Contents:

Page No 1

Page No 2

Page No 3

Page No 4

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE.........................................................................................................................1

Henry David Thoreau..............................................................................................................................1

AT A LYCEUM, not long since, I felt that the lecturer had chosen a theme too foreign to himself, and so

failed to interest me as much as he might have done. He described things not in or near to his heart, but

toward his extremities and superficies. There was, in this sense, no truly central or centralizing thought in the

lecture. I would have had him deal with his privatest experience, as the poet does. The greatest compliment

that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as

well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with

the tool. Commonly, if men want anything of me, it is only to know how many acres I make of their land

since I am a surveyor or, at most, what trivial news I have burdened myself with. They never will go to law

for my meat; they prefer the shell. A man once came a considerable distance to ask me to lecture on Slavery;

but on conversing with him, I found that he and his clique expected seven eighths of the lecture to be theirs,

and only one eighth mine; so I declined. I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere for I

have had a little experience in that business that there is a desire to hear what I think on some subject,

though I may be the greatest fool in the country and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as

the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They

have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore

So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since you are my readers, and I have not been

much of a traveller, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of

the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure

for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blankbook to write thoughts in; they are

commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for

granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a

cripple for life, or seared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus

incapacitated for business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to

There is a coarse and boisterous moneymaking fellow in the outskirts of our town, who is going to build a

bankwall under the hill along the edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his head to keep him

out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there with him. The result will be that he will

perhaps get some more money to board, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly. If I do this, most will

commend me as an industrious and hardworking man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors

which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.

Nevertheless, as I do not need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything

absolutely praiseworthy in this fellow's undertaking any more than in many an enterprise of our own or

foreign governments, however amusing it may be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education at a

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer;

but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her

time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in

throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

For instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning, I noticed one of my neighbors walking beside his team,

which was slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of

industry his day's work begun his brow commenced to sweat a reproach to all sluggards and idlers

pausing abreast the shoulders of his oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of his merciful whip, while

they gained their length on him. And I thought, Such is the labor which the American Congress exists to

protect honest, manly toil honest as the day is long that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society

sweet which all men respect and have consecrated; one of the sacred band, doing the needful but irksome

drudgery. Indeed, I felt a slight reproach, because I observed this from a window, and was not abroad and

stirring about a similar business. The day went by, and at evening I passed the yard of another neighbor, who

keeps many servants, and spends much money foolishly, while he adds nothing to the common stock, and

there I saw the stone of the morning lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn this Lord Timothy

Dexter's premises, and the dignity forthwith departed from the teamster's labor, in my eyes. In my opinion,

the sun was made to light worthier toil than this. I may add that his employer has since run off, in debt to a

good part of the town, and, after passing through Chancery, has settled somewhere else, there to become once

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by

which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the

wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or

lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community

will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.

The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have

to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is

called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying

which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my

work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of

surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct. I once

invented a rule for measuring cordwood, and tried to introduce it in Boston; but the measurer there told me

that the sellers did not wish to have their wood measured correctly that he was already too accurate for

them, and therefore they commonly got their wood measured in Charlestown before crossing the bridge.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work;

and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not

feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do

not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or

fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit. I see advertisements for active young men, as

if activity were the whole of a young man's capital. Yet I have been surprised when one has with confidence

proposed to me, a grown man, to embark in some enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely nothing to do, my

life having been a complete failure hitherto. What a doubtful compliment this to pay me! As if he had met me

halfway across the ocean beating up against the wind, but bound nowhere, and proposed to me to go along

with him! If I did, what do you think the underwriters would say? No, no! I am not without employment at

this stage of the voyage. To tell the truth, I saw an advertisement for ablebodied seamen, when I was a boy,

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain,

but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable

man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to

the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely

Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and

obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and

by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a

pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee

that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I

should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there

would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I

wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal

blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are

selfsupporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planingmill feeds its

boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that

ninetyseven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy

Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be stillborn, rather. To be

supported by the charity of friends, or a government pension provided you continue to breathe by whatever

fine synonyms you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse. On Sundays the poor debtor goes to

church to take an account of stock, and finds, of course, that his outgoes have been greater than his income.

In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to

start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

As for the comparative demand which men make on life, it is an important difference between two, that the

one is satisfied with a level success, that his marks can all be hit by pointblank shots, but the other, however

low and unsuccessful his life may be, constantly elevates his aim, though at a very slight angle to the horizon.

