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23 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau · Logic Library

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Conclusion to the sick. The doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery.
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Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buckeye does not
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grow in New England, and the mocking bird is rarely heard here. The
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wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we. He breaks his fast in
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Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night
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in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace
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with the seasons, cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till the greener and
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sweeter grass awaits him by the yellowstone. Yet we think that if rail fences
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are pulled down and stone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth
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set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town clerk
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forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer, but you may
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go to the land of infernal fire. Nevertheless, the universe is wider than
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our views of it. Yet we should oftener look over the tapherral of our
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craft like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking Oakum.
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The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent.
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Our voyaging is only great circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of
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the skin. Merely one hastens to southern Africa to chase the giraffe, But
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surely that is not the game he would be after? How long prey would
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a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare
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sport, but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one's self.
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Direct your eye inward, and you'll find a thousand regions in your mind yet
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undiscovered. Travel them and be expert in home cosmography. What does Africa?
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What does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the
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chart black, though it may prove like the coast when discovered. Is it
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the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or
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a northwest passage around this continent that we would find? Are these the problems
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which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost that his
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wife should be so earnest to find him. Does mister Grinnell know where he
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himself is is be rather the mongo Park, the Lewis and Clark and Frobisher
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of your own streams and oceans. Explore your own higher latitudes with shiploads of
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preserved meats to support you if they be necessary, and pile the empty cans
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sky high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely?
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Nay, be a columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening
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new channels, not of trade but of thought. Every man is the lord
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of a realm, beside which the earthly empire of the czar a hummock left
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by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self respect and
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sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves,
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but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay.
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Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South
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Sea exploring expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition
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of the fact that there are countinents and seas in the moral world to which
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every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but
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that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals
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in a government ship with five hundred men and moys to assist one, than
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it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's
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being alone. Eiret et extremos altar scrutetor iberus plus habit hic vite plus habit
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il ville. Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more
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of God, they more of the road. It is not worth the while
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to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this
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even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some Sime's whole
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by which to get at the inside. At last, England and France,
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Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast all front on this private sea.
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But no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though
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it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to
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speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would
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travel farther than all travelers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the
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sphinx to dash her head against a stone. Even obey the precept of the
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old philosopher, and explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
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Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars. Cowards that run away
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and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause
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at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn out China or
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Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere summer and winter,
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day and night, sundown, moon down, and at last Earth down.
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Two. It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery to ascertain what degree
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of resolution was necessary in order to place one's self in formal opposition to the
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most sacred laws of society. He declared that a soldier who fights in the
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ranks does not require half so much courage as a footpad, that honor and
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religion have never stood in the way of a well considered and affirm resolve.
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This was manly as the world goes, and yet it was idle, if
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not desperate. A saner man would have found himself often enough informal opposition to
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what are deemed the most sacred laws of society through obedience to yet more sacred
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laws, and so have tested his resolution without going out of his way.
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It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society,
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but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the
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laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just
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government, if he should chance to meet with such. I left the woods
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for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me
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that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more
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time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into
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a particular route and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived
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there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond
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side, and though it is five or six years since I trod it,
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it is still quite distinct. It is true I fear that others may have
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fallen into it, and so help to keep it open. The surface of
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the earth is soft and imp pressible by the feet of men, and so
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with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty. Then must
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be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.
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I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go
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before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could
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best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below.
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Now I learned this, at least by my experiment that if one advances
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confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he
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has imagined, he will meet with the success unexpected in common hours. He
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will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary. New universal,
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and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him, or
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the old laws be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense,
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and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.
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In proportion, as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will
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appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, poverty,
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nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your
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work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put
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the foundations under them. It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make
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that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools
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grow so as if that were important, and there were not enough to understand
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you without them, As if nature could support but one order of understandings could
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not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds flying, as well as creeping things,
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and hush and woe, which bright can understand, were the best English,
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as if there were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression
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may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits
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of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which
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I have been convinced. Extravagance it depends on how you are yarded. The
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migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant,
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like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, and
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runs after her calf in milking time. I desire to speak somewhere without bounds,
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like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments.
