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Henry David Thoreau
From Walden
"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else I knew as well." p 7
He calls the bible an "old book." -- (He is talking about how his neighbors gather material possessions when he writes this line "... as it says in an old book, which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves will break through and steal.") p 8
"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the facetious cares and superfluously course labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them." p 9
He criticizes the way people incur debts and the work so hard to pay them off. -- "I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coat and shoes which are fast wearing out or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of another hour." p 9
"No way of thinking, however ancient, can be trusted without proof." p 10
"What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields." p 10
"What old people say you cannot do, you try and find you can." p 10
"I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors." p 11
One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with," and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
"... man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried." p 11
"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man--you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind-- I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all of that." p 12
"It would be of some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them..."
Then Thoreau enters into a discussion of what are the necessities. He says they are food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. He says most people have encumbered themselves with much more than needed.
"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." p 14
"None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty."p 14
"To be a philosopher is not merely to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically." p 15
"The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?" p 15
Thoreau says he would "gladly tell all he knows" about his life, thoughts and ideas and would "never paint 'No Admittance'" on his gate. p 16
*/ need p 17 about city not valuing his services, and him not wanting to need to sell his books. He says he preferred to study how not to need to sell them than to study how to convince people to buy them.
I do not claim to have all the answers, but like a rooster, I wish to wake my neigbors up by my questions. (SPH var)
My comments
Original comments from around 1996
T. did not want to force change upon people. He wanted to lead by example only. He probably would not have gone on the speaking circuit. He did not have high goals.
As T. went to the woods to learn what nature could teach him, not to change it, I make periodic visits to society to see what lessons it offers. Unlike T. however, I have a strong passion to effect a change on that which I observe.
T. said he was willing to let his neighbors sleep. I am unwilling and unable to do the same for those I care about.
He refused to affirm on faith what can not be supported by experience.
2000 Comments
I now prefer to simply offer ideas in my writing and not to try to push them on people- definitely I have stopped (or almost stopped) trying to change my mother, family, girlfriends, school principals, etc.
This is copied from: http://www.walden.org/thoreau/
[1]
At a lyceum, not long since, I felt that the lecturer had chosen
a theme too foreign to himself, and so failed to interest me as
much as he might have done. He described things not in or near to
his heart, but toward his extremities and superficies. There was,
in this sense, no truly central or centralizing thought in the
lecture. I would have had him deal with his privatest experience,
as the poet does. The greatest compliment that was ever paid me
was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my
answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens,
it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were
acquainted with the tool. Commonly, if men want anything of me,
it is only to know how many acres I make of their land—since
I am a surveyor—or, at most, what trivial news I have
burdened myself with. They never will go to law for my meat; they
prefer the shell. A man once came a considerable distance to ask
me to lecture on Slavery; but on conversing with him, I found
that he and his clique expected seven-eighths of the lecture to
be theirs, and only one-eighth mine; so I declined. I take it for
granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere—for I have
had a little experience in that business—that there is a
desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may
be the greatest fool in the country—and not that I should
say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent
to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong
dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me,
and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them
beyond all precedent.
[2]
So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since you
are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I
will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near
home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the
flattery, and retain all the criticism.
[3]
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.
[4]
This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am
awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It
interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious
to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work,
work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they
are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me
making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was
calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an
infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits
by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus
incapacitated for—business! I think that there is nothing,
not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to
life itself, than this incessant business.
[5]
There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the
outskirts of our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under
the hill along the edge meadow. The powers have put this into his
head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three
weeks digging there with him. The result will be that he will
perhaps get some more money to hoard, and leave for his heirs to
spend foolishly. If I do this, most will commend me as an
industrious and hardworking man; but if I choose to devote myself
to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little
money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to
regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy in
this fellow's undertaking, any more than in many an enterprise of
our own or foreign governments however amusing it may be to him
or them, I prefer to finish my education at a different school.
[6]
If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he
is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his
whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making
earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and
enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests
but to cut them down!