I should much rather be the last man though, as the Orientals say, "Greatness doth not approach him who is

It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living; how

to make getting a living not merely holiest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a

living is not so, then living is not. One would think, from looking at literature, that this question had never

disturbed a solitary individual's musings. Is it that men are too much disgusted with their experience to speak

of it? The lesson of value which money teaches, which the Author of the Universe has taken so much pains to

teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether. As for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of

all classes are about it, even reformers, so called whether they inherit, or earn, or steal it. I think that Society

has done nothing for us in this respect, or at least has undone what she has done. Cold and hunger seem more

friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.

The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any

better how to live than other men? if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does Wisdom work

in a treadmill? or does she teach how to succeed by her example? Is there any such thing as wisdom not

applied to life? Is she merely the miller who grinds the finest logic? It is pertinent to ask if Plato got his living

in a better way or more successfully than his contemporaries or did he succumb to the difficulties of life like

other men? Did he seem to prevail over some of them merely by indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or

find it easier to live, because his aunt remembered him in her will? The ways in which most men get their

living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life chiefly because they do

The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and

prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live

by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to

society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade,

and all the common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are

not worth the dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be

ashamed of such company. If I could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not

pay such a price for it. Even Mahomet knew that God did not make this world in jest. It makes God to be a

moneyed gentleman who scatters a handful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble for them. The

world's raffle! A subsistence in the domains of Nature a thing to be raffled for! What a comment, what a

satire, on our institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself upon a tree. And have all the

precepts in all the Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most admirable invention of the human

race only an improved muckrake? Is this the ground on which Orientals and Occidentals meet? Did God

direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted and He would, perchance, reward us with

God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a

facsimile of the same in God's coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It

is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen. I did not know that mankind

was suffering for want of old. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as

wit. A grain of gold gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

The golddigger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons of San

Francisco. What difference does it make whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the

loser. The golddigger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be.

It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of

transgressors may be hard in many respects. The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that

golddigging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same same thing with the wages

of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle,

and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not

After reading Howitt's account of the Australian golddiggings one evening, I had in my mind's eye, all

night, the numerous valleys, with their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet deep,

and half a dozen feet across, as close as they can be dug, and partly filled with water the locality to which

men furiously rush to probe for their fortunes uncertain where they shall break ground not knowing but the

gold is under their camp itself sometimes digging one hundred and sixty feet before they strike the vein, or

then missing it by a foot turned into demons, and regardless of each others' rights, in their thirst for riches

whole valleys, for thirty miles, suddenly honeycombed by the pits of the miners, so that even hundreds are

drowned in them standing in water, and covered with mud and clay, they work night and day, dying of

exposure and disease. Having read this, and partly forgotten it, I was thinking, accidentally, of my own

unsatisfactory life, doing as others do; and with that vision of the diggings still before me, I asked myself

why I might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest particles why I might not sink a

shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine. There is a Ballarat, a Bendigo for you what though it

were a sulkygully? At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in

which I could walk with love and reverence. Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own

way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travellers may see only a gap in the

Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to

the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead,

and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful. Is not our native soil auriferous? Does

not a stream from the golden mountains flow through our native valley? and has not this for more than

geologic ages been bringing down the shining particles and forming the nuggets for us? Yet, strange to tell, if

a digger steal away, prospecting for this true gold, into the unexplored solitudes around us, there is no danger

that any will dog his steps, and endeavor to supplant him. He may claim and undermine the whole valley

even, both the cultivated and the uncultivated portions, his whole life long in peace, for no one will ever

dispute his claim. They will not mind his cradles or his toms. He is not confined to a claim twelve feet square,

as at Ballarat, but may mine anywhere, and wash the whole wide world in his tom.

Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twentyeight pounds, at the Bendigo

diggings in Australia: "He soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and,

when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he

was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly

knocked his brains out." I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains

out against the nugget. Howitt adds, "He is a hopelessly ruined man." But he is a type of the class. They are

all fast men. Hear some of the names of the places where they dig: "Jackass Flat" "Sheep'sHead Gully"

"Murderer's Bar," etc. Is there no satire in these names? Let them carry their illgotten wealth where they

will, I am thinking it will still be "Jackass Flat," if not "Murderer's Bar," where they live.

