The degree to which an individual may spiritualize, may comprehend divinity, depends on his ability to differentiate between permanent and transient values and his persistence in seeking the permanent, the absolute and ideal. Thoreau's spiritual journey provides one example of striving toward the absolute. The story of the artist of Kouroo, who aspired to perfection and, in the process of single-mindedly achieving it, transcended time and mortality, provides another.
Vitality and the ability to change are bound up with perception throughout Walden. The light of each new day brings fresh opportunity for understanding. Thoreau refers often to vision and to perception-enhancing experience. He writes in "The Village" of being lost in a snowstorm, which bestows a heightened appreciation of nature and an ability to see familiar things anew. At the beginning of "Winter Animals," he describes looking at the landscape from the frozen surface of Flint's Pond and marveling at the sensation of never having seen it before. Openness to taking new perspectives is essential to individual change.
In "Spring," the process of rebirth, the leap from death to life, represents radical change. Thoreau writes that Walden was dead, and is now alive again. The chapter concludes with the seasons "rolling on into summer" in a predictable cycle of endless change. The narrative of Walden thus ends with the integration of transience and permanence, of change and constancy.
