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01 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Chapter one Economy. When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk
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of them, I lived alone in the woods, a mile from any neighbor,
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in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden
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Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my
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hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I
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am a sojourner in civilized life. Again, I should not obtrude my affairs
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so much on the notice of my readers, if very particular inquiries had not
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been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call
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impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but considering
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the circumstances very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat,
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if I did not feel lonesome, if I was not afraid, and
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the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I
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devoted to charitable purposes, and some who have large families how many poor children
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I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular
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interest in me, to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these
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questions in this book. In most books, the I or first person is
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omitted. In this it will be retained that in respect to egotism is the
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main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all always
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the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself
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if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately I am confined
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to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on
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my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and
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sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of
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other men's lives. Some such account as he would send to his kindred from
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a distant land, For if he has lived sincerely, it must have been
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in a distant land. To me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed
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to poor students, as for the rest of my readers. They will accept
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such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams
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in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom
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it fits. I would fain say something not so much concerning the Chinese in
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Sandwich Islanders, as you who read these pages, who are said to live
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in New England. Something about your condition, especially your outward condition, or
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circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it
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is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be
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improved as well as not. I have traveled a good deal in Concord,
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and everywhere, in shops and offices and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to
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me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard
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of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun,
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or hanging suspended with their heads downward over flames, or looking at the
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heavens over their shoulders until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position,
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while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into their
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stomach, or dwelling chained for life at the foot of a tree, or
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measuring with their bodies like caterpillars the breadth of vast empires, or standing on
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one leg on the top of pillar. Even these forms of conscious penance are
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hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve
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labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken.
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For they were only twelve and had an end. But I could never see
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that these men slew or captured any monster, or finished any labor. They
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had no friend ioleus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's
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head. But as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.
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I see young men, my townsmen whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms,
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houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools. For these are more
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easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the
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open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer
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eyes what field they were called to labor in? Who made them serfs of
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the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres when man is condemned to
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eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as
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soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life,
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pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can.
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How many a poor immortal soul have I met, well nigh crushed and
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smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it
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a barn seventy five feet by forty its aggion, stables never cleansed, and
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one hundred acres of land tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood lot.
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The portionless who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough
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to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh. But men labor under
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a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil
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for compost by a seeming fate commonly called necessity. They are employed, as
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it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will
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corrupt, and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life,
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as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not
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before. It is said that Dusallium and Pyra created men by throwing stones over
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their heads behind them indegenus durum, sumus experiensk leborum a documenta damus qua simus
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orogin nati, or as Rally rhymes it in his sonorous way. From thence
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are kind, hard hearted, is enduring pain and care, approving that our
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bodies of a stony nature are so much for a blind obedience to a blundering
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oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them and not seeing where they
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fell. Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance
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and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of
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life, that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers from
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excessive toil are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the
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laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity. Day by day he cannot
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afford to sustain the manliest relations to men. His labor would be depreciated in
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the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How
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can he remember well his ignorance which his growth requires, who has so often
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to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and
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recruit him with our cordials before we judge of him. The finest qualities of
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our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the
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most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
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Some of you we all know are poor, find it hard to live,
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are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no
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doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all
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the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which
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are fast wearing or already worn out, and have come to this page to
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spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is
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very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live. For my sight
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has been whetted by experience, always on the limits, trying to get into
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business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slow called by
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the Latins ace alienum another's brass, for some of their coins were made of
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brass, still living and dying and buried by this other's brass, always promising
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to pay, promising to pay tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent, seeking
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to curry favor, to get custom by how many modes only not state prison
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offenses, lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourself into a nutshell of civility,
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or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may
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persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or
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his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him, making
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yourself sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something
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to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stalking behind the
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plastering, or more safely in the brick bank, no matter where, no
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matter how much or how little, I sometimes wonder that we can be so
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frivolous. I may almost say as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign
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form of servitude called negro slavery. There are so many keen and subtle masters
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that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer.
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It is worse to have a northern one. But worst of all,
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when you are the slave driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man?
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Look at the teamster on the highway wending to market by day or night.
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Does any divinity stir within him his highest duty to fodder and water his
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horses? What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does
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not he drive for squire make a st How godlike? How immortal is he
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see how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears,
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not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion
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of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a
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weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself,
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That it is which determines, or rather indicates his fate self emancipation,
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even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination. What wilberforce is
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there to bring that about? Think also of the ladies of the land weaving
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toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in
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their fates, as if you could kill time without injuring eternity. The mass
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of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
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From the desperate city, you go into the desperate country and have to
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console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair
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is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There
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is no play in them, for this comes after work but it is a
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characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. When we consider what to use
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the words of the Catechism, is the chief end of man? And what
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are the true necessaries and means of life? It appears as if men had
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deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other.
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Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures
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remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up
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our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient can be
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trusted without proof. What everyone echoes or in silence passes by as true to
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day may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which
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some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.
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What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.
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Old deeds for old people and new deeds for new Old people did not
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know enough once perchance to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire agoing. New
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people put a little dry wood under a pot, and our world round the
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globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people.
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As the phrase is age is no better, hardly so well qualified for an
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instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
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One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value
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by living practically. The old have no very important advice to give the young.
