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THOREAU'S
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
WITH SPECIAL CONSIDERATION OF THE
INFLUENCE OF HINDOO PHILOSOPHY
INAUGURAL-DISSERTATION
ZUR
ERLANGUNG DER DOKTORWURDE
DER
HOHEN PHILOSOPHISCHEN FAKULTAT
DER
GROSSHERZOGLICH BADISCHEN
RUPRECHT-KARLS-UNIVERSITAT ZU HEIDELBERG
VORGELEGT VON
H. A. SNYDER.
Dedicated to my dear parents.
Table of Contents.
Biographical Slietch i
CHAPTER I.— Rbligion.
Page
I. Introductory 7
II. Acquaintance with Hindoo Literature 9
III. Conception of God 12
1. God as First Cause 12
2. God as Preserver . . . 12
3. God as Immanent Creator ... . 13
4. God Identical with Nature ... 14
5. God without Limitations of Personality .... . . 16
rv. Conception of Man .... 18
' I. Relation to Nature i8
a. One with Nature . 18
b. Respect for Plants and Animals 19
\y c. Abstinence from Meat Eating ■ .20
2. Relation to God 21
a. One with God 22
b. Dualism 24
c. Original Sinlessness . . 25
d. Sin. ... 26
v' 3. Purpose of Life 27
V' 4. Conditions of Fulfilling Life' s Purpose . . . ... 28
• a. Negation of Self 28
" b. Renunciation of the World 30
.-' Avoidance of Disturbing Influences 31
^ c. Solitude .31
^ f. Silence 32
c. Negation of Desire 33
d. Negation of Works . . ' . . . 34
a. Faith 36
Ky b. The Yoga . . 37
V. Immortality 38
1. Death — Metamorphosis '38
2. Transmigration of Souls 39
3- Form of the Soul Eternal ,
4. Death of the Body its Reunion with Nature
5. Sleep ...
a. Dreams ....
b. Deep Sleep . ....
6. Wind, the Breath of Spirit
7. Unconcern Regarding the Future State . .
Page
40
40
41
41
42
43
43
CHAPTER II.— Music.
Significance of Art — Introductory . . . ... .47
1. Music a Revelation of the Universal . . .... 48
a. Transcends Reason . . . 49
b. Speaks with Assurance . . 49
2. Ethical Value of Music . .50
a. Reveals Unreality of the Apparent World .... 50
b. Reveals Possibility of Harmony with Eternal De-
signs . . . ... 5°
c. Lifts above the Limits of Personality. . .... 52
d. Effects Oneness with the Universal 52
3. Hearing of Music a Religious Act 53
a. Music only for the Virtuous . . 53
4. Music Universal and Perpetual 54
^ a. Nature and Music One . ... 54
'^ b. Music of the Spheres 55
5. Best Music Worldless 55
w a. Silence the most Perfect Music 56
1/ 6. Music and the Yoga Practice ■ . 56
CHAPTER III.— I.OVE.
I. Thoreau and the English Pantheistic Poets — Introductory ... 59
'^ I . Love to Nature . . .59
*• 2. Relationship to Natural Objects . . 59
3. Nature-love a Passion 60
4. Manifestation of the Divine in Nature the source of Love
to Nature .... . 61
. 5. The Spirit of Nature is the Spirit of Love 62
^ 6. Love the Atmosphere of Life in Nature . . . ■ . 63
II. Love to Man : Friendship 64
1. Platonic Love 64
2. Love, Community of Ideals 65
a. Love Detects Faults 65
b. The Place of Hate 66
Vll
P»ge
3. Love is Universal not Personal . . 66
a. Death cannot Interrupt Love's Course ... 67
4. Ethical Value of Love ■ • 67
in. Love and Marriage .... .67
IV. Love to Mankind 68
1. Not Philanthropy . . 68
2. Universal in Character . ... 68
^ V. The Goal of Love Oneness with the Spirit of Love Itself .... 69
CHAPTER IV.— Politics.
