Thoreau talks about this in one of his most lucid moments: If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put something behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him, or the old laws be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense; and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings!2
