WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and

memorable as that from the man to the farmer;—and in a new country,

fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still

to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the

land I cultivated was sold—namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But

as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by

squatting on it.

There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such

questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and

to strike at the root of the matter at once,—for the root is faith,—I

am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they

cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.

For my part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind being tried;

as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on

the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the

same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments,

though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their

thirds in mills, may be alarmed.

My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost me nothing

of which I have not rendered an account, consisted of a bed, a table, a

desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of

tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a

wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a

jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor

that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty

of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for

taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand

without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher

would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up

country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly

account of empty boxes? That is Spaulding’s furniture. I could never

tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so called

rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken.

Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load

looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one

shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we

_move_ ever but to get rid of our furniture, our _exuviæ_; at last to

go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be

burned? It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man’s

belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are

cast without dragging them,—dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that

left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to

be free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a

dead set! “Sir, if I may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?”

If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he

owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his

kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not

burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway

he can. I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a

knot hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot follow

him. I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig,

compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his

“furniture,” as whether it is insured or not. “But what shall I do with

my furniture?” My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider’s web then.

Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire

more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody’s barn. I look

upon England to-day as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great

deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from long housekeeping,

which he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk,

bandbox and bundle. Throw away the first three at least. It would

surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk,

and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.

When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained

his all—looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of

his neck—I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because

he had all _that_ to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will take

care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But

perchance it would be wisest never to put one’s paw into it.

I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for

I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing

that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of

mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet, and if he

is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to

retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than to add a

single item to the details of housekeeping. A lady once offered me a

mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare

within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my

feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of

evil.

Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon’s effects, for

his life had not been ineffectual:—

“The evil that men do lives after them.”

As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate

in his father’s day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now,

after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these

things were not burned; instead of a _bonfire_, or purifying

destruction of them, there was an _auction_, or increasing of them. The

neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and

carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie

there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. When

a man dies he kicks the dust.

The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably

imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting

their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they

have the reality or not. Would it not be well if we were to celebrate

such a “busk,” or “feast of first fruits,” as Bartram describes to have

been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? “When a town celebrates the

busk,” says he, “having previously provided themselves with new

clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture,

they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things,

sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town of their

filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they

cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After

having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the

town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the

gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty

is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town.—”

“On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together,

produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in

the town is supplied with the new and pure flame.”

They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing for

three days, “and the four following days they receive visits and

rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like

manner purified and prepared themselves.”

The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every

fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come

to an end.

I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary

defines it, “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual

grace,” than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally

inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no biblical

record of the revelation.

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor

of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I

could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well

as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have

thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in

proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was

obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly,

and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of

my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have

tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way

in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I

was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a

good business. When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do

for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of

friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and

seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its

small profits might suffice,—for my greatest skill has been to want but

little,—so little capital it required, so little distraction from my

wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances went

unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this

occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick

the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of

them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed that I might

gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved

to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I

have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though

you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to

the business.

As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom,

as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my

time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate

cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If

there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things,

and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the

pursuit. Some are “industrious,” and appear to love labor for its own

sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I

have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do

with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as

hard as they do,—work till they pay for themselves, and get their free

papers. For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the

most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty

days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going

down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen

pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates

from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the

other.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to

maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if

we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations

are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a

man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats

easier than I do.

One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, told me

that he thought he should live as I did, _if he had the means_. I would

not have any one adopt _my_ mode of living on any account; for, beside

that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for

myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the

world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find

out and pursue _his own_ way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or

his neighbor’s instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let

him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to

do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor

or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is

sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port

within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.

Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer still for a

thousand, as a large house is not proportionally more expensive than a

small one, since one roof may cover, one cellar underlie, and one wall

separate several apartments. But for my part, I preferred the solitary

dwelling. Moreover, it will commonly be cheaper to build the whole

yourself than to convince another of the advantage of the common wall;

and when you have done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper,

must be a thin one, and that other may prove a bad neighbor, and also

not keep his side in repair. The only coöperation which is commonly

possible is exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true

coöperation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible

to men. If a man has faith, he will coöperate with equal faith

everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest

of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To coöperate, in the

highest as well as the lowest sense, means _to get our living

together_. I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel

together over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he

went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of

exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be

companions or coöperate, since one would not _operate_ at all. They

would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures. Above

all, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start to-day; but he

who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may

be a long time before they get off.

