Life Without Principle
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau challenges the valuation of the collective over the individual, a common theme in his era when industrialization and societal conformity were on the rise. His line echoes the transcendentalist belief in the irreducible value of the individual soul, standing in stark opposition to a society increasingly obsessed with numbers and masses. The individual, for Thoreau, is the true measure of significance, a principle he lived by during his retreat to Walden Pond.