criticized for practicing his policy of expansion by living in a
vacuum--but he peopled that vacuum with a race of beings and
established a social order there, surpassing any of the precepts in
social or political history. "...for he put some things behind and
passed an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws
were around and within him, the old laws were expanded and interpreted
in a more liberal sense and he lived with the license of a higher
order"--a community in which "God was the only President" and "Thoreau
not Webster was His Orator." It is hard to believe that Thoreau really
refused to believe that there was any other life but his own, though he
probably did think that there was not any other life besides his own
for him. Living for society may not always be best accomplished by
living WITH society. "Is there any virtue in a man's skin that you must
touch it?" and the "rubbing of elbows may not bring men's minds closer
together"; or if he were talking through a "worst seller" (magazine)
that "had to put it over" he might say, "forty thousand souls at a ball
game does not, necessarily, make baseball the highest expression of
spiritual emotion." Thoreau, however, is no cynic, either in character
or thought, though in a side glance at himself, he may have held out to
be one; a "cynic in independence," possibly because of his rule laid
down that "self-culture admits of no compromise."

It is conceivable that though some of his philosophy and a good deal of
his personality, in some of its manifestations, have outward colors
that do not seem to harmonize, the true and intimate relations they
bear each other are not affected. This peculiarity, frequently seen in
his attitude towards social-economic problems, is perhaps more
emphasized in some of his personal outbursts. "I love my friends very
much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them
commonly when I am near." It is easier to see what he means than it is
to forgive him for saying it. The cause of this apparent lack of
harmony between philosophy and personality, as far as they can be
separated, may have been due to his refusal "to keep the very delicate
balance" which Mr. Van Doren in his "Critical Study of Thoreau" says
"it is necessary for a great and good man to keep between his public
and private lives, between his own personality and the whole outside
universe of personalities." Somehow one feels that if he had kept this