Without
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LIFE
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LIFE aſ
WITHOUT
PRINCIPLE
By HENRY
DAVID THOREAU
AUTHOR of “walpen,” “THE DUTy
of civil Disobedience,” ETc
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THE SIMPLE LIFE PRESS
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“If a man were to place himself
in an attitude to bear manſu//y the
greatest evil that can be inflicted on
him, he would find suddenly that
Žhere was no such evil to bear, his
braze back would go a-begging. When
Atlas got his back made up, that
was al/ that was required. The
world rests on principles.”
— H. D. THOREAU,

Lab,
| lab. bequeſ
|º
Life without Principle
T a lyceum, not long since, I felt that the
lecturer had chosen a theme too foreign
to himself, and so failed to interest me as much
as he might have done. He described things not
in or near to his heart, but toward his extremities
and superficies. There was, in this sense, no truly
central or centralising thought in the lecture.
I would have had him deal with his privatest
experience, as the poet does. The greatest com-
pliment that was ever paid me was when one asked
me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this
happens; it is such a rare use he would make
of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool.
Commonly, if men want anything of me, it is only
to know how many acres I make of their land,-
since I am a surveyor, or, at most, what trivial
news I have burdened myself with. They never
will go to law for my meat; they prefer the shell.
A man once came a considerable distance to
ask me to lecture on Slavery ; but on conversing
with him, I found that he and his clique expected
seven-eighths of the lecture to be theirs, and only
one-eighth mine ; so I declined. I take it for
granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere—
for I have had a little experience in that business,
—that there is a desire to hear what I think on
5

6 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
Some subject, though I may be the greatest fool
in the country, and not that I should say pleas-
ant things merely, or such as the audience will
assent to ; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will
give them a strong dose of myself. They have
sent for me and engaged to pay for me, and I am
determined that they shall have me, though I bore
them beyond all precedent.
So now I would say something similar to you,
my readers. Since you are my readers and I have
not been much of a traveller, I will not talk about
people a thousand miles off, but come as near home
as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all
the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
Let us consider the way in which we spend our
lives.
This world is a place of business. What an
infinite bustle ! I am awaked almost every
night by the panting of the locomotive. It inter-
rupts my dreams. There is no Sabbath. It would
be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It
is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily
buy a blank book to write thoughts in ; they are
commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irish-
man, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took
it for granted that I was calculating my wages.
If a man was tossed out of a window when an
infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out
of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly
because he was thus incapacitated for—business |
I think that there is nothing, not even crime,
more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to
life itself, than this incessant business.
There is a coarse and boisterous money-making
fellow in the outskirts of our town, who is going
to build a bank-wall under the hill along the edge

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 7
of his meadow. The powers have put this into
his head to keep him out of mischief, and he
wishes me to spend three weeks digging there
with him. The result will be that he will perhaps
get some more money to hoard, and leave for
his heirs to spend foolishly. If I do this, most
will commend me as an industrious and hard-
working man ; but if I choose to devote myself
to certain labours which yield more real profit,
though but little money, they may be inclined
to look on me as an idler. Nevertheless, as I do
not need the police of meaningless labour to regu-
late me, and do not see anything absolutely
praiseworthy in this fellow's undertaking, any
more than in many an enterprise of our own or
foreign governments, however amusing it may
be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education
at a different school.
If a man walk in the woods for love of them
half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded
as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a
speculator, shearing off those woods and making
earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an
industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a
town had no interest in its forests but to cut them
down |
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed
to employ them in throwing stones over a wall,
and then in throwing them back, merely that they
might earn their wages. But many are no more
worthily employed now. For instance : just
after Sunrise, one summer morning, I noticed one
of my neighbours walking beside his team, which
was slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung
under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere
of industry, His day's work begun, his brow

8 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
commenced to sweat, a reproach to all sluggards
and idlers, pausing abreast the shoulders of his
oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of
his merciful whip, while they gained their length
on him. And I thought, Such is the labour which
the American Congress exists to protect, honest,
manly toil, honest as the day is long, -that
makes his bread taste Sweet, and keeps society
Sweet,_which all men respect and have conse-
crated ; one of the sacred band, doing the needful
but irksome drudgery. Indeed, I felt a slight
reproach, because I observed this from a window,
and was not abroad and stirring about a similar
business. The day went by, and at evening I
passed the yard of another neighbour, who keeps
many servants, and spends much money foolishly,
while he adds nothing to the common stock, and
there I saw the stone of the morning lying beside
a whimsical structure intended to adorn this Lord
Timothy Dexter's premises, and the dignity forth-
with departed from the teamster's labour, in
my eyes. In my opinion, the Sun was made to
light worthier toil than this. I may add, that
his employer has since run off, in debt to a good
part of the town, and, after passing through
Chancery, has settled somewhere else, there to
become once more a patron of the arts.
The ways by which you may get money almost
without exception lead downward. To have
done anything by which you earned money merely
is to have been truly idle, or worse. If the labourer
gets no more than the wages which his employer
pays him he is cheated—he cheats himself. If
you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you
must be popular, which is to go down perpendi-
cularly. Those services which the community

