Spiritwalk
Teachers
Henry David Thoreau
Contents
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
~
- I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
- to front only the essential facts of life,
- and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
- and not, when I came to die,
- discover that I had not lived.
~
- If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
- and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
- he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
~
If for a moment we make way with our petty selves,
wish no will to anyone, apprehend no ill,
cease to be but as a crystal which reflects a ray ~
what shall we not reflect!
What a universe will appear
crystallized and radiant around us!
~
- It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants.
- The question is: what are we busy about?
~
- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (complete)
Excerpts from WALDEN, by Henry David Thoreau
... The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
What is called resignation is confirmed
desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to
console
yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is
concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play
in
them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate
things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and
what are
the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the
common
mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no
choice left.
But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to
give up our
prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
What
everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood
to-morrow,
mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing
rain on
their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds
for old
people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch
fresh
fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are
whirled round the
globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no
better, hardly so
well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has
lost. One may
almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.
Practically, the old
have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial,
and their
lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it
may be that
they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than
they were. 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. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me
anything to
the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not
avail me that
they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect
that this my
Mentors said nothing about.
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. Some things are really
necessaries
of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries
merely, and in
others still are entirely unknown.
The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors,
both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to
Evelyn, "the wise
Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prętors have
decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on
it without
trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor."(4) Hippocrates has even left
directions how we
should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor
longer. Undoubtedly
the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life
are as old
as Adam. But 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. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto,
"be not afflicted,
my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?"
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun
which ripens
my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would
have
prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the
apexes of
what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the
universe
are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as
our
several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater
miracle
take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in
all the ages
of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!--I
know of no
reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be.
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 that. One
generation
abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much
care of
ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to
our
strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of
disease. We are
made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!
or,
what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we
can avoid
it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit
ourselves to
uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life,
and denying
the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as
there can be
drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle
which is taking
place every instant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we
do not
know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man has reduced a fact of
the
imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish
their lives on
that basis.
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to
is
about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. It would be
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; or
even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most
commonly
bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the
improvements
of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our
skeletons,
probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own
exertions,
has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few,
if any,
whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many
creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the
prairie it is a few
inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest
or the
mountain's shadow. None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The
necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under
the several
heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we
prepared to
entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has
invented, not
only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of
the warmth
of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to
sit by it. We
observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we
legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that
is, with an
external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin?
Darwin, the
naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who
were well
clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were
farther
off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at
undergoing such a
roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the
European shivers
in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the
intellectualness
of the civilized man? According to Liebig,(5) man's body is a stove, and food the fuel
which keeps
up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The
animal heat
is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too
rapid; or for
want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital
heat is not to
be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above
list, that the
expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while
Food may
be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us--and Fuel serves only to prepare
that
Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without--Shelter and
Clothing also
serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed.
The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us.
What
pains we accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our
beds,
which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this
shelter within a
shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor
man is wont to
complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer
directly a great
part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian
life. Fuel,
except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits
are sufficiently
cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and
Clothing
and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I
find by my
own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and for
the
studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and
can all be
obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to
barbarous and
unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that
they may
live--that is, keep comfortably warm--and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich
are not
simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked,
of course ą
la mode.(6)
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. With respect to luxuries and
comforts, the wisest
have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers,
Chinese,
Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward
riches, none
so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of
them
as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race.
None can
be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we
should call
voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or
commerce, or
literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet
it is
admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not
merely to
have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so 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. The success of great scholars
and thinkers is
commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by
conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a
noble race of
men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of
the
luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our
own lives?
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?
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next?
Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid
houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and
the like.
When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another
alternative than to
obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler
toil having
commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle
downward, and it
may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly
in the
earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?--for the nobler
plants are
valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are
not treated like
the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they
have
perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not
know them
in their flowering season.
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own
affairs
whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly
than the
richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live--if, indeed,
there are any
such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in
precisely
the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of
lovers--and, to
some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well
employed, in
whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;--but mainly
to the
mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of
the times,
when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and
inconsolably of
any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that
seemingly wealthy,
but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how
to use it,
or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
Where I Lived,
and What I Lived for
At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible
site of a
house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I
live. In
imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I
knew their
price. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on
husbandry with
him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a
higher price
on it--took everything but a deed of it--took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to
talk--cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed
it long
enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort
of real-estate
broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from
me
accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat?--better if a country seat. I discovered
many a site
for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the
village,
but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and
there I did live, for
an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the
winter through,
and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place
their
houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the
land into
orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to
stand before
the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let
it lie,
fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can
afford to let
alone.