1. Introductory .... 73
2. Civilization Corrupt • • 73
a. Return to Nature . . . 74
3. Thoreau and Rousseau . . . . . ... 74
4. Basis of Government the Individual . • ■ 75
5. Democratic the Best Form of Government 76
a. Danger of Perversion to Serve Individual Ends . . 76
b. Against Government by Majorities ... .77
6. Object of Government 78
a. Kant and Emerson : Morality the Object of Govern-
ment . . 78
7. Character of the Best Government ... 79
a. The Best Men its Members 79
b. Representation of the Best Elements of the Nation . 79
8. Relation of the Citizen to the Government . ... 80
a. Duty of Obedience to the Laws of His Own Being
only . . 80
b. Right of Resistance ... .81
c. Individual Responsibility 82
d. Power of One Man 82
g. Thoreau's Attitude toward Socialism . 83
10. Ideal Government — No Government 83
APPENDIX.
I. Chronological Table 87
II. Bibliography 91
Lebenslauf.
Ich, Helena Adell Snyder, bin zu Port Elmsley, Ontario,
Canada, geboren. Ich bin englische Unterthanin und wurde
Protestantisch erzogen. Ich besuchte das Gymnasium zu
Smith's Falls und nachher zu Perth welches ich mit dem Zeug-
niss der Reife im Zahre 1890 verliess. Ich widmete mich
hierauf dem Studium der Englischen Litteratur und Philologie,
Gechichte und Philosophic an der Universitat Queen's zu
Kingston wo ich im Jahre 1895 den Magister liberalium artium
erhielt. In demselben Jahre legte ich mein Staatsexamen bei
der Canadischen (Ontario) Regierung ab.
Zur Forsetzung meiner Studien begab ich mich an die
hiesige Universitat woselbst ich im Jahre 1899 als Horerin der
philosophischen Fakultat inscribiert wurde. Ich horte vorzugs-
weise die Vorlesungen der Herm Professoren Hoops, Fischer,
Thode, Braune, von Duhn und Ihne und bin alien diesen
Herren fiir reiche wissenschaftliche Anregung und Forderung
zu herzlichem Dank verbunden.
Biographical Sketch.
Henry David Thoreau was born at Concord, Massachu-
setts, on the i2th of July, 1817, and with the exception of
a few years which the family spent in Chelmsford and Boston,
he passed there his childhood and youth up to the time of en-
tering college in 1833. At Harvard he does not seem to have
distinguished himself in his studies or to have obtained very
high standing in his classes. So much time did he devote to
outside, general, classical reading, so little did he work to the
satisfaction of his professors that he obtained only about half
of the bursary which would otherwise have been given him
out of the fund for the assistance of poor students. His es-
says, however, excited considerable comment and were the
means of his becoming acquainted with Emerson. Shortly
after his graduation, he, with his brother, founded a private
school in Concord, and as Emerson was then residing in that
village, their friendship became strong and intimate.
Emerson and Margaret Fuller were joint editors of the
" Dial," a magazine on much the same plan as the German
" Horen," and to which almost all the better talent of the
United States contributed. Thoreau was invited to write for
it and consented. His first published paper, " Aulus Perseus
Flaccus," appeared in it in 1840, and he was a regular, though
unpaid, contributor until it suspended publication in 1844.
But the private school did not pay expenses, so in 1843
the brothers abandoned it, and Henry went to Staten Island
as tutor to the sons of Mr. William Emerson. He seems to
have done so unwillingly however, and to have felt that he
could only find his true life in withdrawing from a life of mean
cares and constant anxiety concerning the merely physical
and temporal. He expressed his dissatisfaction in a letter to
his friend EUery Channing, who replied :
" I see nothing for you on this earth but that field which I once
christened " Briars ;" go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and then
begin the process of devouring yourself alive."
The next year, 1844, Thoreau resigned his position and
returned to Concord.
