the 'trick of science'

I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination, for which you account scientifically to my understanding, but do not so account to my imagination. It is what it suggests and is the symbol of that I care for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it of its symbolicalness, you do me no service and explain nothing...If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient...Just as inadequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet's account of a steam-engine. If we knew all things thus mechanically merely, should we know anything really?
...

We seek too soon to ally the perceptions of the mind to the experience of the hand, to prove our gossamer truths practical, to show their connection with our every-day life (better show their distance from our every-day life), to relate them to the cider-mill and the banking institution. Ah, give me pure mind, pure thought! Let me not be in haste to detect the universal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it! Much finer themes I aspire to, which will yield no satisfaction to the vulgar mind, not one sentence for them. Perchance it may convince such that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy. Dissolve one nebula, and so destroy the nebular system and hypothesis. Do not seek expressions, seek thoughts to be expressed.

By perseverance you get two views of the same truth.

Thoreau's simple grave in Concord, Mass.

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pg 101 - 102, The journal Henry David Thoreau, introduction by John R. Stilgoe