[7]
Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed all and to
employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing
them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are
no more worthily employed now. For instance: just after sunrise,
one summer morning, I noticed one of my neighbors walking beside
his team, which was slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung under
the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of industry, his day's work
begun—his brow commenced to sweat,—a reproach to all
sluggards and idlers—pausing a breast the shoulders of his
oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of his merciful
whip, while they gained their length on him. And I thought, Such
is the labor which the American Congress exists to
protect—honest manly toil—honest as the day is
long—that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society
sweet—which all men respect and have consecrated; one of the
sacred band, doing the needful, but irksome drudgery. Indeed, I
felt a slight reproach, because I observed this from the window,
and was not abroad and stirring about a similar business. The day
went by and at evening I passed the yard of another neighbor, who
keeps many servants, and spends much money foolishly, while he
adds nothing to the common stock, and there I saw the stone of
the morning lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn
this Lord Timothy Dexter's premises, and the dignity forthwith
departed from the teamsters labor, in my eyes. In my opinion, the
sun was made to light worthier toil than this. I may add, that
his employer has since run off, in debt to a good part of the
town, and, after passing through Chancery, has settled somewhere
else, there to become once more a patron of the arts.
[8]
The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead
downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely
is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more
than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he
cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer,
you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those
services which the community will most readily pay for it is most
disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less
than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more
wisely. Even the poet-laureate would rather not have to celebrate
the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine;
and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge
that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of
surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do
not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and
not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are
different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will
give him the most land, not which is most correct. I once
invented a rule for measuring cord-wood, and tried to introduce
it in Boston; but the measurer there told me that the sellers did
not wish to have their wood measured correctly—that he was
already too accurate for them, and therefore they commonly got
their wood measured in Charlestown before crossing the bridge.
[9]
The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get
‘a good job,’ but to perform well a certain work; and,
even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay
its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were
working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for
scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your
work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
[10]
It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much
to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly
buy them off from their present pursuit. I see advertisements for
active young men, as if activity were the whole of a young
man's capital. Yet I have been surprised when one has with
confidence proposed to me, a grown man, to embark in some
enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely nothing to do, my life
having been a complete failure hitherto. What a doubtful
compliment this to pay me! As if he had met me half-way across
the ocean beating up against the wind, but bound nowhere, and
proposed to me to go along with him! If I did, what do you think
the underwriters would say? No, no! I am not without employment
at this stage of the voyage. To tell the truth, I saw an
advertisement for able-bodied seamen, when I was a boy,
sauntering in my native port, and as soon as I came of age I
embarked.
[11]
The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may
raise money enough to tunnel a mountain. but you cannot raise
money enough to hire a man who is minding his own
business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether
the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their
inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to
be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely
disappointed.
[12]
Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my
freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society
are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which
afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to
some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly
a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a
necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee, that, if my
wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them
would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and
afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for
me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I
shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish
to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend
his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who
consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All
great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance,
must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill
feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your
living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that
ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally,
tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be
surely prophesied.
[13]
Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be
born, but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the
charity of friends, or a government pension—provided you
continue to breathe—by whatever fine synonymes you describe
these relations, is to go into the almshouse. On Sundays the poor
debtor goes to church to take an account of stock, and finds, of
course, that his outgoes have been greater than his income. In
the Catholic Church, especially, they go into Chancery, make a
clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men
will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never
make an effort to get up.
[14]
As for the comparative demand which men make on life, it is an
important difference between two, that the one is satisfied with
a level success, that his marks can all be hit by point-blank
shots, but the other, however low and unsuccessful his life may
be, constantly elevates his aim, though at a very slight angle to
the horizon. I should much rather be the last man—though, as
the Orientals say, ‘Greatness doth not approach him who is
forever looking down; and all those who are looking high are
growing poor.’
[15]
It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered
written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a
living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting
and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then
living is not. One would think, from looking at literature, that
this question had never disturbed a solitary individuals musings.
Is it that men are too much disgusted with their experience to
speak of it? The lesson of value which money teaches, which the
Author of the Universe has taken so much pains to teach us, we
are inclined to skip altogether. As for the means of living, it
is wonderful how indifferent men of all classes are about it,
even reformers, so called—whether they inherit, or earn, or
steal it. I think that society has done nothing for us in this
respect, or at least has undone what she has done. Cold and
hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which
men have adopted and advise to ward them off.
