Henry David Thoreau's Walden is Thoreau's personal account of his experience at Walden Pond while in search of a deeper understanding of life and truth. In Walden Thoreau writes that a person's goal for human existence should not be wealth or the acquisition of power, but the exploration of one's own mind. Throughout Walden Thoreau reveals his conflicting feelings of the nature of man, and specifically in "Higher Laws" he deals with the clash between the spiritual nature of man and the savage nature of the animal inside us. "Higher Laws" is also instrumental in suggesting this conflicting theme of animal and spiritual natures which occurs throughout Walden. .
In "Higher Laws" Thoreau constantly deals with powerful emotions pulling him in two completely opposite directions. At one pole lies his desire to return to the savage beast he once was, and at the other pole lies his yearning desire to remain true and spiritual in his spiritual adult life. Thoreau is constantly experiencing both sides of his personality as he struggles to suppress the animal within him. Thoreau expresses his hope that the reader will not just experience the "young", physical life but, embrace the "higher" one as well. .
As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both.
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Thoreau did not completely abandon his "savage delight". He continues to satisfy his desire for the wilderness on his regular fishing and hunting trips at Walden Pond.
