morning." This seems unworthy of "accompanying the undulations of
celestial music" found on this same page, in which an "ode to
morning" is sung--"the awakening to newly acquired forces and
aspirations from within to a higher life than we fell asleep
from...for all memorable events transpire in the morning time and
in the morning atmosphere." Thus it is not the whole tone scale
of the Orient but the scale of a Walden morning--"music in single
strains," as Emerson says, which inspired many of the polyphonies
and harmonies that come to us through his poetry. Who can be
forever melancholy "with Aeolian music like this"?

This is but one of many ways in which Thoreau looked to Nature
for his greatest inspirations. In her he found an analogy to the
Fundamental of Transcendentalism. The "innate goodness" of Nature
is or can be a moral influence; Mother Nature, if man will but
let her, will keep him straight--straight spiritually and so
morally and even mentally. If he will take her as a companion,
and teacher, and not as a duty or a creed, she will give him
greater thrills and teach him greater truths than man can give or
teach--she will reveal mysteries that mankind has long concealed.
It was the soul of Nature not natural history that Thoreau was
after. A naturalist's mind is one predominantly scientific, more
interested in the relation of a flower to other flowers than its
relation to any philosophy or anyone's philosophy. A transcendent
love of Nature and writing "Rhus glabra" after sumac doesn't
necessarily make a naturalist. It would seem that although
thorough in observation (not very thorough according to Mr.
Burroughs) and with a keen perception of the specific, a
naturalist--inherently--was exactly what Thoreau was not. He
seems rather to let Nature put him under her microscope than to