My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms--the refusal
was all I
wanted--but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to
actual
possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and
collected
materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the
owner gave me
a deed of it, his wife--every man has such a wife--changed her mind and wished to keep it,
and he
offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the
world, and
it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a
farm, or ten
dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I
had carried it
far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it,
and, as he was
not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds,
and
materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any
damage to my
poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it
yielded without
a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,
"I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute."(1)
I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm,
while the
crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not
know it for
many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible
fence, has
fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer
only the skimmed
milk.
The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being,
about two
miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the
highway by a
broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from
frosts in the
spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and
barn, and
the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the
hollow and
lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should
have; but
above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the
house was
concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I
was in
haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the
hollow apple
trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in
short, had
made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on;
like
Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders--I never heard what compensation he received for
that--and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for
it and be
unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most
abundant crop
of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have
said.
All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale--I have always
cultivated a
garden--was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have
no
doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall
plant, I shall be
less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as
possible live
free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm
or the
county jail.
Old Cato,(2) whose "De Re Rustica" is my "Cultivator," says--and the
only translation I have seen
makes sheer nonsense of the passage--"When you think of getting a farm turn it thus
in your mind,
not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go
round it once.
The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall
not buy greedily, but
go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me
the more at last.
The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at
length, for
convenience putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose
to write
an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his
roost, if only
to wake my neighbors up.
When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as
days
there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house
was
not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or
chimney, the
walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at
night. The
upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and
airy look,
especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied
that by noon
some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day
more or
less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had
visited a
year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god,
and where a
goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as
sweep
over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of
terrestrial music.
The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the
ears that
hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.
The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was a tent, which I
used
occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my
garret; but the
boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this more
substantial
shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so
slightly clad,
was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive
somewhat as a
picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere
within had lost
none of its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even
in the
rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An abode without birds is like a meat without
seasoning."
Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having
imprisoned
one, but having caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which
commonly
frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those smaller and more thrilling songsters of
the forest
which never, or rarely, serenade a villager--the wood thrush, the veery, the scarlet
tanager, the field
sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many others.
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the village of
Concord
and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and
Lincoln, and
about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground; but I
was so
low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with
wood, was my
most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed
me like a
tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes,
and, as the
sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by
degrees, its soft
ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were
stealthily
withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal
conventicle.
The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides
of
mountains.
This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm in
August,
when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had
all the serenity
of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake
like this is
never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being,
shallow and
darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven
itself so much
the more important. From a hill-top near by, where the wood had been recently cut off,
there was a
pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which
form the shore
there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out
in that
direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between
and over
the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue.
Indeed, by
standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and
more distant
mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and also
of some
portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this point, I could not see
over or beyond the
woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give
buoyancy
to and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it
you see that
earth is not continent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool.
When I looked
across the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I
distinguished
elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the
earth beyond the
pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of
interverting water,
and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land.
Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did not feel crowded or confined
in
the least. There was pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which
the
opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the steppes of
Tartary,
affording ample room for all the roving families of men. "There are none happy in the
world but
beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon"--said Damodara, when his herds required new
and larger
pastures.
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to
those
eras in history which had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region
viewed
nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote
and
more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far
from noise
and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but
forever
new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those
parts near to
the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an
equal remoteness
from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my
nearest
neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of creation
where I had
squatted,--
"There was a shepherd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by."(3)
What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher
pastures than his
thoughts?
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say
innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the
Greeks. I got
up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things
which I
did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching Thang (4) to
this
effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever
again." I can
understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint
hum of a
mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn,
when I
was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of
fame. It was
Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and
wanderings. There
was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the
everlasting vigor and
fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the
awakening
hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us
awakes which
slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it
can be called a day,
to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some
servitor, are
not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by
the
undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the
air--to a higher life
than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be
good, no less than
the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred,
and auroral
hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and
darkening
way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs
rather, are
reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All
memorable events,
I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say,
"All
intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most
memorable of the
actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the
children of
Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps
pace with
the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the
attitudes and labors
of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort
to throw
off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been
slumbering?