"I have thoroughly tried school-keeping," he writes, "but was
obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe accordingly, and
I lost my time into the bargain."
In i84\he retired to Walden Woods, where he built him-
self with his own hands a hut on the shore of the pond.
Wonderful stories, resembling those told of St. Francis
of Assissi, are told of his intimacy with the wild animals in
the wood : ' ' The fishes swam into his hand ; the mice would
come and playfully eat out of his fingers, and the very mole
paid him firiendly visits ; sparrows alighted on his shoulder at
his call . . . snakes coiled round his leg ... he
pulled the woodchuck out of his hole by the tail and took the
foxes under his protection from the hunters."
It was while living at Walden, too, that he was seized
and put in goal for refusing to pay the taxes imposed by a
wholly iniquitous government.
For two years and a half he lived alone in his cabin ;
then when Mr. Emerson went to England, in 1847, he yielded
to the claims of friendship and went to stay with Mrs. Emer-
son and the children. His letters to Emerson during this
period are very interesting, and permit us to see how he was
held in esteem by the older members of the family and loved
by the children. After Emerson's return home towards the
end of the next year Thoreau felt it his duty to assist in the
support of his own mother and sisters. He took up his
father's trade of pencil-making, and continued to reside in the
town instead of returning to Walden. He lived, however, in
as absolute retirement and almost as much in Walden Woods
and at the heart of Nature as he had in his Walden cabin.
In this year he published his first book — written ten years
earlier — " A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers,"
an account of a week's trip in a row-boat taken by him in
company with his brother John. The book did not sell very
well, and the publishers requested him to remove the unsold
copies from their warehouse, as they had no room to store
them. He complied with their request, and in his diary of
October 28, 1853, thus humorously describes his plight :
" I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes,
over seven hundred of which I wrote myself. Is it not
well that the author should behold the fruits of his labor ?
My works are piled up on one side of my chamber half as
high as my head, my Opera Omnia. This__was_authorship,
th ese are the works of m y brain !" Ax-<^-v»-ve^t-<ru.< ^
But this did not in the least discourage him : " Indeed,"
he continues in the same record in his diary, " I believe
that the result is more inspiring and better for me than if a
thousand had bought my wares. It affects my privacy less
and leaves me freer."
His second book, "Walden,"* which describes his life
in the woods, was not published until 1854. It is, perhaps,
the most widely read of his works, and has been translated^
into several European languages. -^
In 1856 Thoreau made the acquaintance of Horace
Greeley at Chappaqua, who offered him the tutorship of his
sons. He considered the proposition for a time for the sake
of his family, but at last refused, holding that " the life is
more than meat and the body more than raiment."
He continued, however, to write for several magazines,
for the most part articles descriptive of trips he occasionally
took during the summer, as, for instance, two walking tours
about Cape Cod, three visits to the forests of Maine and a
longer journey into I^ower Canada. These excursions were
made on foot, alone or with one single friend (with in Maine
an Indian for a guide), and so were entirely in keeping with
the still privacy of his whole life. His last trip was taken in
* Translated into German by Emma Emmerich. (Palm, Miinchen.)
i86i, when his friends, concerned about his failing health,
persuaded him to go to Minnesota, hoping that in the dry,
clear climate of that State he would be able to shake off the
disease of the lungs which had attacked him. It was not of
any lasting benefit, however. Not long after his return to
Concord he wrote to his young friend Benton :
" You ask particularly about njy health. I suppose I
have not many months to live, but of course I know nothing
about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as
ever and regret nothing. ' '
' ' His patience was unfailing, ' ' writes Channing. ' ' He
knew not aught save resigjnation ; he did mightily cheer and
console those whose strength was less."
He died on the 6th of May, 1862, and was buried in the
peaceful "Sleepy Hollow" cemetery at Concord. The in-
scription was written by Channing :
' ' Hail to thee, O man ! who has come from the transi-
tory place to the imperishable ! ' '
CHAPTER I.
