balance he would have lost "hitting power." Again, it seems that
something of the above depends upon the degree of greatness or
goodness. A very great and especially a very good man has no separate
private and public life. His own personality though not identical with
outside personalities is so clear or can be so clear to them that it
appears identical, and as the world progresses towards its inevitable
perfection this appearance becomes more and more a reality. For the
same reason that all great men now agree, in principle but not in
detail, in so far as words are able to communicate agreement, on the
great fundamental truths. Someone says: "Be specific--what great
fundamentals?" Freedom over slavery; the natural over the artificial;
beauty over ugliness; the spiritual over the material; the goodness of
man; the Godness of man; have been greater if he hadn't written plays.
Some say that a true composer will never write an opera because a truly
brave man will not take a drink to keep up his courage; which is not
the same thing as saying that Shakespeare is not the greatest figure in
all literature; in fact, it is an attempt to say that many novels, most
operas, all Shakespeares, and all brave men and women (rum or no rum)
are among the noblest blessings with which God has endowed
mankind--because, not being perfect, they are perfect examples pointing
to that perfection which nothing yet has attained.

Thoreau's mysticism at times throws him into elusive moods--but an
elusiveness held by a thread to something concrete and specific, for he
had too much integrity of mind for any other kind. In these moments it
is easier to follow his thought than to follow him. Indeed, if he were
always easy to follow, after one had caught up with him, one might find
that it was not Thoreau.

It is, however, with no mystic rod that he strikes at institutional
life. Here again he felt the influence of the great transcendental
doctrine of "innate goodness" in human nature--a reflection of the like
in nature; a philosophic part which, by the way, was a more direct
inheritance in Thoreau than in his brother transcendentalists. For
besides what he received from a native Unitarianism a good part must
have descended to him through his Huguenot blood from the
"eighteenth-century French philosophy." We trace a reason here for his
lack of interest in "the church." For if revealed religion is the path
between God and man's spiritual part--a kind o