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1 Oct 2021

from Conclusion

16-I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now

 

Which best expresses the meaning of the following aphorism from Section 16 of Thoreau's Walden?

Sec 16: "The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels."

A. Just as our feet make paths in the soft earth, so our thoughts make impressions on our minds.

B. Feet and minds are alike because they both wander.

C. Because the earth is so soft, we can make paths when we walk on it; our minds. are soft, too.