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Thoreau's philosophy is we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or smell beauty and strength as we can a flower or a rock. But by being close to nature, we can get a hint of the spirit that transcends material things. All we have to do is get away from useless, routine activities, go outdoors, and listen to nature as it speaks to us (Ring 25). Walden and Thoreau's other writings have made people see nature in new ways that they never saw before. Nature, Thoreau explained, brought peace of mind and encouraged people to think for themselves (Reef 12). "We can never have enough of nature," he wrote, "The wilderness, with its living and decaying trees, the thunder clouds, and the rain which lasts three weeks- (Reef 12). To Thoreau, nature was a living being. He wanted to do more than just enjoy its beauty. Thoreau wrote, "Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it" (Hough 263). .
Thoreau did not wish to live what was not life. Living is so dear. Nor did he wish to practice resignation unless it was quite necessary. Thoreau stated, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole genuine meanness of it, and publish it meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion" (Daugherty 15). .
The simple life, by whose judgment Thoreau measured men and economics, is aimed at the most complete realization of the perfectibility natural instinct in every person. In Thoreau's youth, he sought the conditions for such a life in an idealized uprising. After his experiment at Walden Pond, he moved toward reconciliation between simplicity and an economy of machines and profit.