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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:16:21 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:16:21 -0700 |
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diff --git a/1022-h/1022-h.htm b/1022-h/1022-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e265572 --- /dev/null +++ b/1022-h/1022-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1348 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Walking, by Henry David Thoreau</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1022 ***</div> + +<h1>Walking</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by Henry David Thoreau</h2> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as +contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an +inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I +wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there +are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and +every one of you will take care of that. +</p> + +<p> +I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood +the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to +speak, for <i>sauntering</i>, which word is beautifully derived “from +idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, +under pretense of going <i>à la Sainte Terre</i>,” to the Holy Land, till +the children exclaimed, “There goes a <i>Sainte-Terrer</i>,” a +Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as +they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there +are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive +the word from <i>sans terre</i> without land or a home, which, therefore, in +the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home +everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still +in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, +in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all +the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the +first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort +of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer +this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. +</p> + +<p> +It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who +undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but +tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set +out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the +shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to +return,—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our +desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and +sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,—if you +have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are +a free man; then you are ready for a walk. +</p> + +<p> +To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a +companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an +old, order—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but +Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The chivalric and +heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or +perchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not the Knight, but Walker +Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People. +</p> + +<p> +We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art; though, +to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be received, most of +my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can +buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in +this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct +dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family +of the Walkers. <i>Ambulator nascitur, non fit.</i> Some of my townsmen, it is +true, can remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten +years ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half an hour +in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined themselves to the +highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may make to belong to this select +class. No doubt they were elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a +previous state of existence, when even they were foresters and outlaws. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“When he came to grene wode,<br /> + In a mery mornynge,<br /> +There he herde the notes small<br /> + Of byrdes mery syngynge.<br /> +<br /> +“It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,<br /> + That I was last here;<br /> +Me lyste a lytell for to shote<br /> + At the donne dere.” +</p> + +<p> +I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours +a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through +the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly +engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand +pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in +their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with +crossed legs, so many of them—as if the legs were made to sit upon, and +not to stand or walk upon—I think that they deserve some credit for not +having all committed suicide long ago. +</p> + +<p> +I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, +and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour, or four +o’clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of +night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I +had committed some sin to be atoned for,—I confess that I am astonished +at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my +neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks +and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff +they are of—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as +if it were three o’clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the +three-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage +which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over against +one’s self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out a garrison +to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this +time, or say between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, too late for +the morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general +explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of antiquated and +house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an airing—and so the +evil cure itself. +</p> + +<p> +How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do +not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not <i>stand</i> it +at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the +village from the skirts of our garments, making haste past those houses with +purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my +companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone +to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, +which itself never turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch +over the slumberers. +</p> + +<p> +No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with it. As a +man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations +increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life +approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all +the walk that he requires in half an hour. +</p> + +<p> +But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as +it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours—as the swinging +of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. +If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a +man’s swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling +up in far-off pastures unsought by him! +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which +ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth’s servant to +show him her master’s study, she answered, “Here is his library, +but his study is out of doors.” +</p> + +<p> +Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain +roughness of character—will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of +the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe +manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in +the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say +thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain +impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences important +to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown +on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the +thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast +enough—that the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the +night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There +will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of +the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, +whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is +mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the +tan and callus of experience. +</p> + +<p> +When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, +if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have +felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go +to the woods. “They planted groves and walks of Platanes,” where +they took <i>subdiales ambulationes</i> in porticos open to the air. Of course +it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us +thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods +bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain +forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it +sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of +some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is—I am out of +my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I +in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, +and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so implicated even in what are +called good works—for this may sometimes happen. +</p> + +<p> +My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked +almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet +exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can +still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’ walking will carry me +to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farmhouse which I had +not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the king of Dahomey. +There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the +landscape within a circle of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an +afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never +become quite familiar to you. +</p> + +<p> +Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of +houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform +the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people who would +begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw the fences half +consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and some worldly miser +with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place around +him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old +post-hole in the midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the +middle of a boggy Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his +bounds without a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and +looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor. +</p> + +<p> +I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my +own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road except where the +fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then the brook, and then the +meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles in my vicinity which have no +inhabitant. From many a hill I can see civilization and the abodes of man afar. +The farmers and their works are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their +burrows. Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, +and manufactures and agriculture even politics, the most alarming of them +all,—I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. +Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to +it. I sometimes direct the traveler thither. If you would go to the political +world, follow the great road,—follow that market-man, keep his dust in +your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it; for it, too, has its place +merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean field into +the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half hour I can walk off to some +portion of the earth’s surface where a man does not stand from one +year’s end to another, and there, consequently, politics are not, for +they are but as the cigar smoke of a man. +</p> + +<p> +The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the +highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are the arms and +legs—a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of +travelers. The word is from the Latin <i>villa</i> which together with +<i>via</i>, a way, or more anciently <i>ved</i> and <i>vella</i>, Varro derives +from <i>veho</i>, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which +things are carried. They who got their living by teaming were said +<i>vellaturam facere</i>. Hence, too, the Latin word <i>vilis</i> and our +<i>vile</i>; also <i>villain</i>. This suggests what kind of degeneracy +villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over +them, without traveling themselves. +</p> + +<p> +Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots. +Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, +comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or +livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I am a good horse to travel, but not +from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a +road. He would not make that use of my figure. I walk out into a nature such as +the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may +name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor +Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer amount of +it in mythology than in any history of America, so called, that I have seen. +</p> + +<p> +However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as if they +led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There is the Old +Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now, methinks, unless that +is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the bolder to speak of it here, +because I presume that there are one or two such roads in every town. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD.<br /> +<br /> +Where they once dug for money,<br /> +But never found any;<br /> +Where sometimes Martial Miles<br /> +Singly files,<br /> +And Elijah Wood,<br /> +I fear for no good:<br /> +No other man,<br /> +Save Elisha Dugan—<br /> +O man of wild habits,<br /> +Partridges and rabbits,<br /> +Who hast no cares<br /> +Only to set snares,<br /> +Who liv’st all alone,<br /> +Close to the bone;<br /> +And where life is sweetest<br /> +Constantly eatest.<br /> +When the spring stirs my blood<br /> +With the instinct to travel,<br /> +I can get enough gravel<br /> +On the Old Marlborough Road.<br /> +Nobody repairs it,<br /> +For nobody wears it;<br /> +It is a living way,<br /> +As the Christians say.<br /> +Not many there be<br /> +Who enter therein,<br /> +Only the guests of the<br /> +Irishman Quin.<br /> +What is it, what is it<br /> +But a direction out there,<br /> +And the bare possibility<br /> +Of going somewhere?<br /> +Great guide boards of stone,<br /> +But travelers none;<br /> +Cenotaphs of the towns<br /> +Named on their crowns.<br /> +It is worth going to see<br /> +Where you <i>might</i> be.<br /> +What king<br /> +Did the thing,<br /> +I am still wondering;<br /> +Set up how or when,<br /> +By what selectmen,<br /> +Gourgas or Lee,<br /> +Clark or Darby?<br /> +They’re a great endeavor<br /> +To be something forever;<br /> +Blank tablets of stone,<br /> +Where a traveler might groan,<br /> +And in one sentence<br /> +Grave all that is known<br /> +Which another might read,<br /> +In his extreme need.<br /> +I know one or two<br /> +Lines that would do,<br /> +Literature that might stand<br /> +All over the land,<br /> +Which a man could remember<br /> +Till next December,<br /> +And read again in the spring,<br /> +After the thawing.<br /> +If with fancy unfurled<br /> +You leave your abode,<br /> +You may go round the world<br /> +By the Old Marlborough Road. +</p> + +<p> +At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private +property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative +freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into +so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive +pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other +engines invented to confine men to the <i>public</i> road, and walking over the +surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some +gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude +yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, +before the evil days come. +</p> + +<p> +What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I +believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously +yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we +walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and +stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken +by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path +which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no +doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet +exist distinctly in our idea. +</p> + +<p> +When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my +steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and +whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle southwest, +toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that +direction. My needle is slow to settle—varies a few degrees, and does not +always point due southwest, it is true, and it has good authority for this +variation, but it always settles between west and south-southwest. The future +lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that +side. The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a +parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have been thought +to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in which my house +occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round irresolute sometimes for +a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a thousandth time, that I will walk +into the southwest or west. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go +free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall +find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness and freedom behind the eastern +horizon. I am not excited by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that +the forest which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward +the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough consequence +to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the +wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into +the wilderness. I should not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not +believe that something like this is the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I +must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is +moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. Within a few +years we have witnessed the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the +settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, +judging from the moral and physical character of the first generation of +Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern Tartars +think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. “The world ends +there,” say they; “beyond there is nothing but a shoreless +sea.” It is unmitigated East where they live. +</p> + +<p> +We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, +retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a +spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our +passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its +institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance +for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in +the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide. +</p> + +<p> +I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of singularity, +that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk with the general +movement of the race; but I know that something akin to the migratory instinct +in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in some instances, is known to have +affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and mysterious +movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the broadest rivers, each +on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and bridging narrower +streams with their dead,—that something like the <i>furor</i> which +affects the domestic cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a worm in +their tails,—affects both nations and individuals, either perennially or +from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to +some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I +should probably take that disturbance into account. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,<br /> +And palmeres for to seken strange strondes.” +</p> + +<p> +Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as +distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears to migrate +westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer +whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the +horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. +The island of Atlantis, and the islands and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort +of terrestrial paradise, appear to have been the Great West of the ancients, +enveloped in mystery and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking +into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all +those fables? +</p> + +<p> +Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed +it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men in those days +scented fresh pastures from afar. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,<br /> +And now was dropped into the western bay;<br /> +At last <i>he</i> rose, and twitched his mantle blue;<br /> +To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.” +</p> + +<p> +Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that +occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied in its +productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as this is? +Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that “the species of large trees +are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United States +there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in +height; in France there are but thirty that attain this size.” Later +botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt came to America to +realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its +greatest perfection in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic +wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described. The geographer +Guyot, himself a European, goes further—further than I am ready to follow +him; yet not when he says: “As the plant is made for the animal, as the +vegetable world is made for the animal world, America is made for the man of +the Old World.... The man of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the +highlands of Asia, he descends from station to station towards Europe. Each of +his steps is marked by a new civilization superior to the preceding, by a +greater power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore +of this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns upon his +footprints for an instant.” When he has exhausted the rich soil of +Europe, and reinvigorated himself, “then recommences his adventurous +career westward as in the earliest ages.” So far Guyot. +</p> + +<p> +From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the Atlantic +sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger Michaux, in his +Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802, says that the common inquiry in the +newly settled West was, “‘From what part of the world have you +come?’ As if these vast and fertile regions would naturally be the place +of meeting and common country of all the inhabitants of the globe.” +</p> + +<p> +To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, <i>Ex oriente lux; ex occidente</i> +FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Francis Head, an English traveler and a Governor-General of Canada, tells +us that “in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New World, +Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the +whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she used in delineating +and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of America appear infinitely +higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon +looks larger, the stars are brighter the thunder is louder, the lightning is +vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, +the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader.” This +statement will do at least to set against Buffon’s account of this part +of the world and its productions. +</p> + +<p> +Linnæus said long ago, “Nescio quæ facies <i>læta, glabra</i> plantis +Americanis” (I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect +of American plants); and I think that in this country there are no, or at most +very few, <i>Africanæ bestiæ</i>, African beasts, as the Romans called them, +and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation of +man. We are told that within three miles of the center of the East Indian city +of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually carried off by tigers; but +the traveler can lie down in the woods at night almost anywhere in North +America without fear of wild beasts. +</p> + +<p> +These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than in +Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear +infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are +symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her +inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will +appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it as +much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man—as there +is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not +man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these +influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I +trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, +fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky—our understanding more +comprehensive and broader, like our plains—our intellect generally on a +grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and +forests,—and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and +grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the traveler +something, he knows not what, of <i>læta</i> and <i>glabra</i>, of joyous and +serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world go on, and why was +America discovered? +</p> + +<p> +To Americans I hardly need to say— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Westward the star of empire takes its way.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more +favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country. +</p> + +<p> +Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though we may +be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There is the home of +the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to the sea for their +inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to +understand even the slang of today. +</p> + +<p> +Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like a dream of +the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in something more than +imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and repaired by later heroes, +past cities and castles whose very names were music to my ears, and each of +which was the subject of a legend. There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck +and Coblentz, which I knew only in history. They were ruins that interested me +chiefly. There seemed to come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and +valleys a hushed music as of crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated +along under the spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to an heroic +age, and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry. +</p> + +<p> +Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way +up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up, counted +the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians +moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now +looked up the Ohio and the Missouri and heard the legends of Dubuque and of +Wenona’s Cliff—still thinking more of the future than of the past +or present—I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that +the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet +to be thrown over the river; and I felt that <i>this was the heroic age +itself</i>, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and +obscurest of men. +</p> + +<p> +The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have +been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. +Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it +at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the +tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story of +Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The +founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their +nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children +of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and +displaced by the children of the northern forests who were. +</p> + +<p> +I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn +grows. We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or arbor vitæ in our tea. There +is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere +gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other +antelopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the +marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts, including the +summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they +have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed +the fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughterhouse pork +to make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can +endure,—as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw. +</p> + +<p> +There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to which I +would migrate—wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which, +methinks, I am already acclimated. +</p> + +<p> +The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well as that +of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of trees +and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so much a part +and parcel of Nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our +senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature which he most +haunts. I feel no disposition to be satirical, when the trapper’s coat +emits the odor of musquash even; it is a sweeter scent to me than that which +commonly exhales from the merchant’s or the scholar’s garments. +When I go into their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no +grassy plains and flowery meads which they have frequented, but of dusty +merchants’ exchanges and libraries rather. +</p> + +<p> +A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter +color than white for a man—a denizen of the woods. “The pale white +man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the naturalist +says, “A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant +bleached by the gardener’s art, compared with a fine, dark green one, +growing vigorously in the open fields.” +</p> + +<p> +Ben Jonson exclaims,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“How near to good is what is fair!” