Henry David Thoreau
 


   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. 

    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.

    There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in  the  outskirts  of 
our town, who is going to build a bank-wall  under  the  hill  along  the  edge 
meadow. The powers have put this into his head to keep him out of mischief, and 
he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there with him. The  result  will  be 
that he will perhaps get some more money to hoard, and leave for his  heirs  to 
spend foolishly. If I do this, most will  commend  me  as  an  industrious  and 
hardworking man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield 
more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look  on  me 
as an idler. Nevertheless,  as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to 
regulate me, and do not see anything absolutely praiseworthy in  this  fellow's 
undertaking, any more than  in  many  an  enterprise  of  our  own  or  foreign 
governments however amusing it may be to him or them, I  prefer  to  finish  my 
education at a different school. 

    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 all and to employ them in 
throwing stones over a wall,  and then in throwing them back,  merely that they 
might earn their wages. But  many  are  no  more  worthily  employed  now.  For 
instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning, I noticed one of my neighbors 
walking beside his team, which was slowly drawing  a  heavy  hewn  stone  swung 
under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of industry, his day's work begun - 
his brow commenced to sweat, - a reproach to all sluggards and idlers - pausing 
a breast the shoulders of his oxen, and half turning round with a  flourish  of 
his merciful whip, while they gained their length on him.  And I thought,  such 
is the labor which the American Congress  exists  to  protect  -  honest  manly 
toil - honest as the day is long - that makes his bread taste sweet, and  keeps 
society sweet - which all men respect and have consecrated; one of  the  sacred 
band, doing the  needful,  but  irksome  drudgery.  Indeed,  I  felt  a  slight 
reproach, because I observed this from the  window,  and  was  not  abroad  and 
stirring about a similar business.  The day went by and at evening I passed the 
yard of another neighbor, who  keeps  many  servants,  and  spends  much  money 
foolishly, while he adds nothing to the common stock, and there I saw the stone 
of the morning lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn  this  Lord 
Timothy  Dexter's  premises,  and  the  dignity  forthwith  departed  from  the 
teamsters labor, in my eyes.  In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier 
toil than this. I may add, that his employer has since  run  off,  in  debt  to 
a good part of the town, and,  after  passing  through  Chancery,  has  settled 
somewhere else, there to become once more a patron of the arts.

    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 
synonymes you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse. On Sundays 
the poor debtor goes to church to take an  account  of  stock,  and  finds,  of 
course, that his outgoes have been greater than his  income.  In  the  Catholic 
Church, especially, they go into Chancery, make a  clean  confession,  give  up 
all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs,  talking about 
the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

    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 
honest and honorable, but altogether inviting  and  glorious;  for  if  getting 
a living is not so, then living is  not.  One  would  think,  from  looking  at 
literature, that this question  had  never  disturbed  a  solitary  individuals 
musings. Is it that men are too much disgusted with their experience  to  speak
of it? The lesson of value  which  money  teaches,  which  the  Author  of  the 
Universe has taken so  much  pains  to  teach  us,  we  are  inclined  to  skip 
altogether.  As for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of 
all classes are about it, even reformers, so called - whether they inherit,  or 
earn, or steal it. I think that  society  has  done  nothing  for  us  in  this 
respect, or at least has undone what she has done. Cold and  hunger  seem  more 
friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and  advise  to
ward them off.

    The title wise is, for the most part,  falsely  applied.  How  can  one  be 
a wise man,  if he does not know any better how to live than other men? - if he 
is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does Wisdom work  in  a  tread-
mill? or does she teach how to succeed by her example?  Is there any such thing 
as wisdom not applied to life? Is she merely the miller who grinds  the  finest 
logic? It is pertinent to ask if Plato got his living in a better way  or  more 
successfully than his contemporaries - or did he succumb to the difficulties of 
life like other men? Did he seem  to  prevail  over  some  of  them  merely  by 
indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to live, because his 
aunt remembered him in her will? The ways in which most men get  their  living, 
that is, live, are mere make-shifts, and a shirking of  the  real  business  of 
life - chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do  not  mean, 
any better.

