disregarded material possessions during his experiment at Walden to refine his lifestyle to one of simplicity, not "frittered away by detail" (173). By simplifying one's life, he believed one would be able to see the essentials and beauty that are residual in nature.The nation itself, with all its so called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. (173)Thoreau did not measure things in monetary terms but instead in how much "life" is exchanged for them. Walden pond freed him from slavery; the enslavement to material things. He called for everyone to witness his personal growth during his sojourn at Walden pond and renounce the avarice of society. "...he ultimately developed a moral philosophy in which doing without superfluities became a virtue in itself and he certainly implied that the richest and the most secure would do well to adopt what he called 'voluntary poverty'" (Krutch 52). Thoreau's principles were based on his belief that humanity was losing sight of what was most important: the trinity of God, nature, and the individual. Greed and materialism subjugate intuition and the passion to achieve divine wisdom. What people wore and owned became more important than what they thought, how they felt, and how they reflected the rhythm of nature.Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature and Henry David Thoreau's Walden provide a window into the mind of a Transcendentalist-a mind which prized the divinity of nature, individuality and rejection of materialism. Both men were able to recognize the divinity which is inherent in both humanity as well as ...
