Transcendentalism Essay “Which would have advanced the most at the end of the month, -the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this-or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile and had received a Rodgers penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?”(Walden p 40) When Thoreau went to Walden Pond to live for two years he discovered many things that he found to be true about life and how it is connected to nature. Thoreau was a transcendentalist;