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Their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such
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miserable failures for private reasons, as they must believe. And it may be
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that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only
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less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet,
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and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest
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advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell
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me anything to the purpose. Here is life an experiment to a great extent
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untried by me, But it does not avail me that they have tried it.
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If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to
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reflect that this my mentors said nothing about. One farmer says to me,
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you cannot live on vegetable foods solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones
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with, And so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his
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system with the raw material of bones. Walking all the while he talks behind
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his oxen, which, with vegetable made bones, jerk him and his lumbering
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plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life
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in some circles the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely,
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and in others still are entirely unknown. The whole ground of human life
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seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights
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and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to
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Evelyn, the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees, and
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the Roman praetorse have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to
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gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to
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that neighbor. Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails,
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that is, even with the end of the fingers neither shorter nor longer.
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Undoubtedly, the very tedium and on we which presumed to have exhausted the variety
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and joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's capacities have never
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been measured, Nor are we to judge of what he can do by any
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precedence. So little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures? Hitherto
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quote, be not afflicted, my child? For who shall assign to thee
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what thou hast left undone end? Quote? We might try our lives by
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a thousand simple tests, as for instance, that the same sun which ripens
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my beings illumines at once a system of earth like ours. If I had
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remembered this, it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light
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in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles?
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What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating
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the same one at the same moment. Nature and human life are as various
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as are several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
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Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes
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for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world,
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in an hour, ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History,
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poetry, mythology. I know of no reading of another's experience so startling
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and informing as this would be the greater part of what my neighbors call good.
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I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of
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anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed
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me when I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can,
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old man, you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of
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a kind. I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that
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one generation abandons the enterprises of another, like stranded vessels. I think that
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we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive
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just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as
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well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain
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of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to
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exaggerate the importance of what work we do, and yet how much is not
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done by us? Or what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant
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we are determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it all the
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day long, on the alert. At night, we unwittingly say our prayers
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and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live,
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reverencing ours our life, denying the possibility of change. This is the
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only way, we say, But there are as many ways as there can
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be drawn raydye from one center. All change is a miracle to contemplate,
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but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said,
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quote, to know that we know what we know, and that we do
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not know what we do not know. That is true knowledge end quote.
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When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to
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his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that
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basis. Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety
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which I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that
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we be troubled or at least careful. It would be some advantage to live
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a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization,
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if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life, and what methods
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have been taken to obtain them, or even to look over the old day
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books of the merchants to see what it was that men most commonly bought at
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the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries.
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For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws
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of man's existence, as our skeletons probably are not to be distinguished from those
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of our ancestors. By the words necessary of life, I mean whatever of
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all that man obtains by his own exertions has been from the first or from
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long use, has become so important to human life that few, if any,
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whether from savageness or poverty or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it.
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To many creatures, there is, in this sense but one necessary of
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life. Food. To the bison of the prairie, it is a few
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inches of palatable grass with water to drink. Unless he seeks the shelter of
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the forest or the mountain's shadow. None of the brute creation requires more than
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food and shelter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate may accurately
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enough be distributed under the several heads of food, shelter, clothing, and
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fuel. For not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the
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true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented
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not only houses, but clothes and cooked food, And, possibly from the
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accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it at
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first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe
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cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper shelter and clothing,
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we legitimately retain our own internal heat. But with an excess of these,
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or a fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own
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internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin. Darwin the Naturalist,
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says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party,
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who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too
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warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to
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his great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.
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So we are told, the new Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the
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European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these
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savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man. According to liebig Man's body is
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a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the
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lungs. In cold weather, we eat more in warm less The animal heat
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is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place.
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When this is too rapid, or for want of fuel, or from some
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defect in the draft, the fire goes out. Of course, the vital
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heat is not to be confounded with fire, but so much for analogy.
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It appears, therefore, from the above list that the expression animal life is
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nearly synonymous with the expression animal heat. For while food may be regarded as
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the fuel which keeps up the fire within us, and fuel serves only to
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prepare that food, or to increase the warmth of our bodies. By addition,
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from without, shelter and clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus
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generated and absorbed. The grand necessity, then, for our bodies is to
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keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly
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take not only with our food and clothing and shelter, but with our beds,
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which are our night clothes. Robbing the nests and breasts of birds to
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prepare their shelter. Within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of
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grass and leaves at the end of its burrow. The poor man is wont
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to complain that this is a cold world, and to cold no less physical
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than social. We refer directly a great part of our ales. The summer
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in some climates make possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel,
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except to cook his food is then unnecessary. The sun is his fire,
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and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays. While food generally
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is more various and more easily obtained, and clothing and shelter are wholly or
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half unnecessary at the present day, and in this country, as I find
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by my own experience, a few implements a knife, an axe, a
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spade, a wheelbarrow, et cetera. And for these studious lamp, light,
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stationery, and access to a few books rank next to necessaries, and
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can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some not wise go to
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the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote
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themselves to trade for ten or twenty years in order that they may live,
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that is, keep comfortably warm, and die. In New England, at
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last, the luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot,
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as I implied, before they are cooked, of course, Alamode,
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end of the first part of Chapter one,