Thoreauvian demographics

Thoreau in Walden, described humanity as he saw it around him then and there:

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic and divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”