It is worth the while to detect new faculties in man,—he is so much the more divine; and anything that fairly excites our admiration expands us. The Indian, who can find his way so wonderfully in the woods, possesses an intelligence which the white man does not,—and it increases my own capacity, as well as faith, to observe it. I rejoice to find that intelligence flows in other channels than I knew. It redeems for me portions of what seemed brutish before.
ATTRIBUTION:
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Letter, August 18, 1857, to Harrison Blake, in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 6, pp. 315-316, Houghton Mifflin (1906).
