In *[A Plea for Captain John Brown][1]*, Thoreau writes: >I have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the report of that conversation, and still call the principal in it insane. It has the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and habits of life, than an ordinary organization, **secure**. The comma after *organization* makes me think that *secure* is used a noun here but I'm not sure of that as [I have not read anywhere][2] that *secure* is used as a noun. On the other hand, the lack [parallelism][3], in the form of *than*, makes me consider reading this sentence like so: *It has the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and habits of life, than an ordinary, **secure** organization.* Is the word used here as a noun? What does *secure* mean here? [1]: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2567/pg2567-images.html [2]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/secure [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallelism_(grammar)