The perception of truth vs. the collection of facts.

December 16.

The east was glowing with a narrow but ill-defined crescent of light, the blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon.

The woods were this morning covered with thin bars of vapor, — the evaporation of the leaves according to Sprengel, — which seemed to have been suddenly stiffened by the cold.

And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph to us poor crawlers of the plain the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon his “long levelled rules” fall sector wise, and humblest cottage windows greet their lord.

FACTS 

How indispensable to a correct study of Nature is a perception of her true meaning.

The fact will one day flower out into a truth. The season will mature and fructify what the understanding had cultivated.

Mere accumulators of facts — collectors of materials for the master-workmen — are like those plants growing in dark forests, which “put forth only leaves instead of blossoms.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 16, 1837

The blue of the zenith mingling in all possible proportions with the salmon-color of the horizon. See April 16, 1855 ("I could see very clearly the pale salmon of the eastern horizon reflected there and contrasting with an intermediate streak of skim-milk blue, — now, just after sunrise.")

And now the neighboring hilltops telegraph the Monarch's golden ensign in the east, and anon humblest cottage windows greet their lord. See April 16, 1856 ("5.30 A. M. — A little sunshine at the rising. I see it first reflected from E. Wood’s windows before I can see the sun.")

The fact will one day flower out into a truth. See June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth.”); February 18, 1852 ("I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. ... I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, ... I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all.") February 23. 1860 ("A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread.")

December 16. See A Book of the Seasons, By Henry Thoreau, December 16 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

tinyurl.com/hdt371216

This life in the present.

November 4.

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.  This life in the present. 

Let a man have thought what he will of Nature in the house, she will still be novel outdoors.  I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.

My thought is a part of the meaning of the world, and hence I use a part of the world as a symbol to express my thought.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 4, 1852

I keep out-of-doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me. See September 13, 1859 ("You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day."); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.”); July 14, 1854 ("Health is a sound relation to nature.”);