[16]
The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How
can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live
than other men?—if he is only more cunning and
intellectually subtle? Does Wisdom work in a tread-mill? or does
she teach how to succeed by her example? Is there any such
thing as wisdom not applied to life? Is she merely the miller who
grinds the finest logic? It is pertinent to ask if Plato got his living
in a better way or more successfully than his
contemporaries—or did he succumb to the difficulties of life
like other men? Did he seem to prevail over some of them merely
by indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to
live, because his aunt remembered him in her will? The ways in
which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere
make-shifts, and a shirking of the real business of
life—chiefly because they do not know, but partly because
they do not mean, any better.
[17]
The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not
merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called,
in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That
so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of
commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing
any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no
more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all
the common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and poetry
and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a
puff-ball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up
the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I could command
the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not
pay such a price for it. Even Mahomet knew that God did not make
this world in jest. It makes God to be a moneyed gentleman who
scatters a handful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble
for them. The world's raffle! A subsistence in the domains of
Nature a thing to be raffled for! What a comment, what a satire
on our institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will
hang itself upon a tree. And have all the precepts in all the
Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most admirable
invention of the human race only an improved muck-rake? Is this
the ground on which Orientals and Occidentals meet? Did God
direct us so to get our living, digging where we never
planted—and He would, perchance, reward us with lumps of
gold?
[18]
God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food
and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the
same in God's coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and
raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems
of counterfeiting that the world has seen. I did not know that
mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of
it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as
wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much
as a grain of wisdom.
[19]
The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a
gambler as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What
difference does it make, whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If
you win, society is the loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of
the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may
be. It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your
gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of transgressors may
be hard in many respects. The humblest observer who goes to the
mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a
lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the
wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has
seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes
into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves
another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.
[20]
After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings
one evening, I had in my mind's eye, all night, the numerous
valleys, with their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten
to one hundred feet deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close
as they can be dug, and partly filled with water—the
locality to which men furiously rush to probe for their
fortunes—uncertain where they shall break ground—not
knowing but the gold is under their camp itself—sometimes
digging one hundred and sixty feet before they strike the vein,
or then missing it by a foot—turned into demons, and
regardless of each other's rights, in their thirst for
riches—whole valleys, for thirty miles, suddenly
honey-combed by the pits of the miners, so that even hundreds are
drowned in them—standing in water, and covered with mud and
clay, they work night and day, dying of exposure and disease.
Having read this, and partly forgotten it, I was thinking,
accidentally, of my own unsatisfactory life, doing as others do;
and with that vision of the diggings still before me, I asked
myself, why I might not be washing sonic gold daily, though it
were only the finest particles—why I might not sink a
shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine. There
is a Ballarat, a Bendigo for you—what though it were a Sulky
Gully? At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary
and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and
reverence. Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes
his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road,
though ordinary travellers may see only a gap in the paling. His
solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of
the two.
[21]
Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to
be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very
opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther
and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate
when they think themselves most successful. Is not our native
soil auriferous? Does not a stream from the golden mountains flow
through our native valley? and has not this for more than
geologic ages been bringing down the shining particles and
forming the nuggets for us? Yet, strange to tell, if a digger
steal away, prospecting for this true gold, into the unexplored
solitudes around us, there is no danger that any will dog his
steps, and endeavor to supplant him. He may claim and undermine
the whole valley even, both the cultivated and the uncultivated
portions, his whole life long in peace, for no one will ever
dispute his claim. They will not mind his cradles or his toms. He
is not confined to a claim twelve feet square, as at Ballarat,
but may mine anywhere, and wash the whole wide world in his tom.
[22]
Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed
twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia:
‘He soon began to drink; got a horse and rode all about,
generally at full gallop, and when he met people, called out to
inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them
that he was "the bloody wretch that had found the
nugget." At last he rode full speed against a tree, and I
think however nearly knocked his brains out.’ I think,
however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked
his brains out against the nugget. Howitt adds, ‘He is a
hopelessly ruined man.’ But he is a type of the class. They
are all fast men. Hear some of the names of the places where they
dig: ‘Jackass Flat’—‘Sheep's-Head
Gully’—‘Murderer's Bar’ etc. Is there no
satire in these names? Let them carry their ill-gotten wealth
where they will, I am thinking it will still be ‘Jackass
Flat,’ if not ‘Murderer's Bar,’ where they live.
