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