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 9
will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable
to render. You are paid for being something
less than a man. The State does not commonly
reward a genius any more wisely. Even the
poet-laureate would rather not have to celebrate
the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed
with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet
is called away from his muse to gauge that very
pipe. As for my own business, even that kind
of surveying which I could do with most satis-
faction my employers do not want. They would
prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not
too well—ay, not well enough. When I observe
that there are different ways of surveying, my
employer commonly asks which will give him the
most land, not which is most correct. I once
invented a rule for measuring cord-wood, and
tried to introduce it in Boston ; but the measurer
there told me that the sellers did not wish to have
their wood measured correctly,–that he was
already too accurate for them, and therefore they
commonly got their wood measured in Charles-
town before crossing the bridge.
The aim of the labourer should be, not to get
his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform
well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary
sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its
labourers so well that they would not feel that
they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood
merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money,
but him who does it for love of it.
# It is remarkable that there are few men so well
employed, so much to their minds, but that a
little money or fame would commonly buy them
off from their present pursuit. I see advertise-

IO LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
ments for active young men, as if activity were
the whole of a young man's capital. Yet I have
been surprised when one has with confidence
proposed to me, a grown man, to embark in some
enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely nothing
to do, my life having been a complete failure
hitherto. What a doubtful compliment this is
to pay me ! As if he had met me half-way across
the ocean beating up against the wind, but bound
nowhere, and proposed to me to go along with
him If I did, what do you think the under-
writers would say P No, no I am not without
employment at this stage of the voyage. To tell
the truth, I saw an advertisement for able-bodied
seamen, when I was a boy, sauntering in my
native port, and as soon as I came of age I em-
barked.
The community has no bribe that will tempt
a wise man. You may raise money to tunnel a
mountain, but you cannot raise money enough
to hire a man who is minding his own business.
An efficient and valuable man does what he can,
whether the community pay him for it or not.
The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the
highest bidder, and are for ever expecting to be
put into office. One would suppose that they
were rarely disappointed.
Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with
respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection
with and obligation to society are still very slight
and transient. Those slight labours which afford
me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that
I am to some extent serviceable to my contem-
poraries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me,
and I am not often reminded that they are a
necessity. So far I am successful. But I fore-

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE II
see that, if my wants should be much increased,
the labour required to supply them would become
a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons
and afternoons to society, as most appear to do,
I am sure that for me there would be nothing left
worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus
sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish
to suggest that a man may be very industrious,
and yet not spend his time well. There is no
more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the
greater part of his life getting his living. All
great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet,
for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry,
as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the
shavings it makes. You must get your living by
loving. But as it is said of the merchants that
ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men
generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and
bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
Merely to come into the world the heir of a
fortune is not to be born, but to be still-born,
rather. To be supported by the charity of friends,
or a government pension,-provided you continue
to breathe, by whatever fine synonyms you
describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse.
On Sundays the poor debtor goes to church to
take an account of stock, and finds, of course,
that his outgoes have been greater than his income.
In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into
Chancery, make a clean confession, give up all,
and think to start again. Thus men will lie on
their backs, talking about the fall of man, and
never make an effort to get up.
As for the comparative demand which men
make on life, it is an important difference between
two, that the one is satisfied with a level success,

I2 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
that his marks can all be hit by point-blank shots,
but the other, however low and unsuccessful his
life may be, constantly elevates his aim, though
at a very slight angle to the horizon. I should
much rather be the last man,—though, as the
Orientals say, “Greatness doth not approach
him who is for ever looking down ; and all those
who are looking high are growing poor.”
It is remarkable that there is little or nothing
to be remembered written on the subject of getting
a living : how to make getting a living not merely
honest and honourable, but altogether inviting
and glorious ; for if getting a living is not so, then
living is not. One would think, from looking
at literature, that this question had never dis-
turbed a solitary individual’s musings. Is it
that men are too much disgusted with their experi-
ence to speak of it 2 The lesson of value which
money teaches, which the Author of the Universe
has taken so much pains to teach us, we are inclined
to skip altogether. As for the means of living,
it is wonderful how indifferent men of all classes
are about it, even reformers, so called,—whether
they inherit, or earn, or steal it. I think that
Society has done nothing for us in this respect,
or at least has undone what she has done. Cold
and hunger seem more friendly to my nature
than those methods which men have adopted
and advise to ward them off.
The title wise is, for the most part, falsely
applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does
not know any better how to live than other men P
—if he is only more cunning and intellectually
subtle P Does wisdom work in a treadmill P or
does she teach how to succeed by her example? Is
there any such thing as wisdom not applied to

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE I3
life 2 Is she merely the miller who grinds the
finest logic P. It is pertinent to ask if Plato got
his living in a better way or more successfully
than his contemporaries, or did he succumb
to the difficulties of life like other men P Did
he seem to prevail over some of them merely by
indifference, or by assuming grand airs 2 or find
it easier to live, because his aunt remembered
him in her will P The ways in which most men
get their living, that is, live, are mere make-
shifts, and a shirking of the real business of life,
chiefly because they do not know, but partly
because they do not mean, any better.
The rush to California, for instance, and the
attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philo-
sophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it,
reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That
so many are ready to live by luck, and so get
the means of commanding the labour of others
less lucky, without contributing any value to
society And that is called enterprise ! I know
of no more startling development of the immora-
lity of trade, and all the common modes of getting
a living. The philosophy and poetry and religion
of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a
puff-ball. The hog that gets his living by rooting,
stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such
company. If I could command the wealth of
all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not
pay such a price for it. Even Mahomet knew
that God did not make this world in jest. It
makes God to be a moneyed gentleman who
scatters a handful of pennies in order to see man-
kind scramble for them. The world’s raffle
A subsistence in the domains of Nature a thing
to be raffled for What a comment, what a