The last resource of our energy has been the robbing of graveyards on the Isthmus of Darien, an enterprise

which appears to be but in its infancy; for, according to late accounts, an act has passed its second reading in

the legislature of New Granada, regulating this kind of mining; and a correspondent of the "Tribune" writes:

"In the dry season, when the weather will permit of the country being properly prospected, no doubt other

rich guacas [that is, graveyards] will be found." To emigrants he says: "do not come before December; take

the Isthmus route in preference to the Boca del Toro one; bring no useless baggage, and do not cumber

yourself with a tent; but a good pair of blankets will be necessary; a pick, shovel, and axe of good material

will be almost all that is required": advice which might have been taken from the "Burker's Guide." And he

concludes with this line in Italics and small capitals: "If you are doing well at home, STAY THERE," which

may fairly be interpreted to mean, "If you are getting a good living by robbing graveyards at home, stay

But why go to California for a text? She is the child of New England, bred at her own school and church.

It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in

excusing the ways of men. Most reverend seniors, the illuminati of the age, tell me, with a gracious,

reminiscent smile, betwixt an aspiration and a shudder, not to be too tender about these things to lump all

that, that is, make a lump of gold of it. The highest advice I have heard on these subjects was grovelling. The

burden of it was It is not worth your while to undertake to reform the world in this particular. Do not ask

how your bread is buttered; it will make you sick, if you do and the like. A man had better starve at once

than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread. If within the sophisticated man there is not an

unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels. As we grow old, we live more coarsely, we relax

a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious

to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves.

In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of

sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars

are inhabited or not, in order to discover it. Why must we daub the heavens as well as the earth? It was an

unfortunate discovery that Dr. Kane was a Mason, and that Sir John Franklin was another. But it was a more

cruel suggestion that possibly that was the reason why the former went in search of the latter. There is not a

popular magazine in this country that would dare to print a child's thought on important subjects without

You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his

society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they

appear to hold stock that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things. They will continually

thrust their own low roof, with its narrow skylight, between you and the sky, when it is the unobstructed

heavens you would view. Get out of the way with your cobwebs; wash your windows, I say! In some lyceums

they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is,

and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean

breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about. The lecture

was as harmless as moonshine to them. Whereas, if I had read to them the biography of the greatest scamps in

history, they might have thought that I had written the lives of the deacons of their church. Ordinarily, the

inquiry is, Where did you come from? or, Where are you going? That was a more pertinent question which I

overheard one of my auditors put to another one "What does he lecture for?" It made me quake in my shoes.

To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they

dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the

underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an

underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten. What stuff is the man made of

who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and subtilest truth? I often accuse my finest

acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do

not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that

the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each

That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was! only another kind of

politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the

thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together,

as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an

elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent, and had nothing to put under the serpent.

Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When

our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man

who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the

most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea,

and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the

postoffice. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters,

proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it

seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so

much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the

We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I did not know why my news

should be so trivial considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so

paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition. You are often

tempted to ask why such stress is laid on a particular experience which you have had that, after twentyfive

years, you should meet Hobbins, Registrar of Deeds, again on the sidewalk. Have you not budged an inch,

then? Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi,

and impinge on some neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which affords a basis for them, and hence a

parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet

explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about

such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.

All summer, and far into the autumn, perchance, you unconsciously went by the newspapers and the news,

and now you find it was because the morning and the evening were full of news to you. Your walks were full

of incidents. You attended, not to the affairs of Europe, but to your own affairs in Massachusetts fields. If you

chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news

transpire thinner than the paper on which it is printed then these things will fill the world for you; but if

you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. Really to see the

sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars, and Huns, and Chinamen! Like insects, they swarm. The historian strives

in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that

Pray, let us live without being drawn by dogs, Esquimauxfashion, tearing over hill and dale, and biting each

Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind

the details of some trivial affair the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are

to lumber their minds with such rubbish to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to

intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of

the street and the gossip of the teatable chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself an

hypaethral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts

which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which

only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is

important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single case of the

criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for

many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street

had occupied us the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our

thoughts' shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? When I have been compelled to sit

spectator and auditor in a courtroom for some hours, and have seen my neighbors, who were not compelled,

stealing in from time to time, and tiptoeing about with washed hands and faces, it has appeared to my mind's

eye, that, when they took off their hats, their ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for sound, between

which even their narrow heads were crowded. Like the vanes of windmills, they caught the broad but shallow

stream of sound, which, after a few titillating gyrations in their coggy brains, passed out the other side. I

wondered if, when they got home, they were as careful to wash their ears as before their hands and faces. It

has seemed to me, at such a time, that the auditors and the witnesses, the jury and the counsel, the judge and

the criminal at the bar if I may presume him guilty before he is convicted were all equally criminal, and a