[23]
The last resource of our energy has been the robbing of
graveyards on the Isthmus of Darien, an enterprise which appears
to be but in its infancy; for, according to late accounts, an act
has passed its second reading in the legislature of New Granada,
regulating this kind of mining; and a correspondent of the
‘Tribune’ writes: ‘In the dry season, when the
weather will permit of the country being properly prospected, no
doubt other rich 'guacas' [that is, graveyards] will be
found.’ To emigrants he says: ‘do not come before
December; take the Isthmus route in preference to the Boca del
Toro one; bring no useless baggage, and do not cumber yourself
with a tent; but a good pair of blankets will be necessary; a
pick, shovel, and axe of good material will be almost all that is
required’; advice which might have been taken from the
‘Burker's Guide.’ And he concludes with this line in
Italics and small capitals: ‘If you are doing well at
home, STAY THERE,’ which may fairly be interpreted to
mean, ‘If you are getting a good living by robbing
graveyards at home, stay there.’
[24]
But why go to California for a text? She is the child of New
England, bred at her own school and church.
[25]
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few
moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of
men. Most reverend seniors, the illuminati of the age,
tell me, with a gracious, reminiscent smile, betwixt an
aspiration and a shudder, not to be too tender about these
things—to lump all that, that is, make a lump of gold of it.
The highest advice I have heard on these subjects was grovelling.
The burden of it was—It is not worth your while to undertake
to reform the world in this particular. Do not ask how your bread
is buttered; it will make you sick, if you do—and the like.
A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the
process of getting his bread. If within the sophisticated man
there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the
devil's angels. As we grow old, we live more coarsely, we relax a
little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our
finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of
sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate
than ourselves.
[26]
In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true
and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry
has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the
problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to
discover it. Why must we daub the heavens as well as the earth?
It was an unfortunate discovery that Dr. Kane was a Mason, and
that Sir John Franklin was another. But it was a more cruel
suggestion that possibly that was the reason why the former went
in search of the latter. There is not a popular magazine in this
country that would dare to print a child's thought on important
subjects without comment. It must be submitted to the D. D.s. I
would it were the chickadee-dees.
[27]
You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a
natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all the world.
[28]
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad
and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most
with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some
institution in which they appear to hold stock—that is, some
particular, not universal, way of viewing things. They will
continually thrust their own low roof, with its narrow skylight,
between you and the sky, when it is the unobstructed heavens you
would view. Get out of the way with your cobwebs, wash your
windows, I say! In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted
to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their
religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked
into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of
what religion I have experienced, and the audience never
suspected what I was about. The lecture was as harmless as
moonshine to them. Whereas, if I had read to them the biography
of the greatest scamps in history, they might have thought that I
had written the lives of the deacons of their church. Ordinarily,
the inquiry is, Where did you come from? or, Where are you going?
That was a more pertinent question which I overheard one of my
auditors put to another one—‘What does he lecture
for?’ It made me quake in my shoes.
[29]
To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a
world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and
flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We
select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we
build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an
underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our
sills are rotten. What stuff is the man made of who is not
coexistent in our thought with the purest and subtilest truth? I
often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity;
for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we
do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity
that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks
do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not
habitually demand any more of each other.
[30]
That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but
superficial, it was!—only another kind of politics or
dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country,
but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of
the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded
together, as usual, one leaning on another, and all together on
nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, the
elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent, and had
nothing to put under the serpent. For all fruit of that stir we
have the Kossuth hat.
[31]
Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our
ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life
ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into
mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which
he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor;
and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our
fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea,
and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go
more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may
depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the
greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive
correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.
[32]
I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I
have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I
have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the
snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two
masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to
possess the wealth of a day.
[33]
We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard
in our day. I do not know why my news should be so
trivial—considering what one's dreams and expectations are,
why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for
the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest
repetition. You are often tempted to ask why such stress is laid
on a particular experience which you have had—that, after
twenty-five years, you should meet Hobbins, Registrar of Deeds,
again on the sidewalk. Have you not budged an inch, then? Such is
the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere,
insignificant as the sporules of fungi, and impinge on some
neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which affords
a basis for them, and hence a parasitic growth. We should wash
ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our
planet explode, if there is no character involved in the
explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such
events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round
a corner to see the world blow up.
