the Thoreau Log.
4 October 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  When I have made a visit where my expectations are not met, I feel as if I owed my hosts an apology for troubling them so. If I am disappointed, I find that I have no right to visit them . . .

  P.M.—To Conantum . . .

  It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair’s breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange . . .

(Journal, 12:369-373)

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