By all kinds of traps and signboards, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such

trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than

useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian

streams, and not the town sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive

mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the barroom and the police

court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to

which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit

of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be

macadamized, as it were its foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if

you would know what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and

asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treatment so

If we have thus desecrated ourselves as who has not? the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to

reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves,

as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects

we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as had as

impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced

each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us

by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear

and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them

had better let their peddlingcarts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bride of glorious span

by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no

culture, no refinement but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil? to acquire a little worldly wealth,

or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living

kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom

in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political

tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic the respublica has

been settled, it is time to look after the resprivata the private state to see, as the Roman senate charged its

consuls, "ne quid resPRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment.

Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King

Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a

means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a

nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who

may perchance be really free. We tax ourselves unjustly. There is a part of us which is not represented. It is

taxation without representation. We quarter troops, we quarter fools and cattle of all sorts upon ourselves. We

quarter our gross bodies on our poor souls, till the former eat up all the latter's substance.

With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan mere

Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship

truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and

commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.

So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more

important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance the English question why did I

not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their "good breeding" respects only secondary

objects. The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer

intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days mere courtliness, kneebuckles and smallclothes,

out of date. It is the vice, but not the excellence of manners, that they are continually being deserted by the

character; they are castoffclothes or shells, claiming the respect which belonged to the living creature. You

are presented with the shells instead of the meat, and it is no excuse generally, that, in the case of some fishes,

the shells are of more worth than the meat. The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to

insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself. It was not in this sense

that the poet Decker called Christ "the first true gentleman that ever breathed." I repeat that in this sense the

most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine interests

only, and not the affairs of Rome. A praetor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb

Government and legislation! these I thought were respectable professions. We have heard of heavenborn

Numas, Lycurguses, and Solons, in the history of the world, whose names at least may stand for ideal

legislators; but think of legislating to regulate the breeding of slaves, or the exportation of tobacco! What

have divine legislators to do with the exportation or the importation of tobacco? what humane ones with the

breeding of slaves? Suppose you were to submit the question to any son of God and has He no children in

the Nineteenth Century? is it a family which is extinct? in what condition would you get it again? What

shall a State like Virginia say for itself at the last day, in which these have been the principal, the staple

productions? What ground is there for patriotism in such a State? I derive my facts from statistical tables

A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for this

purpose! I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags,

juniper berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the

dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter

almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the seabrine, is not shipwreck, bitter

enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there

are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and

civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activity the activity of flies about a molasses

hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes.

Lieutenant Herndon, whom our government sent to explore the Amazon, and, it is said, to extend the area of

slavery, observed that there was wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the

comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the great resources of the country." But what

are the "artificial wants" to be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves of, I believe,

his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other material wealth of our native New England; nor are "the

great resources of a country" that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these. The chief want, in every

State that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out "the great

resources" of Nature, and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man naturally dies out of her. When we

want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugarplums, then the great resources of a world

are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men those

In short, as a snowdrift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of

truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never

fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns

specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love

literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my

sense of right so much. I have not got to answer for having read a single President's Message. A strange age

of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come abegging to a private man's door, and utter

their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or

other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it more importunate

than an Italian beggar; and if I have a mind to look at its certificate, made, perchance, by some benevolent

merchant's clerk, or the skipper that brought it over, for it cannot speak a word of English itself, I shall

probably read of the eruption of some Vesuvius, or the overflowing of some Po, true or forged, which

brought it into this condition. I do not hesitate, in such a case, to suggest work, or the almshouse; or why not

keep its castle in silence, as I do commonly? The poor President, what with preserving his popularity and

doing his duty, is completely bewildered. The newspapers are the ruling power. Any other government is

reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, government will

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true,

vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of

the physical body. They are infrahuman, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a halfconsciousness of

them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid

state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called. It is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the great

gizzard of creation. Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political

parties are its two opposite halves sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not

only individuals, but states, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by

what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a

remembering, of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why

should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our had dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to

congratulate each other on the everglorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.