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Famous Unitarian Universalists
Henry David Thoreau
1863
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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.
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 seared 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.
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.
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!
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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."
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.
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.
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?
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 old. I have seen a little of it. I know
that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold gild a
great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
But why go to California for a text? She is the child of New England, bred at
her own school and church. 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.
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. I hardly know an
intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think
aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand
against some institution in which they appear to hold stock- that is, some
particular, not universal, way of viewing things. They will continually thrust
their own low roof, with its narrow skylight, between you and the sky, when it
is the unobstructed heavens you would view. Get out of the way with your
cobwebs; wash your windows, I say! In some lyceums they tell me that they have
voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion
is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and
done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the
audience never suspected what I was about. The lecture was as harmless as
moonshine to them. Whereas, if I had read to them the biography of the greatest
scamps in history, they might have thought that I had written the lives of the
deacons of their church. Ordinarily, the inquiry is, Where did you come from?
or, Where are you going? That was a more pertinent question which I overheard
one of my auditors put to another one- "What does he lecture for?" It made me
quake in my shoes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Pray, let us live without being drawn by dogs, Esquimaux-fashion, tearing over
hill and dale, and biting each other's ears.
Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come
to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair- the news of the
street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds
with such rubbish- to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant
kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a
public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table
chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself- an hypaethral
temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to
dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden
my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could
illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation.
It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect. Think of
admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts,
to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for
many hours! to make a very bar-room of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so
long the dust of the street had occupied us- the very street itself, with all
its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts' shrine!
Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? When I have been compelled to
sit spectator and auditor in a court-room for some hours, and have seen my
neighbors, who were not compelled, stealing in from time to time, and tiptoeing
about with washed hands and faces, it has appeared to my mind's eye, that, when
they took off their hats, their ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for
sound, between which even their narrow heads were crowded. Like the vanes of
windmills, they caught the broad but shallow stream of sound, which, after a few
titillating gyrations in their coggy brains, passed out the other side. I
wondered if, when they got home, they were as careful to wash their ears as
before their hands and faces. It has seemed to me, at such a time, that the
auditors and the witnesses, the jury and the counsel, the judge and the criminal
at the bar- if I may presume him guilty before he is convicted- were all equally
criminal, and a thunderbolt might be expected to descend and consume them all
together.
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.
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 had 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?
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
respublica- 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.
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.
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.
So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray
themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the
Irish question, for instance- the English question why did I not say? Their
natures are subdued to what they work in. Their "good breeding" respects only
secondary objects. The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity
when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of
past days- mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small-clothes, out of date. It is
the vice, but not the excellence of manners, that they are continually being
deserted by the character; they are cast-off-clothes or shells, claiming the
respect which belonged to the living creature. You are presented with the shells
instead of the meat, and it is no excuse generally, that, in the case of some
fishes, the shells are of more worth than the meat. The man who thrusts his
manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of
curiosities, when I wished to see himself. It was not in this sense that the
poet Decker called Christ "the first true gentleman that ever breathed." I
repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial,
having authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the
affairs of Rome. A praetor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions
which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 infrahuman, 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 had 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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