The vast majority are men of society. They live on the surface; they are interested in the transient and fleeting; they are like driftwood on the flood. They ask forever and only the news, the froth and scum of the eternal sea. They use policy; they make up for want of matter with manner. They have many letters to write. Wealth and the approbation of men is to them success. The enterprises of society are something final and sufficing for them. The world advises them, and they listen to its advice. They live wholly an evanescent life, creatures of circumstance. It is of prime importance to them who is the president of the day. They have no knowledge of truth, but by an exceedingly dim and transient instinct, which stereotypes the church and some other institutions. They dwell, they are ever, right in my face and eyes like gnats; they are like motes, so near the eyes that, looking beyond, they appear like blurs; they have their being between my eyes and the end of my nose. The terra firma of my existence lies far beyond, behind them and their improvements. If they write, the best of them deal in ‘elegant literature.’ Society, man, has no prize to offer me that can tempt me; not one. That which interests a town or city or any large number of men is always something trivial, as politics. It is impossible for me to be interested in what interests men generally. Their pursuits and interests seem to me frivolous. When I am most myself and see the clearest, men are least to be seen; they are like muscae volitantes, and that they are seen at all is the proof of imperfect vision. These affairs of men are so narrow as to afford no vista, no distance; it is a shallow foreground only, no large extended views to be taken. Men put to me frivolous questions: When did I come? where am I going? That was a more pertinent question — what I lectured for? — which one auditor put to another. What an ordeal it were to make men pass through, to consider how many ever put to you a vital question! Their knowledge of something better gets no further than what is called religion and spiritual knockings.”
— Thoreau’s journal,
Henry David Thoreau’s Life Without Principle ()
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.
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.
This essay can also be found in the book
My Thoughts
are Murder to the State: Thoreau’s essays on
political philosophy.
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.
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.
[4]
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 of his 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 board, and leave for his heirs to spend
foolishly. If I do this, most will commend me as an
industrious and hard-working 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.
[5]
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!
[6]
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed 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
abreast 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 a 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
teamster’s 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. [7]
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. [8]
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. [9]
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. [10]
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. [11]
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. [12]
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 synonyms 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. [13]
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.”
[14]
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 holiest 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
individual’s 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. [15]
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 makeshifts, and a shirking of the real
business of life — chiefly because they do not know, but
partly because they do not mean, any better.
[16]
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 puffball. 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? [17]
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 was
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. [18]
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. [19]
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
others’ rights, in their thirst for riches — whole valleys, for
thirty miles, suddenly honeycombed 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 some 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.
[20]
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.
[21]
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 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.
[22]
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.”
[23]
But why go to California for a text? She is the child of New
England, bred at her own school and church.
[24]
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.
[25]
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.
You come from attending the funeral of mankind
to attend to a natural phenomenon. A
little thought is sexton to all the world.
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.
[29]
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.
[30]
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.
[31]
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.
[32]
We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I
did 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.
[33]
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 Huns, 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 my dwelling in the clouds;
Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.” [34]
Pray, let us live without being drawn by dogs,
Esquimaux-fashion, tearing over hill and dale, and biting each other’s ears.
[35]
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 hypæthral
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.
[36]
By all kinds of traps and signboards, 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 bar-room 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.
[37]
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 bride 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? [38]
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
economical 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.
[39]
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.
[40]
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.
[41]
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 prætor or proconsul
would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the
attention of the English Parliament and the
American Congress.
[42]
Government and legislation! these I thought were
respectable professions. We have heard of
heaven-born
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.
[43]
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.
[44]
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.
[45]
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.
[46]
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. [47]
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. Why
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
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