Religion.
CHAPTER I.
Religion.
I. — Introductory.
The world has in all ages found it marvellous when a
man, contrary to the natural desire for life and self-^^lization
in the wjorld, has withdrawn himself from it ; and that in the
nineteenth century, in practical, Protestant America, Tho-
reau, young, physically robust and highly educated, should
renounce, not only worldly pleasure, but practically the whole
struggle for existence, could not fail to excite especial wonder
and much speculation as to his motives.
"Few lives contain so many renunciations," writes
Emerson. "He was bred to no profession; he never mar-
ried ; he lived alone ; he never went to church ; he never
voted ; he refused to pay a tax to the State ; he ate no flesh f
he drank no wine ; he never knew the use of tobacco, and, ^
though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose,
wisely, no doubt, for himself, to be the bachelor of thought/
and nature."* ^^
Naturally, such a life met with little sympathy from
Thoreau's fellow-countrymen, who, for the most part, attrib-
uted his course to selfishgess, a lack of energy and the desire
to shirk all responsibility as a citizen of the State and a man
among men. His whole life demonstrated, however, that
these accusations were without foundation and that such mo-
tives could play no part in influencing his decision. Yet even
Emerson, his great contemporary and friend, who himself led
a singularly unworldly and free imaginative life, did not see
the full significance of Thoreau's negation of life, and could
* From the address delivered by R. W. Emerson at Thoreau's fu-
neral and printed in the "Atlantic Monthly," August, 1862. See Preface,
"Miscellanies."
not but bemoan the loss of his splendid talents to the world :
" Had his Genius been only contemplative," wrote Emer-
son in his biographical sketch, "he had been fitted for his
life, but with his energy and practical ability he seemed born
for great enterprise and for command ; and I so much regret
the loss of his rare powers of action that I cannot help count-
ing it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting
this, instead of engineering for all America, he was captain
of a huckleberry party. . . .
' ' Pounding beans is good to the end of pounding empires
one of these days ; but if at the end of the years it is Still
only beans ! "*
But though withdrawal from the world is induced in per-
haps the greater number of cases by lack of energy to engage
in its conflicts, or lack of inner strength to support its ever-
recurring disappointments and deep sadness, the motive often
bears a positive character, is of a religious or philosophical
nature. The realization of the triviality and transitoriness of
this life leads to the decision to negate the present for the con-
sideration of the inner life and of an eternal world. This
ideal has found its fullest expression in the anchorites of the
Roman Catholic Church and the ascetics of the Orient. Yet,
though the institution of monasticism in the East and in the
West alike has its origin in the conception of the significance
of I,ife, of Time and Eternity, of the Divine and His relation
to man, there is a marked difierence between the conception
of the Christian monk and that of the Brahman. To the
Catholic recluse God is a distinct personality, so concrete,
indeed, that he can be represented in images which become
objects of passionate and personal love. For the Brahman,
- on the contrary, God is the Impersonal, the All-p(tjg(vading,
the whole world, himself — the All. The next world, for the sake
of which the Catholic saint renounces this, is almost tangible,
a world like this world but without sorrow, perfect and end-
less. For the Brahman the very thought of such a heaven is
error and sin. For between the ideals themselves a funda-
* H. A. Page, " Thoreau, His Life and Aims." P. 257.
mental difference exists. The Christian ascetic mortifies the
flesh that the soul may win the upper hand and develop itself
into perfection fit for fellowship with the Divine throughout
Eternity. He conceives of this purified soul as retaining its
identity and existing in individual form in the next world,
possibly even in the same body, after the Resurrection from
the dead. The Brahman, on the other hand, seeks not to de^
velop his personality in any sense, but to lose it ; to free him-
self from everything pertaining to individual existence, and
so at last be absorbed into the Principle of Existence itself ;l
to lose all consciousness of separate personality in perfectj
oneness with the Universal.