They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they
would
have performed something. 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
or 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?
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an
infinite
expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no
more
encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious
endeavor. It
is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to
make a few
objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and
medium
through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is
the highest
of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the
contemplation of his
most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information
as we get,
the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential
facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not
lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to
practise resignation,
unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
to live so
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath
and shave close,
to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be
mean, why then to
get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it
were
sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next
excursion. For
most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the
devil or of God,
and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify
God and enjoy
him forever."
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed
into men;
like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our
best virtue has
for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by
detail. An
honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may
add his
ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs
be as two or three,
and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your
accounts on
your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds
and storms and
quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he
would not
founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must
be a
great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if
it be
necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in
proportion. Our
life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever
fluctuating, so
that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself,
with all its
so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is
just such an
unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own
traps,
ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the
million
households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a
stern and more
than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think
that it is essential
that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride
thirty miles an
hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or
like men,
is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and
nights to the
work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if
railroads
are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our
business,
who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever
think what
those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee
man. The
rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over
them. They
are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over;
so that, if
some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.
And when
they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong
position, and
wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were
an
exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the
sleepers
down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up
again.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved
before
we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand
stitches today to
save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. We have the Saint
Vitus'
dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the
parish
bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his
farm in the
outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so
many
times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and
follow that
sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth,
much more to
see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire--or to see it
put out, and
have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church
itself. Hardly a
man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks,
"What's
the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to
be waked every
half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they
have dreamed.
After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. "Pray tell me
anything new that has
happened to a man anywhere on this globe"--and he reads it over his coffee and rolls,
that a man has
had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that
he lives in
the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye
himself.
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few
important
communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two
letters in
my life--I wrote this some years ago--that were worth the postage. The penny-post is,
commonly,
an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which
is so often
safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.
If we
read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one
vessel
wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one
mad
dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter--we never need read of another. One
is enough.
If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and
applications?
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are
old women
over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I
hear, the other
day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several
large squares of
plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure--news which I
seriously think
a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient
accuracy. As for
Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro
and
Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions--they may have changed the
names a
little since I saw the papers--and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail,
it will be true to
the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as
the most
succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost
the last
significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have
learned the
history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again,
unless your
speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into
the
newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not
excepted.
What news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old!
"Kieou-he-yu
(5) (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news.
Khoung-tseu
caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is
your master
doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of
his
faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher
remarked:
What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!" The preacher, instead of vexing
the ears of
drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week--for Sunday is the fit
conclusion of an
ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one--with this one other
draggle-tail
of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! Why so seeming fast,
but deadly
slow?"
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men
would
steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare
it with such
things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If
we
respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound
along the
streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things
have any
permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow
of the
reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and
consenting to
be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit
everywhere,
which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its
true law and
relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are
wiser by
experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that "there was a
king's son, who, being
expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to
maturity in
that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of
his father's
ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his
character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul," continues the
Hindoo
philosopher, "from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own
character, until the truth
is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme." I
perceive that we
inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not
penetrate the
surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should walk through
this town
and see only the reality, where, think you, would the "Mill-dam" go to? If he
should give us an
account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his
description. Look at
a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what
that thing
really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men
esteem
truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and
after the last
man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and
places and
occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never
be more
divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is
sublime and noble
only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The
universe constantly
and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is
laid for us.
Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair
and noble a
design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every
nutshell
and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast,
gently and without
perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children
cry--determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let
us
not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner,
situated in the
meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down
hill. With
unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast
like Ulysses. If
the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings,
why should we run? We
will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and
wedge our feet
downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion,
and
appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New
York and
Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion,
till we
come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and
no
mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place
where you
might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a
Nilometer, but a
Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had
gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you
will see the sun
glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing
you through the
heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or
death, we crave
only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold
in the extremities;
if we are alive, let us go about our business.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy
bottom and
detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would
drink deeper; fish
in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first
letter of the
alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The
intellect is
a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be
any more busy
with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties
concentrated
in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use
their snout
and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think
that the
richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I
judge; and here I will begin to mine.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (complete)
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, Solitude and Life Without Principle
Henry David Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau : Three Complete Books
Henry David Thoreau, The Portable Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (complete)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Spiritwalk, Transcendentalists
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