Discussing his intellectual life, he venerates the written word, calling books the true wealth of nations and urging all people to learn to read well. He went to the woods to "live deliberately," he says, citing simplicity as the path to spiritual wakefulness and taking nature as his model. When he chooses where to live and moves into his house, he celebrates becoming a part of nature and holds the pond sacred. Thoreau builds his own small cabin, earns some money by working in his bean-field, and keeps meticulous financial records to demonstrate how little a man needs to live. Criticizing society's spiritually empty obsessions with clothing and elaborate homes, as well as with formal education, travel, and the use of animal labor, he praises the savage man, who is free from the distraction of society's institutions and lives a simple life. Thoreau designs a life of "voluntary poverty" for himself, determining the absolute necessities of man's existence to be: food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. In the book he sets out his beliefs about society and the nature of human existence, saying first that he believes men need not work as hard as they do, if they are willing to simplify their lives and follow their own instincts. Seeking solitude and self-reliance, Thoreau says, he moved to the woods by Walden Pond, outside Concord Massachusetts, where he lived for two years, writing this book, before returning to society.
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