I4 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
satire, on our institutions ! The conclusion will
be, that mankind will hang itself upon a tree.
And have all the precepts in all the Bibles taught
men only this P and is the last and most admirable
invention of the human race only an improved
muck-rake 2 Is this the ground on which Orien-
tals and Occidentals meet P Did God direct
us so to get our living, digging where we never
planted,—and He would, perchance, reward us
with lumps of gold P
God gave the righteous man a certificate entit-
ling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous
man found a fac-simile of the same in God's coffers,
and appropriated it, and obtained food and
raiment like the former. It is one of the most
extensive systems of counterfeiting that the
world has seen. I did not know that mankind
were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a
little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but
not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild
a great surface, but not so much as a grain of
wisdom.
The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains
is as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons
of San Francisco, What difference does it make,
whether you shake dirt or shake dice P If you
win, society is the loser. The gold-digger is the
enemy of the honest labourer, whatever checks
and compensations there may be. It is not enough
to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold.
So does the devil work hard. The way of trans-
gressors may be hard in many respects. The
humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and
says that gold-digging is of the character of a
lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same
thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practi.

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE I5
cally, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen
only the fact, not the principle, and goes into
trade there—that is, buys a ticket in what com-
monly proves another lottery, where the fact is
not so obvious.
After reading Howitt's account of the Australian
gold-diggings one evening, I had in my mind's
eye all night the numerous valleys, with their
streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to
one hundred feet deep, and half-a-dozen feet
across, as close as they can be dug, and partly
filled with water, the locality to which men
furiously rush to probe for their fortunes,
uncertain where they shall break ground,-not
knowing but the gold is under their camp itself,
sometimes digging one hundred and sixty feet
before they strike the vein, or then missing it by
a foot, turned into demons, and regardless of
each other's rights, in their thirst for riches,
whole valleys, for thirty miles, suddenly honey-
combed by the pits of the miners, so that even
hundreds are drowned in them,-standing in
water, and covered with mud and clay, they work
night and day, dying of exposure and disease.
Having read this, and partly forgotten it, I was
thinking, accidentally, of my own unsatisfactory
life, doing as others do ; and with that vision
of the diggings still before me, I asked myself
why I might not be washing some gold daily,
though it were only the finest particles, why I
might not sink a shaft down to the gold within
me, and work that mine. There is a Ballarat,
a Bendigo, for you, -what though it were a sulky-
\gully ? At any rate, I might pursue some path,
however solitary and narrow and crooked, in
which I could walk with love and reverence.

I6 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
Wherever a man separates from the multitude,
and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed
is a fork in the road, though ordinary travellers
may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary
path across-lots will turn out the higher way of
the two.
Men rush to California and Australia as if the
true gold were to be found in that direction ; but
that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where
it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther
away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate
when they think themselves most successful. Is
not our native soil auriferous P Does not a stream
from the golden mountains flow through our native
valley P and has not this for more than geologic
ages been bringing down the shining particles and
forming the nuggets for us P. Yet, strange to tell,
if a digger steal away, prospecting for this true
gold, into the unexplored solitudes around us,
there is no danger that any will dog his steps, and
endeavour to supplant him. He may claim and
undermine the whole valley even, both the culti-
vated and the uncultivated portions, his whole
life long in peace, for no one will ever dispute his
claim. They will not mind his cradles or his toms.
He is not confined to a claim twelve feet square,
as at Ballarat, but may mine anywhere, and wash
the whole wide world in his tom.
Howitt says of the man who found the great
nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at
the Bendigo diggings in Australia : “He soon
began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about,
generally at full gallop, and, when he met with
people, called out to inquire if they knew who he
was, and then kindly informed them that he was
‘the bloody wretch that had found the nugget,”

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE I7
At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly
knocked his brains out. I think, however, there
was no danger of that, for he had already knocked
his brains out against the nugget. Howitt adds,
“He is a hopelessly ruined man.” But he is a
type of the class. They are all fast men. Hear
some of the names of the places where they
dig : “Jackass Flat,” “Sheep's-Head Gully,”
“Murderer's Bar,” etc. Is there no satire in
these names P Let them carry their ill-gotten
wealth where they will, I am thinking it will still
be “Jackass Flat,” if not “Murderer's Bar,”
where they live.
The last resource of our energy has been the rob-
bing of graveyards on the Isthmus of Darien, an en-
terprise which appears to be but in its infancy; for,
according to late accounts, an act has passed its
second reading in the legislature of New Granada,
regulating this kind of mining ; and a correspon-
dent of the Tribune writes: “In the dry season,
when the weather will permit of the country being
properly prospected, no doubt other rich guacas
[that is, graveyards] will be found.” To emigrants
he says: “Do not come before December ; take
the Isthmus route in preference to the Boca del
Toro one ; bring no useless baggage, and do not
cumber yourself with a tent; but a good pair of
blankets will be necessary; a pick, shovel, and
axe of good material will be almost all that is
required '': advice which might have been taken
from the Burkey’s Guide. And he concludes with
this line in italics and small capitals: “If you
are doing well at home, STAY THERE,” which may
fairly be interpreted to mean, “If you are getting
a good living by robbing graveyards at home,
stay there.”
B

