their prevalence, and
speculation had not suggested to him any other. At another time, hearing
Plato's definition of a man--a biped without feathers--and that one
exhibited a cock plucked and called it Plato's man, he thought it
an important difference that the knees bent the wrong way. He would
sometimes exclaim, "How I love to talk! By George, I could talk all
day!" I asked him once, when I had not seen him for many months, if he
had got a new idea this summer. "Good Lord"--said he, "a man that has
to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do
well. May be the man you hoe with is inclined to race; then, by gorry,
your mind must be there; you think of weeds." He would sometimes ask me
first on such occasions, if I had made any improvement. One winter day I
asked him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a
substitute within him for the priest without, and some higher motive for
living. "Satisfied!" said he; "some men are satisfied with one thing,
and some with another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be
satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the
table, by George!" Yet I never, by any manoeuvring, could get him to
take the spiritual view of things; the highest that he appeared to
conceive of was a simple expediency, such as you might expect an
animal to appreciate; and this, practically, is true of most men. If
I suggested any improvement in his mode of life, he merely answered,
without expressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet he thoroughly
believed in honesty and the like virtues.

There was a certain positive originality, however slight, to be detected
in him, and I occasionally observed that he was thinking for himself and
expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I would any day
walk ten miles to observe it, and it amounted to the re-origination of
many of the institutions of society. Though he hesitated, and perhaps
failed to express himself distinctly, he always had a presentable
thought behind. Yet his thinking was so primitive and immersed in his
animal life, that, though more promising than a merely learned man's,
it rarely ripened to anything which can be reported. He suggested that
there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of life, however
permanently humble and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do
not pretend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was
thought to