hold her under his. He was too fond of Nature to practice
vivisection upon her. He would have found that painful, "for was
he not a part with her?" But he had this trait of a naturalist,
which is usually foreign to poets, even great ones; he observed
acutely even things that did not particularly interest him--a
useful natural gift rather than a virtue.

The study of Nature may tend to make one dogmatic, but the love
of Nature surely does not. Thoreau no more than Emerson could be
said to have compounded doctrines. His thinking was too broad for
that. If Thoreau's was a religion of Nature, as some say,-and by
that they mean that through Nature's influence man is brought to
a deeper contemplation, to a more spiritual self-scrutiny, and
thus closer to God,-it had apparently no definite doctrines. Some
of his theories regarding natural and social phenomena and his
experiments in the art of living are certainly not doctrinal in
form, and if they are in substance it didn't disturb Thoreau and
it needn't us..."In proportion as he simplifies his life the laws
of the 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