"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical
aids,
but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us
in
our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the
unquestionable
ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is
something
to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so
to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve
and
paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which
morally
we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of
arts.
Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of
the
contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only
the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had
to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I
did
not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish
to
practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live
deep
and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and
Spartan-like
as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave
close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms,
and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine
meanness
of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to
know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my
next
excursion.
For most men, it appears to me, are in
a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God,
and
have
somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man
here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were
long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is
error
upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its
occasion
a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by
detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten
fingers,
or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest.
Simplicity,
simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and
not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen,
and
keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping
sea
of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and
thousand-and-one
items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not
founder
and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning,
and
he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead
of
a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.
Our
life is like a German Confederacy,
made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that
even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment.
The
nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by
the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and
overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its
own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of
calculation
and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only
cure
for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than
Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men
think
that it is essential that the
Nation have commerce, and export
ice,
and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a
doubt, whether
they do or not; but whether we should live like
baboons
or like men, is a little uncertain."
"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined
to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves
nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.
As for work, we haven't any of any consequence."
"And I am sure that I
never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man
robbed,
or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel
wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western
Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the
winter
— we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted
with
the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and
applications?
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they
who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are
greedy
after this gossip."
"Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is
fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow
themselves
to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would
be
like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we
respected
only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would
resound
along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that
only
great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that
petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This
is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering,
and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their
daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on
purely
illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and
relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who
think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure."
"Look at a
meeting-house,
or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say
what
that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to
pieces
in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of
the
system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man.
In
eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these
times
and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in
the
present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the
ages.
And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only
by
the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds
us.
The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions;
whether
we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our
lives
in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and
noble
a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off
the
track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.
Let
us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation;
let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the
children
cry — determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go
with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible
rapid
and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows.
Weather
this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down
hill.
With
unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way,
tied to the mast like Ulysses.
If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains.
If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of
music
they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet
downward
through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and
delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through
Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through
Church
and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to
a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call
reality,
and
say,
This is, and no mistake; and then begin,
having
a
point d'appui,
below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall
or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a
Nilometer,
but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of
shams
and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right
fronting
and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its
surfaces,
as if it were a cimeter,
and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and
so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death,
we
crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in
our
throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go
about
our business.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I
drink
I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current
slides
away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky,
whose
bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first
letter
of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise
as
the day I was born."
— Excerpts from "Walden; or, Life in the Woods," by Henry David Thoreau
