Listen to his paean to existential freedom, which as sadly in his day as in ours (probably more so in ours) necessarily celebrates such freedom as a structured argument against the kinds of financial wantonness the modern division of labor encourages: sedate, ineffectual beings attuned to the daily gratification of false, expensive comforts.
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,--that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven.
It is more sad for our day, but this sadness is temporary, for we are far, far more capable of such freedom than Thoreau was then. Technology and a technocratic capitalism may be the taskmaster of modern financial servitude, but with so much less investment of badassity now than what was necessary then, it is also the enabler of the greatest personal freedom ever known by society. With each new day you can sell your technology-borne luxury for idleness (servitude) or invest it in your own Freedom.