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For I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation
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of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared,
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then, lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever in view of the future
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or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in front our outlines,
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dim and misty. On that side, as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration
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toward the sun. The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy
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of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated, its literal monument alone
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remains. The words which express our faith and piety are not definite, yet
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they are significant and fragrant, like frankincense to superior natures. Why level downward
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to our dullest perception always and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense
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is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we
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are inclined to class those who are once and a half witted with a half
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witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some would
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find fault with the morning red if they ever got up early enough. They
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pretend, as I hear that the verses of Cabir have four different senses,
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illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas. But
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in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint of a
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man's writings admit of more than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the
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potato rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain rot, which prevails
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so much more widely and fatally. I do not suppose that I have attained
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to obscurity, but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found
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with my pages on this score than was found with the Walden ice. Southern
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customers objected to its blue color, which is the evidence of its purity,
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as if it were muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white
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but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like the mists which envelop
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the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond. Some are dinning in
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our ears that we Americans and moderns generally are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients
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or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A
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living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang
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himself because he belongs to the race of pigmies, and not be the biggest
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pigmy that he can. Let every one mind his his own business and endeavor
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to be what he was made. Why should we be in such a desperate
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haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises. If a man does not keep
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pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
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Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
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It is not important that he should mature As soon as an apple tree
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or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer. If the condition
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of things which we were made for is not yet what were any reality which
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we can substitute, we will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall
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we, with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over our cells, though
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when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal
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heaven far above, as if the former were not. There was an artist
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in the city of Choreu who was disposed to strive after perfection. One day
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it came into his mind to make a staff, having considered that in an
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imperfect work, time is an ingredient but in a perfect work, time does
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not enter. He said to himself, it shall be perfect in all respects,
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though I should do nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to
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the forest for wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable
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material. And as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends
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gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and died, but
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he grew not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose and resolution,
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and his elevated piety endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth.
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As he made no compromise with time, Time kept out of his way and
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only sighed at a distance, because he could not overcome him. Before he
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had found a stalk in all respects suitable. The city of Koru was a
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hoary ruin, and he sat on one of its mountains to peel the stick.
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Before he had given it the proper shape. The dynasty of the Kandahars
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was at an end, and with the point of the stick, he wrote
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the name of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed
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his work. By the time he had smoothed and polished the staff, Kalpa
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was no longer the pole star, and ere he had put on the ferule
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and the head adorned with precious stones. Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times,
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But why do I stay to mention these things? When the finishing stroke
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was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished
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artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a
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new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair proportions,
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in which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and
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more glorious ones had taken their place. And now he saw, by the
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heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that for him and his work,
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the former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more
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time had elapsed than is required for a single scintillation of the brain of Brahma
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to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. The material was
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pure, and his art was pure. How could the result be other than
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wonderful. No face which we give to a matter will stead us so well
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at last as the truth this alone wears well. For the most part.
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We are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an
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infinity of our natures. We suppose a case and put ourselves into it,
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and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly
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difficult to get out. In sane moments, we regard only the facts the
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case. That is, say what you have to say, not what you
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ought. Any truth is better than make believe. Tom Hyde, at the
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tinker standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say tell
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the tailors said he to remember to make a knot in their thread before they
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take the first stitch. His companion's prayer is forgotten. However, mean your
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life is, Meet it and live it. Do not shun it and call
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it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks
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poorest when you are richest. The fault finder will find faults even in paradise.
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Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some
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pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours even in a poor house. The setting sun
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is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's
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abode. The snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I
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do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have
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as cheering thoughts as in a palace. The towns poor seem to me often
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to live the most independent lives of any Maybe they are simply great enough to
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receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town.
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But it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means,
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which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like
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sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or
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friends. Turn the old return to them. Things do not change, we
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change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you
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do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret
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all my days like a spider, the world would be just as large to
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me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said, from an
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army of three divisions, one can take away its general and put it in
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disorder. From the man, the most abject and vulgar, one cannot take
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away his thought. Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject
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yourself to many influences to be played on. It is all dissipation. Humility,
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like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather
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around us, and low creation widens to our view. We are often reminded
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that, if there were bestowed on us the wealth of creesus, our aims
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must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover,
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if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books
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and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and
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vital experiences. You are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most
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sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone, where it
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is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses,
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ever on a lower level, by magnanimity. On a higher superfluous wealth can
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buy superfluities. Only money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
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I live in the angle of a leaden wall into whose composition was poured
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a little alloy of bell metal. Often in the repose of my mid day,
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there reaches my ears a confused tintinabulum from without. It is the noise
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of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and
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ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner table. But I am no
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more interested in see such things than in the content of the daily times.
