WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Henry David Thoreau

and as one not interested in the success or

      failure of the present economical and social arrangements. I was more

      independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a

      house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very

      crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than they already,

      if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I should have been

      nearly as well off as before.

      I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as

      herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. Men and

      oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen

      will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the

      larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks

      of haying, and it is no boy’s play. Certainly no nation that lived

      simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would

      commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. True, there

      never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am

      I certain it is desirable that there should be. However, _I_ should

      never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work

      he might do for me, for fear I should become a horse-man or a herds-man

      merely; and if society seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we

      certain that what is one man’s gain is not another’s loss, and that the

      stable-boy has equal cause with his master to be satisfied? Granted

      that some public works would not have been constructed without this

      aid, and let man share the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it

      follow that he could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of

      himself in that case? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or

      artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is

      inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in

      other words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only

      works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works

      for the animal without him. Though we have many substantial houses of

      brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the

      degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is said to

      have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it

      is not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few halls

      for free worship or free speech in this county. It should not be by

      their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract

      thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much

      more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers

      and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind

      does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to

      any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to

      a trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In

      Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations

      are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of

      themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal

      pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good

      sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I

      love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar

      grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest

      man’s field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered farther from

      the true end of life. The religion and civilization which are barbaric

      and heathenish build splendid temples; but what you might call

      Christianity does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward

      its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is

      nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could

      be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for

      some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have

      drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might

      possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for

      it. As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the

      same all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or

      the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring

      is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. Mr.

      Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his

      Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson

      & Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to look down on

      it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your high towers and

      monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to

      dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the

      Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of

      my way to admire the hole which he made. Many are concerned about the

      monuments of the West and the East,—to know who built them. For my

      part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them,—who

      were above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics.

      By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the

      village in the mean while, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had

      earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July

      4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, though I

      lived there more than two years,—not counting potatoes, a little green

      corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of

      what was on hand at the last date, was

      Rice,................... $ 1.73½

      Molasses,................ 1.73 Cheapest form of the

      saccharine.

      Rye meal,................ 1.04¾

      Indian meal,............. 0.99¾ Cheaper than rye.

      Pork,.................... 0.22

      All