As a philosopher or expositor and interpreter of a principle, Thoreau
is often simply grotesque. His passion for strong and striking figures
usually gets the best of him. In discussing the relation that exists
between the speaker or lecturer and his audience he says, "The
lecturer will read best those parts of his lecture which are best
heard," as if the reading did not precede the hearing! Then comes this
grotesque analogy: "I saw some men unloading molasses-hogsheads from a
truck at a depot the other day, rolling them up an inclined plane. The
truckman stood behind and shoved, after putting a couple of ropes, one
round each end of the hogshead, while two men standing in the depot
steadily pulled at the ropes. The first man was the lecturer, the last
was the audience." I suppose the hogshead stands for the big thoughts
of the speaker which he cannot manage at all without the active
coöperation of the audience. The truth is, people assemble in a
lecture hall in a passive but expectant frame of mind. They are ready
to be pleased or displeased. They are there like an instrument to be
played upon by the orator. He may work his will with them. Without
their sympathy his success will not be great, but the triumph of his
art is to win their sympathy. Those who went to scoff when the Great
Preacher spoke, remained to pray. No man could speak as eloquently to
empty seats, or to a dummy audience, as to a hall filled with
intelligent people, yet Thoreau's ropes and hogsheads and pulling and
pushing truckmen absurdly misrepresent the true relation that exists
between a speaker and his hearers. Of course a speaker finds it uphill
work if his audience is not with him, but that it is not with him is
usually his own fault.
Thoreau's merits as a man and a writer are so many and so great that I
have not hesitated to make much of his defects. Indeed, I have with
malice aforethought ransacked his works to find them. But after they
are all charged up against him, the balance that remains on the credit
side of the account is so great that they do not disturb us.
There has been but one Thoreau, and we should devoutly thank the gods
of New England for the precious gift. Thoreau's work lives and will
continue to live because, in the first place, the world loves a writer
who can flout it and turn his back upon it and yet make good; and
again because the books which he gave to the world have many and very
high literary and ethical values. They are fresh, original, and
stimulating. He drew a gospel out of the wild; he brought messages
from the wood gods to men; he made a lonely pond in Massachusetts a
fountain of the purest and most elevating thoughts, and, with his
great neighbor Emerson, added new luster to a town over which the muse
of our colonial history had long loved to dwell.