[34]
All summer, and far into the autumn, perchance, you unconsciously
went by the newspapers and the news, and now you find it was
because the morning and the evening were full of news to you.
Your walks were full of incidents. You attended, not to the
affairs of Europe, but to your own affairs in Massachusetts
fields. If you chance to live and move and have your being in
that thin stratum in which the events that make the news
transpire—thinner than the paper on which it is
printed—then these things will fill the world for you; but
if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember
nor be reminded of them. Really to see the sun rise or go down
every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would
preserve us sane forever. Nations! What are nations? Tartars, and
Nuns, and Chinamen! Like insects, they swarm. The historian
strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man
that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the
world. Any man thinking may say with the Spirit of Lodin—
‘I look down from my height on nations,
And they become ashes before me;—
Calm is dwelling in the clouds;
Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.’
[35]
Pray, let us live without being drawn by dogs, Esquimaux-fashion,
tearing over hill and dale, and biting each other's ears.
[36]
Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how
near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some
trivial affair—the news of the street; and I am astonished
to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such
rubbish—to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most
insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to
thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of
the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed?
Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself—an hypaethral
temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so
difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are
significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those
which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could
illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers
and conversation. It Is important to preserve the mind's chastity
in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single case
of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely
through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for
many hours! to make a very bar-room of the mind's inmost
apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied
us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle,
and filth had passed through our thoughts' shrine! Would it not
be an intellectual and moral suicide? When I have been compelled
to sit spectator and auditor in a court-room for some hours, and
have seen my neighbors, who were not compelled, stealing in from
time to time, and tiptoeing about with washed hands and faces, it
has appeared to my mind's eye, that, when they took off their
hats, their ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for sound,
between which even their narrow heads were crowded. Like the
vanes of windmills, they caught the broad, but shallow stream of
sound, which, after a few titillating gyrations in their coggy
brains, passed out the other side. I wondered if, when they got
home, they were as careful to wash their ears as before their
hands and faces. It has seemed to me, at such a time, that the
auditors and the witnesses, the jury and the counsel, the judge
and the criminal at the bar—if I may presume him guilty
before he is convicted—were all equally criminal, and a
thunderbolt might be expected to descend and consume them all
together.
[37]
By all kinds of traps and sign-boards, threatening the extreme
penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only
ground which can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what
it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a
thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the
Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers. There is
inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive
mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale
revelation of the barroom and the police court. The same ear is
fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the
hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed.
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit
of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be
tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized
as it were—its foundation broken into fragments for the
wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will
make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce
blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our
minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long.
[38]
If we have thus desecrated ourselves—as who has
not?—the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to
reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane of the mind. We
should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and
ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what
objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not
the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length
as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind
by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each
morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and
living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in
flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes
through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the
ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has
been used. How many things there are concerning which we might
well deliberate, whether we had better know them—had better
let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or
walk, over that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass
at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of
eternity! Have we no culture, no refinement—but skill only
to live coarsely and serve the Devil?—to acquire a little
worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with
it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living
kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burs
which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?
[39]
America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is
to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely
political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American
has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave
of an economicaI and moral tyrant. Now that the republic—the
res-publica—has been settled, it is time to look
after the res-privata—the private state—to see,
as the Roman senate charged its consuls, ‘ne quid res
PRIVATA detrimenti caperet,’ that the private state
receive no detriment.
[40]
Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from
King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it
to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any
political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a
freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?
We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost
defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may
perchance be really free. We tax ourselves unjustly. There is a
part of us which is not represented. It is taxation without
representation. We quarter troops, we quarter fools and cattle of
all sorts upon ourselves. We quarter our gross bodies on our poor
souls, till the former eat up all the latter's substance.
[41]
With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially
provincial still, not metropolitan—mere Jonathans. We are
provincial, because we do not find at home our
standards—because we do not worship truth, but the
reflection of truth—because we are warped and narrowed by an
exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and
agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.