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +So I would say,— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“How near to good is what is <i>wild!</i>” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to +man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never +rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would +always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw +material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive +forest trees. +</p> + +<p> +Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns +and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have +analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I +have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of +impermeable and unfathomable bog—a natural sink in one corner of it. That +was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps +which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. +There are no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda +(<i>Cassandra calyculata</i>) which cover these tender places on the +earth’s surface. Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the +shrubs which grow there—the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, +lamb-kill, azalea, and rhodora—all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I +often think that I should like to have my house front on this mass of dull red +bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce and trim +box, even graveled walks—to have this fertile spot under my windows, not +a few imported barrow-fuls of soil only to cover the sand which was thrown out +in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, +instead of behind that meager assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for +a Nature and art, which I call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and +make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though +done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful +front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most +elaborate ornaments, acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. +Bring your sills up to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be +the best place for a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to +citizens. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you +could go in the back way. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in +the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or +else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp. How vain, +then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me! +</p> + +<p> +My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the +ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude +compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveler Burton says of +it—“Your <i>morale</i> improves; you become frank and cordial, +hospitable and single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only +disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence.” They who +have been traveling long on the steppes of Tartary say, “On reentering +cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization +oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every +moment as if about to die of asphyxia.” When I would recreate myself, I +seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, +most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place,—a <i>sanctum +sanctorum</i>. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. The wild wood +covers the virgin mould,—and the same soil is good for men and for trees. +A man’s health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his +farm does loads of muck. There are the strong meats on which he feeds. A town +is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that +surround it. A township where one primitive forest waves above while another +primitive forest rots below—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn +and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil +grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the +reformer eating locusts and wild honey. +</p> + +<p> +To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to +dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in +our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those primitive +and rugged trees there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and +consolidated the fibers of men’s thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for +these comparatively degenerate days of my native village, when you cannot +collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we no longer produce tar and +turpentine. +</p> + +<p> +The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by +the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as +long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be +expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is +compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains +himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on +his marrow bones. +</p> + +<p> +It is said to be the task of the American “to work the virgin +soil,” and that “agriculture here already assumes proportions +unknown everywhere else.” I think that the farmer displaces the Indian +even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some +respects more natural. I was surveying for a man the other day a single +straight line one hundred and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp at whose +entrance might have been written the words which Dante read over the entrance +to the infernal regions,—“Leave all hope, ye that +enter”—that is, of ever getting out again; where at one time I saw +my employer actually up to his neck and swimming for his life in his property, +though it was still winter. He had another similar swamp which I could not +survey at all, because it was completely under water, and nevertheless, with +regard to a third swamp, which I did <i>survey</i> from a distance, he remarked +to me, true to his instincts, that he would not part with it for any +consideration, on account of the mud which it contained. And that man intends +to put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course of forty months, and so +redeem it by the magic of his spade. I refer to him only as the type of a +class. +</p> + +<p> +The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, which +should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and +the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog hoe, +rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a +hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian’s cornfield into the +meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to follow. He had no +better implement with which to intrench himself in the land than a clam-shell. +But the farmer is armed with plow and spade. +</p> + +<p> +In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another +name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and +the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the schools, +that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, +so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which ’mid falling dews +wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as +unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on +the prairies of the west or in the jungles of the east. Genius is a light which +makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance +shatters the temple of knowledge itself—and not a taper lighted at the +hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day. +</p> + +<p> +English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake +Poets—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare +included—breathes no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an +essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her +wilderness is a green wood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of +genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform +us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct. +</p> + +<p> +The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet today, +notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of +mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer. +</p> + +<p> +Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet +who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who +nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the +spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used +them—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; +whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand +like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between +two musty leaves in a library,—aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after +their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding +Nature. +</p> + +<p> +I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning +for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I do not know +where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account which contents +me of that Nature with which even I am acquainted. You will perceive that I +demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan age, which no +<i>culture</i>, in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer to it than anything. +How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology its root in +than English literature! Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before +its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with +blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All +other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses; but this +is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and, +whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the decay of other +literatures makes the soil in which it thrives. +</p> + +<p> +The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of +the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their crop, it remains to +be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. +Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of +ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past,—as it is to some +extent a fiction of the present,—the poets of the world will be inspired +by American mythology. +</p> + +<p> +The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may +not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and +Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common +sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. +Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely <i>sensible</i>, +as the phrase is,—others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may +prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discovered that the figures of +serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of +heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were +extinct before man was created, and hence “indicate a faint and shadowy +knowledge of a previous state of organic existence.” The Hindoos dreamed +that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the +tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will +not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been +discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am +partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and +development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The partridge +loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot. +</p> + +<p> +In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in a strain of +music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice—take the +sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,—which by its wildness, +to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in +their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can understand. Give +me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the +savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers +meet. +</p> + +<p> +I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights—any +evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor; +as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of her pasture early in the spring +and boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide, +swollen by the melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing the Mississippi. This +exploit confers some dignity on the herd in my eyes—already dignified. +The seeds of instinct are preserved under the thick hides of cattle and horses, +like seeds in the bowels of the earth, an indefinite period. +</p> + +<p> +Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a dozen +bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldy sport, like huge rats, +even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up +and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as well as by their activity, +their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! a sudden loud <i>Whoa!</i> would +have damped their ardor at once, reduced them from venison to beef, and +stiffened their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who but the Evil One has +cried “Whoa!” to mankind? Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of +many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, +by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half way. Whatever part the +whip has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a <i>side</i> +of any of the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a <i>side</i> of beef? +</p> + +<p> +I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the +slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow +before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men are not +equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the majority, like dogs and +sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why the others +should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level. +Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might +be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as +well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any +man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so rare +a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says,—“The +skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are tanned, are as the skins of +the dog and the sheep tanned.” But it is not the part of a true culture +to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious; and tanning their +skins for shoes is not the best use to which they can be put. +</p> + +<p> +When looking over a list of men’s names in a foreign language, as of +military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular subject, I am +reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The name Menschikoff, for +instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may +belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours +to them. It is as if they had been named by the child’s +rigmarole—<i>Iery-wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan</i>. I see in my mind +a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each the herdsman has +affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect. The names of men are, of +course, as cheap and meaningless as <i>Bose</i> and <i>Tray</i>, the names of +dogs. +</p> + +<p> +Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in +the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and +perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to +believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his +own—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own. At +present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, from his peculiar +energy, was called “Buster” by his playmates, and this rightly +supplanted his Christian name. Some travellers tell us that an Indian had no +name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; and among +some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a +man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame. +</p> + +<p> +I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in +herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It +may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the +woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere +recorded as ours. I see that my neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet +William or Edwin, takes it off with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when +asleep or in anger, or aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear +pronounced by some of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some +jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue. +</p> + +<p> +Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, +with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet +we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is +exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, +which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to +have a speedy limit. +</p> + +<p> +In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain +precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. +Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the +soil—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements +and modes of culture only! +</p> + +<p> +Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both +intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he +honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance. +</p> + +<p> +There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a Frenchman, discovered +“actinism,” that power in the sun’s rays which produces a +chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues of metal +“are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine, +and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would soon perish under +the delicate touch of the most subtle of the agencies of the universe.” +But he observed that “those bodies which underwent this change during the +daylight possessed the power of restoring themselves to their original +conditions during the hours of night, when this excitement was no longer +influencing them.” Hence it has been inferred that “the hours of +darkness are as necessary to the inorganic creation as we know night and sleep +are to the organic kingdom.” Not even does the moon shine every night, +but gives place to darkness. +</p> + +<p> +I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I +would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the +greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but +preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the +vegetation which it supports. +</p> + +<p> +There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus +invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky +knowledge—<i>Gramatica parda</i>—tawny grammar, a kind of +mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred. +</p> + +<p> +We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said +that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a +Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful +Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our +boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us +of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our +positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient +industry and reading of the newspapers—for what are the libraries of +science but files of newspapers—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays +them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters +abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a +horse and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the +Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go to grass. +You have eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The +very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though I +have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn and fed her on +hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful +Knowledge treats its cattle. +</p> + +<p> +A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while +his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. +Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a subject, +and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really +knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all? +</p> + +<p> +My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in +atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we +can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know +that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and +grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we +called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are more things in heaven +and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the lighting up of the +mist by the sun. Man cannot <i>know</i> in any higher sense than this, any more +than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun: +Ὁς τὶ νοῶν, οὐ +κεῖνον +νοήσεις,—“You will not perceive +that, as perceiving a particular thing,” say the Chaldean Oracles. +</p> + +<p> +There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may +obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a +successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of +a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live +free, child of the mist—and with respect to knowledge we are all children +of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, +by virtue of his relation to the law-maker. “That is active duty,” +says the Vishnu Purana, “which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge +which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all +other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist.” +</p> + +<p> +It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories, how +little exercised we have been in our minds, how few experiences we have had. I +would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, though my very growth +disturb this dull equanimity—though it be with struggle through long, +dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would be well if all our lives were +a divine tragedy even, instead of this trivial comedy or farce. Dante, Bunyan, +and others appear to have been exercised in their minds more than we: they were +subjected to a kind of culture such as our district schools and colleges do not +contemplate. Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal +more to live for, aye, and to die for, than they have commonly. +</p> + +<p> +When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is walking on +a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without his hearing them. But soon, by +some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars return. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen,<br /> +And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,<br /> +Traveler of the windy glens,<br /> +Why hast thou left my ear so soon?” +</p> + +<p> +While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are +attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear to me for +the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not +often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little +appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to be +told that the Greeks called the world Κόσμος +Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it +at best only a curious philological fact. +</p> + +<p> +For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on +the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient forays only, +and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to +retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would +gladly follow even a will-o’-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs +unimaginable, but no moon nor firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature +is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her +features. The walker in the familiar fields which stretch around my native town +sometimes finds himself in another land than is described in their +owners’ deeds, as it were in some faraway field on the confines of the +actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word +Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself +surveyed, these bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a +mist; but they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the +glass, and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath. +The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace, and it will +have no anniversary. +</p> + +<p> +I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting +sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays +straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed +as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had settled +there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me—to whom the +sun was servant—who had not gone into society in the village—who +had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through +the wood, in Spaulding’s cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with +gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew +through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity +or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. +They are quite well. The farmer’s cart-path, which leads directly through +their hall, does not in the least put them out, as the muddy bottom of a pool +is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, +and do not know that he is their neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him +whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity +of their lives. Their coat-of-arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the +pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no +politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were +weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was +done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive +in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle +thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not +as in knots and excrescences embayed. +</p> + +<p> +But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my mind +even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recollect myself. It is +only after a long and serious effort to recollect my best thoughts that I +become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as +this, I think I should move out of Concord. +</p> + +<p> +We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us +every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and +fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our +minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent +to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer +build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow +flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the <i>wings</i> of some +thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to +detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to +poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin +China grandeur. Those <i>gra-a-ate thoughts</i>, those <i>gra-a-ate men</i> you +hear of! +</p> + +<p> +We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves +a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my account in climbing +a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and though I got +well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains in the +horizon which I had never seen before,—so much more of the earth and the +heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years +and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I +discovered around me,—it was near the end of June,—on the ends of +the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms, the +fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to +the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the +streets,—for it was court week—and to farmers and lumber-dealers +and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like before, but +they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell of ancient architects finishing +their works on the tops of columns as perfectly as on the lower and more +visible parts! Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the +forest only toward the heavens, above men’s heads and unobserved by them. +We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have +developed their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer +for ages, as well over the heads of Nature’s red children as of her white +ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them. +</p> + +<p> +Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all +mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless +our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is +belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique +in our employments and habits of thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more +recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it that is a newer +testament,—the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; +he has got up early and kept up early, and to be where he is, is to be in +season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and +soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,—healthiness as of a spring +burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last instant of +time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed +his master many times since last he heard that note? +</p> + +<p> +The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness. +The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who can +excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful +stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the +house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, +“There is one of us well, at any rate,”—and with a sudden +gush return to my senses. +</p> + +<p> +We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a meadow, +the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a +cold grey day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, +brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees +in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the hillside, +while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if we were the +only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a +moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting +to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a +solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever +and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest +child that walked there, it was more glorious still. +</p> + +<p> +The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all the +glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it has never +set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have his wings +gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some +little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, +winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, +gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought +I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. +The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of +Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home +at evening. +</p> + +<p> +So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more +brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and +hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and +serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn. +</p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1022 ***</div> +</body> + +</html> + + |