But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I

confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic

enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among

others have sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have

used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some

poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to do,—for the devil

finds employment for the idle,—I might try my hand at some such pastime

as that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this

respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining

certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain

myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they

have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. While my

townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their

fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less

humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for any

thing else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are

full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am

satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I

should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling

to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from

annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater

steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I would not

stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work,

which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say,

Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely

they will.

I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt many

of my readers would make a similar defence. At doing something,—I will

not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good,—I do not hesitate

to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it

is for my employer to find out. What _good_ I do, in the common sense

of that word, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part

wholly unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you are and such

as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with

kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I were to preach at all

in this strain, I should say rather, Set about being good. As if the

sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a

moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin

Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and

tainting meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily

increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such

brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in

the mean while too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it

good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going

about him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly

birth by his beneficence, had the sun’s chariot but one day, and drove

out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the

lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and

dried up every spring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at

length Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and

the sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It

is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man

was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I

should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the

African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and

ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should

get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my

blood. No,—in this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A

man is not a good _man_ to me because he will feed me if I should be

starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch

if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that

will do as much. Philanthropy is not love for one’s fellow-man in the

broadest sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man

in his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a

hundred Howards to _us_, if their philanthropy do not help _us_ in our

best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of a

philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any good

to me, or the like of me.

The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the

stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. Being

superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were

superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the

law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the

ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by,

who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely

forgiving them all they did.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be

your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend

yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious

mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he

is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely

his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags

with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on

the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more

tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day,

one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and I

saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere

he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it

is true, and that he could afford to refuse the _extra_ garments which

I offered him, he had so many _intra_ ones. This ducking was the very

thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would

be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole

slop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil

to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows

the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by

his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to

relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every

tenth slave to buy a Sunday’s liberty for the rest. Some show their

kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they

not be kinder if they employed themselves there? You boast of spending

a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine

tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the

property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose

possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of

justice?

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently

appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our

selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here

in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he

was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the

race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I

once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and

intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political

worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others,

speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required

it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the

greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one

must feel the falsehood and cant of this. The last were not England’s

best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists.

I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to

philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and

works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man’s

uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and

leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for

the sick, serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I

want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over

from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness

must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity,

which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a

charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often

surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast-off griefs as an

atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and

not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take

care that this does not spread by contagion. From what southern plains

comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen

to whom we would send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man

whom we would redeem? If any thing ail a man, so that he does not

perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,—for that

is the seat of sympathy,—he forthwith sets about reforming—the world.

Being a microcosm himself, he discovers, and it is a true discovery,

and he is the man to make it,—that the world has been eating green

apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great green apple,

which there is danger awful to think of that the children of men will

nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his drastic philanthropy

seeks out the Esquimaux and the Patagonian, and embraces the populous

Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic

activity, the powers in the mean while using him for their own ends, no

doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint

blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe,

and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to

live. I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I

never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with

his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is

his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the

morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous

companions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing against the use

of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed

tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have

chewed, which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed

into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what

your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning

and tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set about some free

labor.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our

hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring him

forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather

consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere

recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life,

any memorable praise of God. All health and success does me good,

however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure

helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may

have with me or I with it. If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by

truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as

simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over

our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to

be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies

of the world.

I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that

“They asked a wise man, saying; Of the many celebrated trees which the

Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or

free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is

there in this? He replied; Each has its appropriate produce, and

appointed season, during the continuance of which it is fresh and

blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to neither of

which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of

this nature are the azads, or religious independents.—Fix not thy heart

on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue

to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy

hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing

to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress.”