[42]
So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins,
they betray themselves, when any more important question arises
for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance—the
English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to
what they work in. Their ‘good breeding’ respects only
secondary objects. The finest manners in the world are
awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer
intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past
days—mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small-clothes, out
of date. It is the vice, but not the excellence of manners, that
they are continually being deserted by the character; they are
cast-off clothes or shells, claiming the respect which belonged
to the living creature. You are presented with the shells instead
of the meat, and it is no excuse generally, that, in the case of
some fishes, the shells are of more worth than the meat. The man
who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on
introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to
see himself. It was not in this sense that the poet Decker called
Christ ‘the first true gentleman that ever breathed.’ I
repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom
is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine
interests only, and not the affairs of Rome. A praetor or
proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the
attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress.
[43]
Government and legislation! these I thought were respectable
professions. We have heard of heavenborn Numas, Lycurguses, and
Solons, in the history of the world, whose names at least
may stand for ideal legislators; but think of legislating to regulate
the breeding of slaves, or the exportation of tobacco! What have
divine legislators to do with the exportation or the importation
of tobacco? what humane ones with the breeding of slaves? Suppose
you were to submit the question to any son of God—and has He
no children in the Nineteenth Century? is it a family which is
extinct?—in what condition would you get it again? What
shall a State like Virginia say for itself at the last day, in
which these have been the principal, the staple productions? What
ground is there for patriotism in such a State? I derive my facts
from statistical tables which the States themselves have
published.
[44]
A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins,
and makes slaves of its sailors for this purpose! I saw, the
other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost,
and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds were
strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt
the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake
of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter almonds. America sending
to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not
shipwreck bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet
such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are
those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so
blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on
precisely this kind of interchange and activity—the activity
of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, observes one, if
men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were
mosquitoes.
[45]
Lieutenant Herndon, whom our government sent to explore the
Amazon, and, it is said, to extend the area of slavery, observed
that there was wanting there ‘an industrious and active
population, who know what the comforts of life are, and who have
artificial wants to draw out the great resources of the
country.’ But what are the ‘artificial wants’ to
be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and
slaves of, I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and
granite and other material wealth of our native New England; nor
are ‘the great resources of a country' that fertility or
barrenness of soil which produces these. The chief want, in every
State that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in
its inhabitants. This alone draws out ‘the great
resources’ of Nature, and at last taxes her beyond her
resources; for man naturally dies out of her. When we want
culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than
sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and
drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves,
nor operatives, but men—those rare fruits called heroes,
saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.
[46]
In short, as a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the
wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an
institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it,
nevertheless, and at length blows it down.
[47]
What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial
and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized
that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote
some of their columns specially to politics or government without
charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I
love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never
read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense
of right so much. I have not got to answer for having read a
single President's Message. A strange age of the world this, when
empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private
man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot
take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or
other, hard pushed, and on its last legs, is interceding with me,
the reader, to vote for it—more importunate than an Italian
beggar; and if I have a mind to look at its certificate, made,
perchance, by some benevolent merchant's clerk, or the skipper
that brought it over, for it cannot speak a word of English
itself, I shall probably read of the eruption of some Vesuvius,
or the overflowing of some Po, true or forged, which brought it
into this condition. I do not hesitate, in such a case, to
suggest work, or the almshouse; or why not keep its castle in
silence, as I do commonly? The poor President, what with
preserving his popularity and doing his duty, is completely
bewildered. The newspapers are the ruling power. Any other
government is reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a
man neglects to read the Daily Times, Government will go down on
its knees to him, for this is the only treason in these days.
[48]
Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as
politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions
of human society, but should be unconsciously performed like the
corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infra-human,
a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half consciousness
of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some
of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the
dyspepsia as it is called. It is as if a thinker submitted
himself to be rasped by the great gizzard of creation. Politics
is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel,
and the two political parties are its two opposite
halves—sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind
on each other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a
confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by
what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a
forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering of
that which we should never have been conscious of certainly not
in our waking hours. Who should we not meet, not always as
dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics,
to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not
make an exorbitant demand, surely.
A Note on the Text: The text above reflects the 1906 Houghton Mifflin edition printing of the essay.