Thoreau had, too, a quality which is in itself an economical thing.  He did not care in the least for society.  He said that he would rather “keep bachelor’s hall in hell than go to board in heaven.”  He was not a sociable man, and sociability is in itself expensive.  He had, it is true, some devoted friends, but it seems that he would have done anything for them except see them.  He was a man of many virtues and no vices, but he was most at his ease with faddists.  Not that he avoided his fellow-men; he was always ready to see people, to talk, to play with children, but on the other hand society was not essential to him.  Yet, just and virtuous as he was, there was something radically unamiable about him:  “I love Henry,” one of his friends said of him, “but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm I should as soon think of taking the arm of an elm-tree.”  He was in fact an egotist with strong fancies and preferences; and, though he was an ascetic by preference, he cannot be called a simple-minded man, because the essence of simplicity is not to ride a hobby hard.  He thought and talked too much about simplicity; and the fact is that simplicity, like humility, cannot exist side by side with self-consciousness.  The moment that a man is conscious that he is simple and humble, he is simple and humble no longer.  You cannot become humble by reminding people constantly, like Uriah Heep, of your humility; similarly you cannot become simple, by doing elaborately, and making a parade of doing, the things that the simple man would do without thinking about them.

It is almost true to say that the people who are most in love with simplicity are often the most complicated natures.  They become weary of their own complexity, and they fancy that by acting on a certain regimen they can arrive at tranquillity of soul.  It is in reality just the other way.  One must become simple in soul first, and the simple setting follows as a matter of course.  If a man can purge himself of ambition, and social pride, and ostentation, and the desire of praise, his life falls at once into a simple mould, because keeping up appearances is the most expensive thing in the world; to begin with eating pulse and drinking water, is as if a man were to wear his hair like Tennyson, and expect to become a poet thereby.  Asceticism is the sign and not the cause of simplicity.  The simple life will become easy and common enough when people have simple minds and hearts, when they do the duties that lie ready to their hand, and do not crave for recognition.

Neither can simplicity be brought about by a movement.  There is nothing which is more fatal to it than that people should meet to discuss the subject; it can only be done by individuals, and in comparative isolation.  A friend of mine dreamed the other day that she was discussing the subject of mission services with a stranger; she defended them in her dream with great warmth and rhetoric:  when she had done, her companion said, “Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t believe in people being inspired in rows.”  This oracular saying has a profound truth in it—­that salvation is not to be found in public meetings; and that to assemble a number of persons, and to address them on the subject of simplicity, is the surest way to miss the charm of that secluded virtue.