"The order of things should be reversed: the seventh should be man's day of toil, in which to earn his living by the sweat of his brow, and the other six his Sabbath of the affections and the soul, in which to range this wide-spread garden, and drink in the soft influences and sublime revelations of Nature."
This was an anticipation of his theory of labor and leisure set forth in "Walden," where he says:—
"For more than five years I maintained myself solely by the labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living; the whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I found that the occupation of day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in the year to support one."
This was true of Thoreau, because, as he said, his "greatest skill had been to want but little." In him this economy was a part of morality, or even of religion.
"The high moral impulse," says Channing, "never deserted him, and he resolved early to read no book, take no walk, undertake no enterprise, but such as he could endure to give an account of to himself." How early this austerity appeared in what he wrote, has been little noticed; but I discover it in his earliest college essays, before he was eighteen years old. Thus, in such a paper of the year 1834, this passage occurs:—
"There appears to be something noble, something exalted, in giving up one's own interest for that of his fellow-beings. He is a true patriot, who, casting aside all selfish thoughts, and not suffering his benevolent intentions to be polluted by thinking of the fame he is acquiring, presses forward in the great work he has undertaken, with unremitted zeal; who is as one pursuing his way through a garden abounding with fruits of every description, without turning aside, or regarding the brambles which impede his progress, but pressing onward with his eyes fixed upon the golden fruit before him. He is worthy of all praise; his is, indeed, true greatness."
In contrast with this man the young philosopher sets before us the man who wishes, as the Greeks said, πλεονεκτειν [pleonektein],—to get more than his square meal at the banquet of life.
"Aristocrats may say what they please,—liberty and equal rights are and ever will be grateful, till nature herself shall change; and he who is ambitious to exercise authority over his fellow-beings, with no view to their benefit or injury, is to be regarded as actuated by peculiarly selfish motives. Self-gratification must be his sole object. Perhaps he is desirous that his name may be handed down to posterity; that in after ages something more may be said of him than that he lived and died. His deeds may never be forgotten; but is this greatness? If so, may I pass through life unheeded and unknown!"
What was his own ambition—a purpose in life which only the unthinking could ever confound with selfishness—was expressed by him early in a prayer which he threw into this verse:—
"Great God! I ask Thee for no meaner pelf,
Than that I may not disappoint myself;
That in my conduct I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.
That my weak hand may equal my firm faith,
And my life practice more than my tongue saith;
That my low conduct may not show,
Nor my relenting lines,
That I thy purpose did not know,
Or overrated thy designs."