mystic, a Transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot." To complete his self-index, he should have affixed poet, for his focus of criticism upon science is ever that of a poet. He disputes the exclusive attitude of scientists, who restrict their studies to the actual object, and so neglect its subjective effects. He cares not whether the vision of a rainbow is "a waking thought or a dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or the dark."
As poet, he has great respect for the results of science, while he objects to their anatomic methods. He has compared the poet to an artist with color, the scientist to a sketcher with pencil. Again he urges that the naturalist, in describing an animal, should study its anima, its spirit, the living creature. His advocacy and example in this regard have found a worthy exponent in the popular naturalist of to day, Ernest Seton-Thompson. Declaring that no person can see, at the same time, as poet and scientist, Thoreau avers,—"The poet's second love may be science (not his first) when use has worn off the bloom." His nomenclature of science was general and broad for that time; his reading included nearly all the best authorities, but he was especially familiar with the earlier nature-students,—Aristotle, Pliny, Linnæus, Gerard, Tusser and Walton. His
