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

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