But the progress of individuals is the essential thing; only so far as that takes place will the real progress of the race follow, and those persons contribute most to this real progress who, stepping aside from the ordinary routine, give us by their lives and thoughts a new sense of the reality of what is best, of the ideal towards which all civilization must aim; who are so in love with truth, rectitude, and the beauty of the world, including in this, first of all, the original, unimpaired beauty of the human soul, that they have little care for material prosperity, social position, or public opinion. It was not merely nature in the ordinary sense, plants, animals, the landscape, etc., which attracted Thoreau. He is continually manifesting a human interest in natural objects, and thoughts of an ideal friendship are forever haunting him. Touching the highest and fairest relation of one human soul to another, I do not believe there can be found in literature, ancient or modern, anything finer, anything which comes closer home to our best experience, than what appears in Thoreau's writings generally, and especially in "Wednesday" of the "Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers."