    The rush to California, for instance,  and  the  attitude,  not  merely  of 
merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so  called,  in  relation  to  it, 
reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are  ready  to  live  by 
luck, and so get the means of  commanding  the  labor  of  others  less  lucky, 
without contributing any value to  society!  And  that  is  called  enterprise! 
I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the 
common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and  poetry  and  religion  of 
such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puff-ball. The  hog  that  gets  his 
living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of  such  company. 
If I could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger,  I  would 
not pay such a price for it. Even Mahomet knew that God did not make this world 
in jest. It makes God to be a moneyed  gentleman  who  scatters  a  handful  of 
pennies in order  to  see  mankind  scramble  for  them.  The  world's  raffle! 
A subsistence in the domains  of  Nature  a  thing  to  be  raffled  for!  What 
a comment, what a satire on our institutions!  The  conclusion  will  be,  that 
mankind will hang itself upon a tree. And have all  the  precepts  in  all  the 
Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most  admirable  invention  of 
the human race only  an  improved  muck-rake?  Is  this  the  ground  on  which 
Orientals and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to get our living, digging 
where we never planted - and He would, perchance, reward us with lumps of gold?

    God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, 
but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same  in  God's  coffers,  and 
appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It  is  one  of 
the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen. I did not 
know that mankind were suffering for want of gold.  I have seen a little of it. 
I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit.  A grain of gold 
will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

    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.

    After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening, 
I had in my mind's eye, all night, the numerous valleys,  with  their  streams, 
all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet deep,  and half a dozen 
feet across, as close as they can be dug, and partly  filled  with  water - the 
locality to which men furiously rush to probe  for  their  fortunes - uncertain 
where they shall break ground - not knowing but the gold is  under  their  camp 
itself - sometimes digging one hundred and sixty feet before  they  strike  the 
vein, or then missing it by a foot - turned into demons, and regardless of each 
other's rights, in their thirst for riches - whole valleys, for  thirty  miles,
suddenly honey-combed by the pits of the miners,  so  that  even  hundreds  are 
drowned in them - standing in water, and covered with mud and clay,  they  work 
night and day, dying of exposure and disease.  Having  read  this,  and  partly 
forgotten it, I was thinking, accidentally,  of  my  own  unsatisfactory  life, 
doing as others do; and with that vision  of  the  diggings  still  before  me, 
I asked myself, why I might not be washing sonic gold  daily,  though  it  were 
only the finest particles - why I might not sink  a  shaft  down  to  the  gold 
within me, and work that mine. There is a Ballarat, a  Bendigo  for  you - what 
though it were a Sulky Gully? At any rate, I might pursue  some  path,  however
solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence. 
Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, 
there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary  travellers  may  see  only 
a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way
of the two.

    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  weighted  twenty-
eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: "He soon  began  to  drink; 
got a horse and rode all about, generally at  full  gallop,  and  when  he  met 
people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed 
them that he was "the bloody wretch that had found the nugget." At last he rode 
full speed against a tree,  and I think however nearly knocked his brains out." 
I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already  knocked  his 
brains out against the nugget. Howitt adds, "He is a  hopelessly  ruined  man." 
But he is a type of the class. They are all fast men. Hear some of the names of 
the places where they dig:  "Jackass Flat" - "Sheep's-Head Gully" - "Murderer's 
Bar" etc. Is there no satire in these names? Let them  carry  their  ill-gotten 
wealth where they will, I am thinking it will still be "Jackass Flat,"  if  not 
"Murderer's Bar," where they live.

    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 do not know why my news should be so  trivial - considering  what  one's 
dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news 
we hear, for the most part, is not news  to  our  genius.  It  is  the  stalest 
repetition.  You  are  often  tempted  to  ask  why  such  stress  is  laid  on 
a particular experience which you have had - that, after twenty-five years, you 
should meet Hobbins, Registrar of Deeds, again on the sidewalk.  Have  you  not 
budged an inch, then? Such is the daily news.  Its facts appear to float in the 
atmosphere, insignificant as  the  sporules  of  fungi,  and  impinge  on  some 
neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which affords a basis for them, and 
hence a parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such news.  Of what 
consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no  character  involved  in 
the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events.  We 
do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world 
blow up.

