This is wonderful, Paul, thank you so much for the imaginative perspective. It reminds me of a passage in Thoreau’s “A Winter Walk” essay of 1843, where he narrates coming to a woodcutter’s clearing on his ramble, […]

Wonderful Mike, so good of your to allow your full PDF to be shared here!

I urge anyone interested in this problematic to consult Mike’s Transcendental Ethos, p. 22 ff.

Here Cousin gets a fuller gloss and […]

I agree with Mike that Emerson’s notion of the “me” and “not me” in his essay “Nature” (1836) may also be at play here. Interestingly, Victor Cousin in his Introduction to the History of Philosophy (1828-29; B […]

This is a very good question. As Thoreau’s next paragraph § 82 makes clear, the numbers given here are to be seen as “comparative” at best. In a generous mood, one might say that Thoreau’s narrator strives to […]

This is a perceptive comment by Alireza, which asks us to probe deeper into Thoreau’s writing; always difficult, but always rewarding in the end. As inspired by Alireza, I wonder if the passage also touches on the […]

Thoreau borrows liberally here from a now largely forgotten treatise, Loring Dudley Chapin’s Vegetable Kingdom; or, Handbook of Plants and Fruits (New York, J. Lott, 1843). From Sattelmeyer’s Thoreau’s Rea […]