【正文】 or another. He seems that he wishes all men to seek philosophical superiority rather than paring themselves to the man around them, or seeking their honor in achievements of the most boring and unworthy incidents.Thoreau highlights the crushing, inflexible effect of materialism and mercialism on the individual’s life. Before man has an opportunity to choose what their life should be like, they have been consumed by the property ownership and technical development. Thoreau urges his contemporaries to be satisfied with less material needs. In “what I lived, and what I lived for.” He tells how he himself es close to purchasing the Hollowell place (a concord farm) .but in the end he gives up. Thus, he remains able to enjoy the landscape without possessing himself. In “The Beanfield,” He criticized the mercialization of agriculture, which has lost its coherent dignity. In “village,” he exposes immediately the ic and terrible attractiveness of the shops on Concord’s Mill Dam, and writes his hasty escape from town. In “baker farm,” He depicts the character of John Field, a poor man who regards as necessities tea, coffee, meat, and other dispensable that are obtained only at the cost of sacrificed higher life. Thoreau’s own simple lifestyle contrasts throughout with the multiple, insistent expressions of society’s materialism.Through Walden, Thoreau chiefly talks about how material goods and the work it takes to obtain the property of these things, employs most of the time that a natural man would have to contemplate his own mental improvement. He means that for all the work they have done, they can not enjoy the achievements of their work because they are always working, and once they do have time to contemplate and reflect, the toiling man are too exhausted to really meet their mental needs.Living a simple life is a good way to be easily satisfied with your status quo. You need to minimize your daily necessaries and earthly cares, which perhaps means that you do not need nature provided anything insignificant. A case in point is the Canadian woodchopper, he is a simple man who lives close to nature. He is humble, respectful of nature, and accepts life as it is. In the chapter, “visitors,” Thoreau describes the woodchopper like a prince in disguise. Definitely he lives a happy life which may be admired by the richest person in the world.And is Thoreau happy about his simple life? We can get the answer from his feeling like this：He serves like a rooster, excited and happy .The tone is one of great confidence and joy. The following pages are the author’s optimistic declaration of the richness and fullness of his life at Walden Pond. He describes his cabin in a tone of love for all of its pieces of furniture, and cleans it happily early in the morning before any of the townsman have shown up. As he lays his furniture out on the lawn while the floor is being cleaned. He reminisces that he, “was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sunshine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them.” He enjoyed this leisure, and certainly he will thank to his simplicity. Another moving picture is in the chapter “Economy, when the rain had e before his bread was baked, he fixed a few board over the fire, and he just sat there to watch his loaf and in that way he spent many pleasant hours. Thoreau’s happiness is simple, pure, primitive and everlasting. The happymedium thought.In a highly mercialized society, take western developed countries for an example, they seem to be dedicated to the idea of buying their way to happiness, while in most eastern countries, they are to set the spiritual extreme. A holy man of India expresses his idea of happiness is in needing nothing from outside himself. The idea of “happiness,” to be sure, will not sit still for easy definition: the best one can is to try to set some extremes to the idea and then work toward the middle. Thoreaua creature of both eastern and western thoughthad his own firm sense of that balance. His aim was to save on the low levels in order to spend on the high.A case in point, Thoreau is not a strict vegetarian, though he kept the diet and viewed it as a method of selfimprovement. The reason why he dislike eating the animal food is that he thought they are unclean. And the process of eating a fish, just for an example, from it being caught to it being cooked, it was troublesome and dirty, instead, a few potatoes would have met you well enough. Thoreau neither refused civilization nor fully wele wilderness. Instead he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates both nature and culture. The wilderness he enjoyed was the swamp or forest nearby, and he liked partially cultivated country. His thought of being far in the recesses of the wilderness of Maine was to “travel the logger’s path and the Indian trail.” However, he also hiked on virginal untouched land. Instead of ing out of the woods with a deepened appreciation of the wilds, Thoreau sensed a greater respect for civilization and realized the necessity of the balance. Thoreau likes the rooster that greets the dawn, has successfully created a way of living that has enabled him to find a “new day” in his life. It is a new world and a new self that he has discovered through his thought and activity at his woodland retreat. He feels as if he has been reborn into a fresh and anew, more satisfying life。 he celebrates the feeling of having left behind his old self, the spiritually asleep creature made lifeless by “the dead dry life of society,” for the sake of a new and joyful spiritual life.In “The American Scholar,” [ 9] Emerson described the three basic stages of a transcendentalist’s life: firstly, he learns from the past and self meditation。 secondly, he establishes a harmonious relationship with nature through which he is able to discover moral truths and municates with the god. Wi