Thoreau wrote his famous essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, as a protestagainst an unjust but popular war and the immoral but popular institution ofslave-owning. He did more than write-he declined to pay his taxes, and washauled off to gaol in consequence. Who can say how much this refusal of hishastened the end of the war and of slavery ? At the present day, intellectualdetachment from the State, and individual defiance of its behests when theseare opposed to conscience, are more difficult, and apparently more futile, thanin Thoreau's time. The unit seems of less im­portance in the mass. It is allthe more impera­tive, therefore, that the facts that the mass is composed ofunits and the conscience of the mass is the aggregate conscience of the units,and that the individual is still the sole responsible guardian of his ownconscience and the co-guardian of the public conscience, should be fullyrecognized.