he felt their effect at times with deep re-