Thoreau's motive for withdrawal from the world was of
such a religious — or it may be called philosophical — character,
as that which led the Brahman to find his highest realization
in self-negation ; and the study of Hindoo philosophy was an
important factor in framing Thoreau's whole conception of
life.
It will be the purpose of this study to present a system-
atic consideration of his philosophy of life, together with an
examination into its points of correspondence with Hindoo
Philosophy.
II.— Acquaintance with Hindoo I/iterature.
In 1837 Thoreau became acquainted with Emerson,* who
first drew his attention to the literature of the Orient, f
His first book, " A Week on the Concord and Merrimac
Rivers," written in 1839, contains many such references to
Hindoo Philosophy as the following :
' ' In comparison with the philosophy of the East, we may
say that modern Europe has yet given birth to none. Beside
the vast and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, even
our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green and com-
monplace merely. . . . Ex Oriente lux may still be the
* V. F. B. Sanborn, " Henry D. Thoreau." P. 180.
t V. J. R. Lowell, "Thoreau," "My Study Windows." P. 144.
lO
motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived
from the East all the light which it is destined to receive
thence." *
Concerning the lack of understanding in the modem
world of the profound thought of the East, he writes :
' ' Tried by a New England eye or the mere practical wis-
dom of modem times, they (the Hindoo Scriptures) are the
oracles of a race already in its dotage ; but held up to the sky,
which is the only impartial and incorruptible appeal, they are
of a piece with its depth and serenity, and I am assured that
they will have a place and significance as long as there is a
sky to test them by." f
During the years of his life alone in Walden Woods, he
1 gave much time to the study of the Hindoo Scriptures, as such
records as the following in " Walden" show :
' ' In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous
and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose
composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in compari-
son with which our modern world and its literature seem puny ;
and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a pre-
vious state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our
conceptions." |
So great was his interest in Hindoo literature that his
friend Cholmondd^ on returning to England, sent him from
there, as the most acceptable gift, forty-four volumes, " in
English, French, Latin and Sanskrit," concerning which
Thoreau wrote to his friend Mr. Daniel Ricketson : §
" But I wish now above all to inform you that Cholmon-
dely has gone to the Crimea, but that" before he left he busied
himself in buying, and has caused to be forwarded to me by
Chapman, a royal gift in the shape of twenty-one distinct
works (one in nine volumes —forty-four volumes in all) almost
exclusively relating to ancient Hindoo literature and scarcely
* "Week," p. 186. (The "Week" was, however, not published
till 1849.) Cf., also " Week," p. 184.
t "Weeks," p. 196.
t "Walden," p. 459-
§ Written Dec. 25, 1855 ; v. " Letters," p. 320.
II
one of them to be bought in America. I am familiar with
many of them and know how to prize them. I send you in-
formation of this as I might of the birth of a child."
It was inevitable that this constant study of Hindoo
philosophy, this very living and breathing in its atmosphere,
should influence Thoreau's manner of thought and be an im-
portant factor in moulding his philosophy of life.
He himself acknowledges tha.t the life of the Brahman
possesses a fascination for him :
" It is the attitude of this men more than any communi-
cation which they make that attracts us. The very austerity
of the Brahmans is tempting to a devotional soul." *
He found a certain satisfaction in the thought that his
own mode of life at Walden, in its details, would be4r com-
parison with theirs :
' ' It was fit that I should live on rice mainly, who loved
so well the philosophy of India." f
He recognizes, too, the tremendous influence of the Hin-
doo manner of thought on his mind and spirit in such a
record as the following in " Walden: "
" To be intoxicated with a single glass of wine ! I have
experienced that pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the
esoteric doctrines." J
We have, farther, a clue to those works which made the
greatest impression upon him. In a letter to Mrs. B. B. Wiley,
of Chicago, dated Dec. 12th, 1856, he specifies :
"The best, I think, are the Bhagvat Geeta (an episode in
an ancient heroic poem called the Mahabarat § ) , the Vedas,
the Vishnu Purana and the Institutes of Menu. 11
* "Week," p. 198.
t "Walden," p. 97.
t Cited by Thoreau from Mir Camar Uddin Mast. Walden, p. 157.