I8 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
But why go to California for a text? She is
the child of New England, bred at her own school
and church. -
It is remarkable that among all the preachers
there are so few moral teachers. The prophets
are employed in excusing the ways of men. Most
reverend seniors, the illuminati of the age, tell me,
with a gracious, reminiscent smile, betwixt an
aspiration and a shudder, not to be too tender
about these things, to lump all that, that is,
make a lump of gold of it. The highest advice I
have heard on these subjects was grovelling. The
burden of it was, It is not worth your while to
undertake to reform the world in this particular.
Do not ask how your bread is buttered ; it will
make you sick, if you do, and the like. A man
had better starve at once than lose his innocence
in the process of getting his bread. If within the
sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated
one, then he is but one of the devil's angels. As
we grow old we live more coarsely, we relax a little
in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to
obey our finest instincts. But we should be
fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding
the gibes of those who are more fortunate than
ourselves.
In our science and philosophy, even, there is
commonly no true and absolute account of things.
The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its
hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the
problem whether the stars are inhabited or not,
in order to discover it. Why must we daub the
heavens as well as the earth P. It was an unfor-
tunate discovery that Dr. Kane was a Mason, and
that Sir John Franklin was another. But it was
a more cruel suggestion that possibly that was the

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE IQ
-
reason why the former went in search of the latter.
There is not a popular magazine in this country
that would dare to print a child’s thoughton import-
ant subjects without comment. It must be
submitted to the D.D.’s. I would it were the
chickadee-dees.
You come from attending the funeral of man-
kind to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little
thought is sexton to all the world.
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who
is so broad and truly liberal that you can think
aloud in his society. Most with whom you
endeavour to talk soon come to a stand against
some institution in which they appear to hold
stock—that is, some particular, not universal way
of viewing things. They will continually thrust
their own low roof, with its narrow skylight,
between you and the sky, when it is the unob-
structed heavens you would view. Get out of the
way with your cobwebs, wash your windows, I say!
In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted
to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I
know what their religion is, and when I am near
to or far from it P I have walked into such an
arena and done my best to make a clean breast of
what religion I have experienced, and the audience
never suspected what I was about. The lecture
was as harmless as moonshine to them. Whereas,
if I had read to them the biography of the greatest
scamps in history, they might have thought that
I had written the lives of the deacons of their
church. Ordinarily, the inquiry is, Where did you
come from ? or, Where are you going 2 That was
a more pertinent question which I overheard one
of my auditors put to another once : “What does
he lecture for P’’ It made me quake in my shoes.

2O LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
To speak impartially, the best men that I know
are not serene, a world in themselves. For the
most part they dwell in forms, and flatter and study
effect only more finely than the rest. We select
granite for the underpinning of our houses and
barns ; we build fences of stone ; but we do not
ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth,
the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.
What stuff is the man made of who is not co-exist-
ent in our thought with the purest and subtilest
truth P I often accuse my finest acquaintances of
an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners
and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach
one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity
that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity
that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual,
however; for we do not habitually demand any
more of each other.
That excitement about Kossuth, consider how
characteristic, but superficial, it was 1–only
another kind of politics or dancing. Men were
making speeches to him all over the country, but
each expressed only the thought, or the want
of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on
truth. They were merely banded together, as
usual, one leaning on another, and all together on
nothing ; as the Hindoos made the world rest on
an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the
tortoise on a serpent, and had nothing to put under
the serpent. For all fruit of that stir we have the
Kossuth hat.
Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most
part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets
surface. When our life ceases to be inward and
private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.
We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 2 I
which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told
by his neighbour; and, for the most part, the only
difference between us and our fellow is that he has
seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have
not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go
more constantly and desperately to the post-office.
You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who
walks away with the greatest number of letters,
proud of his extensive correspondence, has not
heard from himself this long while.
I do not know but it is too much to read one
newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and
for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in
my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow,
the trees, say not so much to me. You cannot
serve two masters. It requires more than a day's
devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a
day.
We may well be ashamed to tell what things we
have read or heard in our day. I do not know why
my news should be so trivial,—considering what
one's dreams and expectations are, why the devel-
opments should be so paltry. The news we
hear, for the most part, is not new to our genius.
It is the stalest repetition. You are often tempted
to ask why such stress is laid on a particular exper-
ience which you have had, that, after twenty-five
years, you should meet Hobbins, Registrar of
Deeds, again on the side walk. Have you not
budged an inch, then P Such is the daily news. Its
facts appear to float in the atmosphere, insignificant
as the sporules of fungi, and, impinge on some
neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which
affords a basis for them, and hence a parasitic
growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such
news. Of what consequence, though our planet

