“The naming of things is a useful mnemonic dcvia, enabling us to distinguish and utilize and remember what otherwise might remain an undifferentiated sensory blur, but I don’t think names tell us much of character, essence, meaning.” (Abbey 50)
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“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit, -not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic” (Walden 334)
Nice work Lori, I didnt realize in class that you had already highlighted this passage!