§ Written by Krishna Dwaipayna, the arranger of the Vedas.
II Letters, p. 351.
12
III.— Conception of God.
I. GOD AS FIRST CAUSE.
In common with all formulated religions, the Brahmini-
cal held the conception of a First cause, a Creator of the
world, "from which the All derives its life."* The God
Krishna announces concerning himself :
" I am the creation of the Universe.
" I am the eternal seed of all nature." f
In the Vishnu Purana God is designated as :
" The cause of the cause, the cause of the cause of the
cause, the cause of them all " J
Thoreau also conceives of God as Creator of the world,
man's maker : ^
y*\ delight to come to my bearings, not walk with pomp y
add parade in a conspicuous place, but towalkeyen with^^^-'
Builder of the Universe if I may." § ' ' Has not he (God) done
his work and made man^'^f
2. GOD AS PRESERVER.
The creator of the Universe is, in its existence, its pre-
server. In the Vishnu Purana praise is offered " To him who
as Brahma, creates the Universe, who in its existence is its
preserver. ' ' ^
He regards his creation with love. The race of men is
denominated in the Vedas, "Sons of the Immortal."** The
All-Knowing First Being is not our enemy, but our relative
and father, who cares for us. tt "As friends we pray to thee.
We, mortals, to God." J J In the Bhagvat G^eeta the young
Arjoon thus addresses the God :
* Rigveda, lo, 12, p. 90 ; cf. also Yajur v. MahS-Nara Upan, 11, 4,
p. 241.
t Bhagvat Geeta, p. 36.
X Vishnu Purana, p. 73.
§ Walden, p. 508.
II Autumn, p. 100.
\ Vishnu Purana, p. 141.
** Max Miiller, Sacred Books, vol xv., ii, 5, p. 240.
tt Deussen, Yajur-Veda, ^vet-Upan, p. 295.
tJHymnen des Sama-Veda, p. 216 (i, 8). "Als Freunde flehen wir zu
dir. Zum Gotte Menschen wir. "
13
' ' For thou shouldst bear with me even as a father with
his son, a friend with his friend, a lover with his beloved, O
Krishna, Jadava, Friend." *
The idea of the loving care of God for his creation finds
frequent expression in Thoreau :
" As a mother loves to see her children take nourishment
and expand, so God loves to see his children thrive on the nu-
triment he has provided for them." \
The discerning will not fail to recognize his relationship
to the all-pervading spirit :
' ' The seer will speak of ' the Earths ' and his father who
is in them." %
3. GOD AS IMMANENT CREATOR.
This First Cause of the Universe is not, however, con-
ceived of by the Hindoo philosopher as something apart from
his creation. The world is but a manifestation of him and
he exists in it.
" AUes was is't, das Weltganze. Was sichtbar und was
horbar ist. Dies AUes aussen und innen umfasst, durchdringt
Narayama." || God is immanent in his creation :
' ' Thou art the heart of all creatures and all that has been
or will be emanates from thee, O universal Spirit ! This whole
world from Brahma to a tree thou art. ' ' §
Every natural phenomena is but an expression of God,
the All.
" The God who is in the fire, the God who is in the water,
the God who has entered into the whole world, the God who
is in the plants, the God who is the trees, adoration be to that
God, adoration !" **
* Bhagvat Geeta, p. 58.
t Winter, p. 228.
X Week, p. 504.
II Yajur-ved. MahS.-Naray-Up, 11, 4. Deussen, p. 251. All that exists,
the entire Universe, all that is visible and audible, Narajama envelopes
and penetrates.
§ Vishnu Parana, p. 559.