22 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
explode, if there is no character involved in the
explosion ? In health we have not the least
curiosity about such events. We do not live for
idle amusement. I would not run round a corner
to see the world blow up.
All summer, and far into the autumn, perchance,
you unconsciously went by the newspapers and
the news, and now you find it was because the
morning and the evening were full of news to you.
Your walks were full of incidents. You attended,
not to the affairs of Europe, but to your own affairs
in Massachusetts fields. If you chance to live and
move and have your being in that thin stratum
in which the events that make the news transpire, H
thinner than the paper on whichitis printed,—then
these things will fill the world for you; but if you
Soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot
remember nor be reminded of them. Really to see
the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate
ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us
sane for ever. Nations ! What are nations P
Tartars, and Huns, and Chinamen . Like insects,
they swarm. The historian strives in vain to
make them memorable. It is for want of a man
that there are so many men. It is individuals
that populate the world. Any man thinking may
say with the Spirit of Lodin–
I look down from my height on nations,
And they become ashes before me;—
Calm is my dwelling in the clouds;
Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.
Pray, let us live without being drawn by dogs,
Esquimaux-fashion, tearing over hill and dale, and
biting each other's ears.

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 23
Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I
often perceive how near I have come to admitting
into my mind the details of some trivial affair, H
the news of the street; and I am astonished to
observe how willing men are to lumber their minds
with such rubbish, to permit idle rumours and
incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude
on ground which should be sacred to thought.
Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affair
of the street and the gossip of the tea table chiefly
are discussed ? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven
itself, an hypaethral temple, consecrated to the
Service of the gods P
I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts
which to me are significant that I hesitate to burden
my attention with those which are insignificant,
which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such
is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and
conversation. It is important to preserve the
mind's chastity in this respect. Think of admitting
the details of a single case of the criminal court
into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their
very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many
hours to make a very bar-room of the mind's
inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of
the street had occupied us, the very street itself
with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed
through our thoughts’ shrine ! Would it not be
an intellectual and moral suicide 2
When I have been compelled to sit spectator
and auditor in a court room for some hours, and
have seen my neighbours, who were not compelled,
stealing in from time to time, and tiptoeing about
with washed hands and faces, it has appeared to
my mind's eye that, when they took off their hats,
theirs ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for

24 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
sound, between which even their narrow heads were
crowded. Like the vanes of windmills, they caught
the broad but shallow stream of sound, which,
after a few titillating gyrations in their co
brains, passed out the other side. I wondered if,
when they got home, they were as careful to wash
their ears as before their hands and faces. It has
seemed to me, at such a time, that the auditors and
the witnesses, the jury and the counsel, the judge and
the criminal at the bar, if I may presume him
guilty before he is convicted,—were all equally
criminal, and a thunderbolt might be expected
to descend and consume them all together.
By all kinds of traps and signboards, threatening
the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude
such trespassers from the only ground which can
be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is
worse than useless to remember If I am to be a
thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain
brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town
sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which
comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the
courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale
revelation of the bar-room and the police court.
The same ear is fitted to receive both communica-
tions. Only the character of the hearer determines
to which it shall be open, and to which closed.
I believe that the mind can be permanently
profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things,
so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with trivial-
ity. Our very intellect shall be macadamised, as
it were, its foundation broken into fragments
for the wheels of travel to roll over ; and if you
would know what will make the most durable
pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks,
and asphaltum, you have only to look into some

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 25
of our minds which have been subjected to this
treatment so long."
If we have thus desecrated ourselves, as who
has not 2–the remedy will be by wariness and
devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once
more a fane of the mind. We should treat our
minds—that is, ourselves—as innocent and ingenu-
ous children, whose guardians we are, and be care-
ful what objects and what subjects we thrust on
their attention. Read not the Times. Read the
Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as
bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may
dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in
a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered
fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Know-
ledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes
of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that
passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it,
and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of
Pompeii, evince how much it has been used.
How many things there are concerning which we
might well deliberate whether we had better know
them,-had better let their peddling carts be
driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that
bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass
at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest
shore of eternity I Have we no culture, no refine-
ment, but skill only to live coarsely and serve
the devil P-to acquire a little worldly wealth, or
fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it,
as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and
living kernel to us P Shall our institutions be
like those chestnut-burrs which contain abortive
nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers ?
America is said to be the arena on which the
battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it

