the Thoreau Log.
17 March 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  I catch myself philosophizing most abstractly when first returning to consciousness in the night or morning. I make the truest observations and distinctions then, when the will is yet wholly asleep and the mind works like a machine without friction. I am conscious of having, in my sleep, transcended the limits of the individual, and made observations and
carried on conversations which in my waking hours I can neither recall nor appreciate. As if in sleep our individual fell into the infinite mind, and at the moment of awakening we found ourselves on the confines of the latter. On awakening we resume our enterprise, take up our bodies and become limited mind again.
(Journal, 3:353-354)

Concord, Mass. Thoreau lectures on “An Excursion to Canada” at the Centre School House for the Concord Lyceum (“An Excursion to Canada“).

Thoreau also sends the manuscript of “An Excursion to Canada” to Horace Greeley in New York, N.Y. (Revising Mythologies, 260).

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