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

determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

      Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and

      imagination,—what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think,

      also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the

      last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you

      could kill time without injuring eternity.

      The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called

      resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go

      into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the

      bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is

      concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of

      mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is

      a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

      When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief

      end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it

      appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living

      because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there

      is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun

      rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of

      thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What

      everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to

      be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted

      for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What

      old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds

      for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough

      once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new

      people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the

      globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the

      phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an

      instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

      One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of

      absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important

      advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and

      their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as

      they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which

      belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I

      have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the

      first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They

      have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to the

      purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me;

      but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any

      experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my

      Mentors said nothing about.

      One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for

      it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes

      a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of

      bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with

      vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite

      of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some

      circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries

      merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.

      The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by

      their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to

      have been cared for. According to Evelyn, “the wise Solomon prescribed

      ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors have

      decided how often you may go into your neighbor’s land to gather the

      acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to

      that neighbor.” Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut

      our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter

      nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have

      exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But

      man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what

      he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have

      been thy failures hitherto, “be not afflicted, my child, for who shall

      assign to thee what thou hast left undone?”

      We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance,

      that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of

      earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some

      mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are

      the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different

      beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the

      same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as

      our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to

      another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through

      each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the

      world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry,

      Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling

      and informing as this would be.

      The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to

      be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good

      behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say

      the wisest thing you can, old man,—you who have lived seventy years,

      not without honor of a kind,—I hear an irresistible voice which invites

      me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of

      another like stranded vessels.

      I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may

      waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

      Nature