Henry David Thoreau: A Transcendentalist Of The 19th Century

Henry David Thoreau was a transcendentalist of the 19th century with very simplistic beliefs. He wanted the people to rethink their own lives in a creative way and to always be questioning. In all, he wanted them to always be searching for a greater meaning in life. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." One of the reasons Thoreau decided to start his life over and attempt to undertake living in the woods, was to prove to himself that even in an up and coming industrial America, he was still able to live without the assistance of the new technologies of modern society.

He wanted life to be brought down to the bare bones, for the basic necessities to be all that one relied on, and for life to be based upon the actions of daily life more so than the actions of commerce. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.” Thoreau explains the importance of simplicity by focusing on keeping one's matter’s as small as they can and also not to have more than they can handle. Thoreau conveys transcendentalism through simplicity by showing that a man who lives a simple life can be better off than a man of class with too many things on their plate to deal with. "Instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail." Thoreau determined that being, thinking, and living simply can be really easy. All one has to do is keep things as uncomplicated as possible and to have no more obligations or things to do than they have