26 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that
is meant. Even if we grant that the American has
freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the
slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now
that the republic—the res-publica—has been settled,
it is time to look after the res-privata, the private
state,_to see, as the Roman senate charged
its consuls, “ne quid res PRIVATA detrimenti caper
et,” that the private state receive no detriment.
Do we call this the land of the free ? What is it
to be free from King George and continue the slaves
of King Prejudice P What is it to be born free and
not to live free ? What is the value of any political
freedom but as a means to moral freedom P. Is
it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free,
of which we boast 2 We are a nation of politicians,
concerned about the outmost fences only of freedom.
It is our children's children who may perchance
be really free. We tax ourselves unjustly. There
is a part of us which is not represented. It is
taxation without representation. We quarter
troops, we quarter fools and cattle of all sorts upon
ourselves. We quarter our gross bodies on our poor
souls, till the former eat up all the latter's sub-
stance.
With respect to a true culture and manhood, we
are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—
mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we
do not find at home our standards,--because we
do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth,
because we are warped and narrowed by an exclu-
sive devotion to trade and commerce and manu-
factures and agriculture, and the like, which are
but means, and not the end.
So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere
country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 27
--
any more important question arises for them to
settle, the Irish question, for instance,—the English
question why did I not say ? Their natures are
subdued to what they work in. Their “good
breeding ” respects only secondary objects. The
finest manners in the world are awkwardness and
fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.
They appear but as the fashions of past days,
mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small-clothes,
out of date. It is the vice, but not the excellence
of manners, that they are continually being
deserted by the character; they are cast-off clothes
or shells, claiming the respect which belonged to
the living creature. You are presented with the
shells instead of the meat, and it is no excuse
generally that, in the case of some fishes, the shells
are of more worth than the meat.
The man who thrusts his manners upon me does
as if he were to insist on introducing me to his
cabinet of curiosities when I wished to see himself.
It was not in this sense that the poet Decker called
Christ “the first truegentleman that ever breathed.”
I repeat, that in this sense the most splendid
court in Christendom is provincial, having author-
ity to consult about Transalpine interests only,
and not the affairs of Rome. A praetor or proconsul
would suffice to settle the questions which absorb
the attention of the English Parliament and the
American Congress.
Government and legislation these I thought
were respectable professions. We have heard of
heaven-born Numas, Lycurguses, and Solons, in
the history of the world, whose names at least may
stand for ideal legislators; but think of legislating
to regulate the breeding of slaves, or the export-
ation of tobacco / What have divine legislators

28 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
to do with the exportation or the importation of
tobacco P what humane ones with the breeding of
slaves P Suppose you were to submit the question
to any son of God, and has He no children in the
nineteenth century Pisit a family which is extinct 2
—in what condition would you get it again P What
shall a State like Virginia say for itself at the
last day, in which these have been the principal,
the staple productions P What ground is there for
patriotism in such a State P I derive my facts
from statistical tables which the States themselves
have published.
A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of
nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors
for this purpose ! I saw, the other day, a vessel
which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and
her cargo of rags, juniper berries, and bitter
almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed
hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of
the sea between Leghorn and New York for the
sake of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter almonds.
America sending to the Old World for her bitters
Is not the sea brine, is not shipwreck, bitter
enough to make the cup of life go down here 2
Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted com-
merce; and there are those who style themselves
statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to
think that progresss and civilization depend on
precisely this kind of interchange and activity,+
the activity of flies about a molasses hogshead.
Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And
very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes.
Lieutenant Herndon, whom our government sent
to explore the Amazon, and, it is said, to extend
the area of slavery, observed that there was wanting
there “an industrious and active population, who

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 29
know what the comforts of life are, and who have
artificial wants to draw out the great resources
of the country.” But what are the “artificial
wants '' to be encouraged 2 Not the love of lux-
uries, like the tobacco and slaves of, I believe, his
native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other
material wealth of our native New England ; nor
are “the great resources of a country’’ that
fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these.
The chief want, in every State that I have been
into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabi-
tants. This alone draws out “the great resources ''
of Nature,and at last taxes her beyond her resources;
for man naturally dies out of her. When we want
culture more than potatoes, and illumination more
than sugar plums, then the great resources of a
world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or
staple production, is—not slaves, nor operatives,
but men, those rare fruits called heroes, saints,
poets, philosophers, and redeemers.
In short, as a snowdrift is formed where there is a
lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is
a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the
truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at
length blows it down.
What is called politics is comparatively some-
thing so superficial and inhuman, that, practically,
I have never fairly recognised that it concerns me at
all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of
their columns specially to politics or government
without charge ; and this, one would say, is all
that saves it ; but, as I love literature, and, to some
extent, the truth also, I never read those columns
at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of
right so much. I have not got to answer for
having read a single President's Message. A

30 LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
strange age of the world this, when empires,
kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a
private man's door, and utter their complaints at
his elbow !
I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that
some wretched government or other, hard pushed,
and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the
reader, to vote for it, more importunate than a
Italian beggar ; and if I have a mind to look at its
certificate, made, perchance, by some benevolent
merchant's clerk, or the skipper that brought it
over, for it cannot speak a word of English itself,
I shall probably read of the eruption of some
Vesuvius, or the over-flowing of some Po, true or
forged, which brought it into this condition. I do
not hesitate, in such a case, to suggest work, or
the almshouse; or why not keep its castle in
silence, as I do commonly P. The poor President,
what with preserving his popularity and doing his
duty, is completely bewildered. The newspapers
are the ruling power. Any other government is
reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence.
If a man neglects to read his Daily Times, govern-
ment will go down on its hands and knees to him,
for this is the only treason in these days.
Those things which now most engage the atten-
tion of men, as politics and the daily routine, are,
it is true, vital functions of human society, but
should be unconsciously performed, like the
corresponding functions of the physical body.
They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation.
I sometimes awake to a half consciousness of
them going on about me, as a man may become
conscious of some of the processes of digestion in
a morbid state and so have the dyspepsia, as it is
called. It is as if a thinker submitted himself

