e universe will appear less
complex and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor
weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air your work need
not be lost; that is where they should be, now put the foundations
under them." ... "Then we will love with the license of a higher order
of beings." Is that a doctrine? Perhaps. At any rate, between the lines
of some such passage as this lie some of the fountain heads that water
the spiritual fields of his philosophy and the seeds from which they
are sown (if indeed his whole philosophy is but one spiritual garden).
His experiments, social and economic, are a part of its cultivation and
for the harvest--and its transmutation, he trusts to moments of
inspiration--"only what is thought, said, and done at a certain rare
coincidence is good."

Thoreau's experiment at Walden was, broadly speaking, one of these
moments. It stands out in the casual and popular opinion as a kind of
adventure--harmless and amusing to some, significant and important to
others; but its significance lies in the fact that in trying to
practice an ideal he prepared his mind so that it could better bring
others "into the Walden-state-of-mind." He did not ask for a literal
approval, or in fact for any approval. "I would not stand between any
man and his genius." He would have no one adopt his manner of life,
unless in doing so he adopts his own--besides, by that time "I may have
found a better one." But if he preached hard he practiced harder what
he preached--harder than most men. Throughout Walden a text that he is
always pounding out is "Time." Time for inside work out-of-doors;
preferably out-of-doors, "though you perhaps may have some pleasant,
thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor house." Wherever the
place--time there must be. Time to show the unnecessariness of
necessities which clog up time. Time to contemplate the value of man to
the universe, of the universe to man, man's excuse for being. Time FROM
the demands of social conventions. Time FROM too much labor for some,
which means too much to eat, too much to wear, too much material, too
much materialism for others. Time FROM the "hurry and waste of life."
Time FROM the "St. Vitus Dance." BUT, on the other side of the ledger,
time FOR learning that "there is no safety in stupidity alone." Time
FOR introspection. Time FOR reality. Time FOR expansion. Time FOR
practicing the art, of living the art of living. Thoreau has been