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The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners, chiefly. But a
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goose is a goose. Still dress it as you will. They tell me
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of California, and Texas, of England, and the indies of the honorable
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mister Blank of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till
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I am ready to leap from their courtyard like the Mameluke Bay. I delight
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to come to my bearings. Not walk in procession with pomp and parade in
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a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the builder of the universe.
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If I may not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial
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nineteenth century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are
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men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect
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a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and
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Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate
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toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me. Not hang by the beam
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of the scale and try to weigh less. Not suppose a case, but
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take the case, that is, to travel the only path I can,
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and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction
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to commerce to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let
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us not play at kittley benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere. We
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read that the traveler asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard
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bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveler's horse sank
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in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, I thought
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you said this bog had a hard bottom. So it has answered the latter.
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But you've not got half way to it yet. So it is with
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the bogs and quicksands of society. But he is an old boy that knows
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it. Only what is thought, said or done at a certain rare coincidence
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is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a
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nail into mere lathe and plastering such a deed would keep me awake nights.
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Give me a hammer and let me feel for the furring. Do not depend
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on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you
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can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction, a
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work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse. So will
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help you God. And so only every nail driven should be as another rivet
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in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. Rather than
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love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at
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a table where rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but
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sincerity and truth were not, And I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
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The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was
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no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age
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of the wine and the fame of the vintage. But I thought of an
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older, a newer and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which
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they had not got and could not buy. The style. The house and
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grounds and entertainment passed for nothing with me. I called on the king,
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but he made me wait in his hall and conducted like a man incapacitated for
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hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree.
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His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called
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on him. How long shall we sit in our porticoes, practicing idle and
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musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent, as if one were to
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begin the day with long suffering and hire a man to hoe his potatoes,
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and in the afternoon go forth to practice Christian meekness and charity. With goodness
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aforethought, consider the china pride and stagnant self complacency of mankind. This generation
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inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line.
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And in Boston and London, and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long
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descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.
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There are the records of the philosophical societies and the public eulogies of great
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men. It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue. Yes, we
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have done great deeds and sung divine songs which shall never die, that is,
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as long as we can remember them. The learned societies and great men
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of Assyria. Where are they? What youthful philosophers and experimentalists we are?
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There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole human life.
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These may be but the spring months in the life of the race.
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If we have had the seven years itch, we have not seen the seventeen
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year locust. Yet in concord, we are acquainted with a mere pellicle of
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the globe on which we live. Most have not delt six feet beneath the
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surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are
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beside. We are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves
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wise and have an established order on the surface. Truly we are deep thinkers.
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We are ambitious spirits. As I stand over the insect crawling amid the
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pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight,
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and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts and bide its head
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from me, who might perhaps be its benefactor and impart to its race.
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Some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater benefactor and intelligence it stands
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over me, the human insect there is an incessant influx of novelty into the
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world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. I need only suggest what kind
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of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such
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words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm
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sung with a nasal twang. While we believe in the ordinary and mean,
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we think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the
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British Empire is very large and respectable, and the United States are a first
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rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every
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man, which can float the British Empire like a chip. If he should
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ever harbor it in his mind, Who knows what sort of seventeen year locust
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will next come out of the ground. The government of the world I live
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in was not framed like that of Britain in after dinner conversations over the wine.
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The life in us is like the water in the river. It may
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rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood of the
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parched uplands. Even this may be the eventful year which will drown out all
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our muskrats, it was not always dry land where we dwell. I see
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far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed before science began to record its
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freshets. Every One has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New
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England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf
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of an old table of apple tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's
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kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward a Massachusetts from an
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egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still as appeared by counting the
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annual layers beyond it, which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched
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perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in
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a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this, Who knows what beautiful and
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winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of
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woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum
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of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance
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of its well seasoned tomb, Heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the
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astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board, may unexpectedly
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come forth from amidst society's most trivial and hand selled furniture, to enjoy its
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perfect summer life. At last. I do not say that John or Jonathan
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will realize all this. But such is the character of that morrow, which
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mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out
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our eyes is darkness to us only that day dawns to which we are awake.
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There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
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End of conclusion, end of Walden