    All summer, and far into the autumn,  perchance,  you unconsciously went by 
the newspapers and the news, and now you find it was because  the  morning  and 
the evening were full of news to  you.  Your  walks  were  full  of  incidents. 
You attended, not to the  affairs  of  Europe,  but  to  your  own  affairs  in 
Massachusetts fields. If you chance to  live  and  move  and  have  your  being 
in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire - thinner 
than the paper on which it is printed - then these things will fill  the  world 
for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane,  you  cannot  remember 
nor be reminded of them. Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to 
relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.  Nations! 
What are nations? Tartars, and Nuns, and Chinamen! Like  insects,  they  swarm. 
The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of  a  man 
that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.  Any man 
thinking may say with the Spirit of Lodin - 
              "I look down from my height on nations,
              And they become ashes before me; - 
              Calm is dwelling in the clouds;
              Pleasant are the great fields of my rest."

    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  sign-boards,  threatening  the  extreme  penalty 
of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which  can  be 
sacred to you. It is so hard to  forget  what  it  is  worse  than  useless  to 
remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it  be  of  the  mountain 
brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers.  There is inspiration, 
that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind  from  the  courts  of 
heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the barroom and the police 
court. The same  ear  is  fitted  to  receive  both  communications.  Only  the 
character of the hearer determines to which it shall  be  open,  and  to  which 
closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned  by  the  habit  of 
attending to trivial things, so that all our  thoughts  shall  be  tinged  with 
triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized as it were - its foundation 
broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if  you  would 
know what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce 
blocks, and asphaltum,  you have only to look into some of our minds which have 
been subjected to this treatment so long.

    If we have thus desecrated ourselves - as who has not? - the remedy will be 
by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more  a  fane 
of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is,  ourselves,  as  innocent  and 
ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be  careful  what  objects  and 
what subjects we thrust on their  attention.  Read  not  the  Times.  Read  the 
Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as  bad  as  impurities.  Even  the 
facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense 
effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile  by  the  dews  of  fresh  and 
living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light 
from heaven.  Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and 
tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets  of  Pompeii,  evince 
how much it has been used.  How many things there are concerning which we might 
well deliberate, whether we had  better  know  them  -  had  better  let  their 
peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of
glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time 
to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no culture, no refinement - but skill 
only to live coarsely and serve the  Devil?  -  to  acquire  a  little  worldly 
wealth, or fame, or liberty,  and make a false show with it,  as if we were all 
husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us?  Shall our institutions 
be like those chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts,  perfect only to prick 
the fingers?

    America is said to be the arena on which the battle of  freedom  is  to  be 
fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely  political  sense  that  is 
meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself  from  a  political 
tyrant,  he is still the slave of an economicaI and moral tyrant.  Now that the 
republic - the res-publica - has been settled, it is time  to  look  after  the 
res-privata - the private state - to see,  as  the  Roman  senate  charged  its 
consuls, "ne quid res PRIVATA  detrimenti  caperet,"  that  the  private  state 
receive no detriment.

    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 heavenborn Numas, Lycurguses, and Solons, in  the  history  of 
the world,  whose names at least may stand for ideal legislators;  but think of 
legislating to regulate the breeding of slaves,  or the exportation of tobacco! 
What have divine legislators to do with the exportation or the  importation  of 
tobacco? what humane ones with the breeding of  slaves?  Suppose  you  were  to 
submit the question to any son  of  God  -  and  has  He  no  children  in  the 
Nineteenth Century? is it a family which is extinct? - in what condition  would 
you get it again? What shall a State like Virginia say for itself at  the  last 
day, in which these have been  the  principal,  the  staple  productions?  What 
ground is there for patriotism  in  such  a  State?  I  derive  my  facts  from 
statistical tables which the States themselves have published.

    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 infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to 
a half consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may  become  conscious 
of some of the processes of digestion in  a  morbid  state,  and  so  have  the 
dyspepsia as it is called. It is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped 
by the great gizzard of creation. Politics is,  as  it  were,  the  gizzard  of 
society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political  parties  are  its  two 
opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each 
other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which 
expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our  life  is 
not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent,  a  remembering 
of that which we should never have been  conscious  of  certainly  not  in  our 
waking hours. Who should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad 
dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate  each  other  on  the  ever 
glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.

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