Religious Scholar

Thoreau has been dismissed as a mere observer of the natural world in the years following the completion of his masterpiece, Walden. But there was always more to his relationship with Nature than simply naming plants and recording the behavior of animals. Invited by the Association for the Advancement of Science to describe his special interests, the usually scientific Thoreau demurred, and in fact, even challenged the purely scientific objectivity with which his methods are often linked. In his Journal for March 5, 1853, he disclosed his true relationship with the environment:

“...I felt that it would be to make myself the laughing-stock of the scientific community to describe or attempt to describe to them that branch of science which specially interests me, inasmuch as they do not believe in a science which deals with the higher law. So I was obliged to speak to their condition and describe to them that poor part of me which alone they can understand. The fact is, I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot. Now I think of it, I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations.”

Like Einstein in the 20^th century, and all scientist-philosophers who seek meaning beyond appearances, Thoreau found spiritual truth in the mystery that lies at the core of the phenomenal universe: as the Upanishads call it, that by which the eyes see, the ears hear, the mind perceives. The natural world may be known through science, but the mysterious essence remains elusive, always the realm of religion, dreams, and art.