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 3I
to be rasped by the great gizzard of creation.
Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full
of grit and gravel, and the two political parties
are its two opposite halves—sometimes split into
quarters, it may be, which grind on each other.
Not only individuals, but States, have thus a
confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you
can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus
our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas !
to a great extent, a remembering of that which
we should never have been conscious of, certainly
not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet,
not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams,
but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each
other on the ever-glorious morning. I do not
make an exorbitant demand, surely.
The Higher Life
From Thoreau's Private letters
DO believe that the outward and the inward
life correspond ; that if any should succeed
to live a higher life, others would know of it;
that difference and distance are one. To set
about living a true life is to go a journey to a
distant country, gradually to find ourselves
surrounded by new scenes and men ; and as long
as the old are around me, I know that I am not
in any true sense living a new or a better life.
The outward is only the outside of that which
is within. Men are not concealed under habits,
but are revealed by them ; they are their true
clothes. I care not how curious a reason they
may give for their abiding by them. Circum-

32 THE HIGHER LIFE
stances are not rigid and unyielding, but our
habits are rigid. We are apt to speak vaguely
sometimes, as if a divine life were to be grafted
on to or built over this present as a suitable founda-
tion. This might do if we could so build over
our old life as to exclude from it all the warmth
of our affection, and addle it, as the thrush builds
over the cuckoo's egg, and lays her own atop, and
hatches that only ; but the fact is, we—so there
is the partition—hatch them both, and the cuckoo's
always by a day first, and that young bird crowds
the young thrushes out of the nest. No. Destroy
the cuckoo's egg, or build a new nest.
Change is change. No new life occupies the
old bodies;–they decay. It is born, and grows,
and flourishes. Men very pathetically inform
the old, accept and wear it. Why put up with
the almshouse when you may go to Heaven P
It is embalming, no more. Let alone your
ointments and your linen Swathes, and go into
an infant’s body. You see in the catacombs
of Egypt the result of that experiment, that
is the end of it.
I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing
as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the
wisest man thinks he must attend to in a day;
how singular an affair he thinks he must omit.
When the mathematician would solve a difficult
problem, he first frees the equation of all encum-
brances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So
simplify the problem of life, distinguish the
necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see
where your main roots run. I would stand upon
facts. Why not see, use our eyes P Do men
know nothing 2 I know many men who, in
common things, are not to be deceived ; who

THE HIGHER LIFE 33
trust no moonshine ; who count their money
correctly, and know how to invest it; who are
said to be prudent and knowing, who yet will
stand at a desk the greater part of their lives, as
cashiers in banks, and glimmer and rust and
finally go out there. If they know anything,
what under the sun do they do that for P Do
they know what bread is P or what it is for P
Do they know what life is P. If they knew some-
thing, the places which know them now would
know them no more for ever.
This, our respectable daily life, in which the
man of common sense, the Englishman of the
world, stands so squarely, and on which our insti-
tutions are founded, is in fact the veriest illusion,
and will vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision ;
but that faint glimmer of reality which sometimes
illuminates the darkness of daylight for all men
reveals something more solid and enduring than
adamant, which is in fact the corner-stone of the
world.
Men cannot conceive of a state of things so
fair that it cannot be realised. Can any man
honestly consult his experience and say that it is
So P Have we any facts to appeal to when we
say that our dreams are premature P Did you
ever hear of a man who had striven all his life
faithfully and singly toward an object and in no
measure obtained it P If a man constantly
aspires, is he not elevated P Did ever a man try
heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find
that there was no advantage in them 2 that it
was a vain endeavour P. Of course we do not
expect that our paradise will be a garden. We
know not what we ask. To look at literature;—
how many fine thoughts has every man had
C

34 THE HIGHER LIFE
how few fine thoughts are expressed Yet we
never have a fantasy so subtile and ethereal,
but that talent merely, with more resolution and
faithful persistency, after a thousand failures,
might fix and engrave it in distinct and enduring
words, and we should see that our dreams are
the solidest facts that we know. But I speak
not of dreams.
What can be expressed in words can be ex-
pressed in life.
My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have
no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my
faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from
these that I speak. Every man's position is in
fact too simple to be described. I have sworn
no oath. I have no designs on society, or Nature,
or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to
be that. I live in the present. I only remember
the past, and anticipate the future. I love to
live. I love reform better than its modes. There
is no history of how bad became better. I believe
something, and there is nothing else but that.
I know that I am. I know that another is who
knows more than I, who takes interest in me,
whose creature, and yet whose kindred, in one
sense, am I. I know that the enterprise is worthy.
I know that things work well. I have heard
no bad news.
As for positions, combinations, and details,
what are they P In clear weather, when we look
into the heavens, what do we see but the sky
and the Sun ?
If you would convince a man that he does
wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him.
Men will believe what they see. Let them see.
Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round
your life, as a dog does his master's chaise. Do

THE HIGHER LIFE 35
what you love. Know your own bone : gnaw
at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Do
not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out
of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not
simply good ; be good for something. All fables,
indeed, have their morals ; but the innocent
enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you
and the light. Respect men as brothers only.
When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no
letter of introduction. When you knock, ask
to see God—none of the servants. In what con-
cerns you much, do not think that you have com-
panions : know that you are alone in the world.
Thus I write at random. I need to see you,
and I trust I shall, to correct my mistakes. Per-
haps you have some oracles for me.
>k -k >k >k >k
“We must have our bread.” But what is our
bread P Is it baker's bread P Methinks it should
be very home-made bread. What is our meat P
Is it butcher's meat P What is that which we
must have P Is that bread which we are now
earning sweet P Is it not bread which has been
suffered to sour, and then been sweetened with an
alkali, which has undergone the vinous, acetous,
and sometimes the putrid fermentation, and then
been whitened with vitriol P. Is this the bread
which we must have P Man must earn his bread
by the sweat of his brow, truly, but also by the
sweat of his brain within his brow. The body can
feed the body only. I have tasted but little bread
in my life. It has been mere grub and provender
for the most part. Of bread that nourished the
brain and the heart, scarcely any. There is ab-
solutely none, even on the tables of the rich.
There is not one kind of food for all men. You
must and you will feed those faculties which you

36 THE HIGHER LIFE
exercise. The labourer whose body is weary does
not require the same food with the scholar whose
brain is weary. Men should not labour foolishly
like brutes, but the brain and the body should
always, or as much as possible, work and rest to-
gether, and then the work will be of such a kind that
when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry
also, and the same food will suffice for both ; other-
wise the food which repairs the waste energy of the
overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain,
and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all
food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.
How shall we earn our bread is a grave question ;
yet it is a sweet and inviting question. Let us not
shirk it, as is usually done. It is the most import-
ant and practical question which is put to man.
Let us not answer it hastily. Let us not be content
to get our bread in some gross, careless, and hasty
manner. Some men go a-hunting, some a-fishing,
Some a-gaming, some to war; but none have so
pleasant a time as they who in earnest seek to earn
their bread. It is true actually as it is true really ;
it is true materially as it is true spiritually, that
they who seek honestly and sincerely, with all their
hearts and lives and strength, to earn their bread
do earn it, and it is sure to be very sweet to them.
A very little bread, - a very few crumbs are
enough, if it be of the right quality, for it is in-
finitely nutritious. Let each man, then, earn at
least a crumb of bread for his body before he dies,
and know the taste of it, that it is identical with
the bread of life, and that they both go down at one
swallow.
Our bread need not ever be sour or hard to digest.
What Nature is to the mind she is also to the body.
As she feeds my imagination, she will feed my body;
for what she says she means, and is ready to do.

THE HIGHER LIFE 37
She is not simply beautiful to the poet's eye. Not
only the rainbow and sunset are beautiful, but to
be fed and clothed, sheltered and warmed aright,
are equally beautiful and inspiring. There is not
necessarily any gross and ugly fact which may not
be eradicated from the life of man. We should
endeavour practically in our lives to correct all
the defects which our imagination detects. The
heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high.
So high as a tree aspires to grow, so high it will find
an atmosphere suited to it. Every man should
stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible.
How can any man be weak who dares to be at all P
Even the tenderest plants force their way up
through the hardest earth, and the crevices of
rocks; but a man no material power can resist.
What a wedge, what a beetle, what a catapult, is
an earnest man | What can resist him P
It is a momentous fact that a man may be good
or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be
false ; it may be either a shame or a glory to him.
The good man builds himself up ; the bad man
destroys himself.
But whatever we do we must do confidently (if
we are timid, let us, then, act timidly), not expect-
ing more light, but having light enough. If we
confidently expect more, then let us wait for it.
But what is this which we have P. Have we not
already waited 2 Is this the beginning of time 2
Is there a man who does not see clearly beyond,
though only a hair's-breadth beyond where he at
any time stands P
If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed.
Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may
have some divinity in them. That we have but
little faith is not sad, but that we have but little
faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned.

38 THE HIGHER LIFE
When, in the progress of a life, a man Swerves,
though only by an angle infinitely small, from his
proper and allotted path (and this is never done
quite unconsciously, even at first; in fact, that was
his broad and scarlet sin, ah, he knew of it more
than he can tell), then the drama of his life turns
to tragedy, and makes haste to its fifth act. When
once we thus fall behind ourselves, there is no ac-
counting for the obstacles which rise up in our
path, and no one is so wise as to advise, and no one
so powerful as to aid us while we abide on that
ground. Such are cursed with duties, and the neg-
lect of their duties. For such the decalogue was made,
and other far more voluminous and terrible codes.
These departures,--who have not made them 2–
for they are as faint as the parallax of a fixed star,
and at the commencement we say they are
nothing, that is, they originate in a kind of sleep
and forgetfulness of the soul when it is naught. A
man cannot be too circumspect in order to keep in
the straight road, and be sure that he sees all that
he may at any time see, that so he may dis-
tinguish his true path.
>k >k :k -k >k
As for conforming outwardly, and living your
own life inwardly, I do not think much of that:
Let not your right hand know what your left hand
does in that line of business. It will prove a fail-
ure. Just as successfully can you walk against a
sharp steel edge which divides you cleanly right
and left. Do you wish to try your ability to resist
distension ? It is a greater strain than any soul
can long endure. When you get God to pulling one
way and the devil the other, each having his feet
well braced,—to say nothing of the conscience saw-
ing transversely,–almost any timber will giveway.
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