** Yajur-ved. ^vet-Upan, ii, 21, 11. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 243.
H
The Bhagvat Geeta empliasizes the importance of perception
of the immanence of the Eternal in all things alike :
' ' The learned behold him (the Almighty) alike in the
reverend Brahman perfected in knowledge, in the ox and in
the elephant, in the dog and in him who eateth of the flesh of
dogs. Those whose minds are fixed on this equality gain
eternity even in this world. They put their trust in Brahma,
Tthe Eternal, because he is everywhere alike y *
i To Thoreau, also, had insight been g^ven to recognize
I the Eternal as existing in all things .
" The common man will speak with reverence of the
heavens, but the seer will speak of ' the earths ' and his
father who is in them." f
The search after fuller perception of this indwelling God
even becomes his business in life :
" My profession is to find God in nature. ' ' J
V On' his walks he communes with the spirit which pervades
all phenomena of the natural world :
" It is as if I always met in those places some grand,
serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging though invisible,
companion and walked with him." ||
4. GOD IDENTICAI, WITH NATURE.
Since in all nature, in each single phenomenon, God
dwells as its cause, it follows that all things are emanations
of this indwelling Spirit, manifestations of the Omnipresent
One, and, therefore, that God and the Universe— or Nature —
are one and the same. This identity is expressed with great
frequency in the sacred books of the East, firom which I will
therefore cite but the following representative passages :
' ' They who know true wisdom and whose minds are
pure behold the whole world as one with divine knowledge, as
one with thee, O God! " §
* Bhagvat Geeta, p. 27.
t Week, p. 504.
,, t Excursions, p. 439.
" 1 , II Winter, p. 151.
§ Vishnu Purana, p. 32.
15
The Veda further extoUs the Eternal as :
" Hochster des Alls, ^as All selber, Ew'ger Narayami,
Hari ; ja, Purusha ist dieses Weltall." *
To see Nature with true perception is equivalent to seeing
God — Krishna spake :
" Behold, O Arjoon, my million forms divine, of various
species and diverse shapes and colors. Behold in this my
body the whole world animate and inanimate and all things else. ' ' f
In Thoreau's direct manner the same thought is ex-
pressed :
' ' May we not see God ? Is not Nature rightly read that
of which she is taken to be the symbol merely ?" %
As the Hindoo characterizes fire, water, wind — all the
powers or motions in nature — as God, so Thoreau :
' ' These motions everywhere in Nature must surely be the
circulation of God. " 1 1
Interesting, too, is the following note in Thoreau's diary
from Dec. 29, 1841 :
" God did not make the world in jest, no nor indiffer-
ence." It is God's world § — which might almost be a trans-
lation of the following passage from the Upanishads of the
Vedas :
' ' Viele lassen die Weltschopfung
Auf Wunsch Gottes allein entstehen —
Zum Genuss sich, zum Spielzeuge
Schuf sie Gott, meinen andere —
Nein, sie ist Gottes selbst IVesen."**
* Yajur-ved. Mah9,-Naray, 11, 4. Deussen, p. 251 ; cf. also Rig-
Veda, 10, 2, p. 90. " Highest of the All, the All itself, Eternal Nara-
yana, Hari. Yes, Purusha is the whole world."
t Bhagvat Geeta, p. 53.
t Week, p. 504.
II Autumn, p. 430.
§ Winter, p. 52.
** Atharva-ved. Mand-Kar Up., i, 3. Deussen, p. 579. Many con-
sider that the creation of the world was the fulfilment of divine desire ;
i6
The conception of God as immanent in all things, as
identical with the Universe itself, must necessarily preclude
restrictions of any nature of the Divine and so present the
idea of
5. GOD WITHOUT LIMITATION OF PERSONALITY.
It follows, therefore, naturally and necessarily, that the
ancient Hindoo religion should lack any representation of its
God in art.*
Only when God is conceived of as possessing a definite
form and distinct personality — as, for instance, of a human
being or of an animal — can He be represented in art. Thus
the gods of ancient Greece could take form in sculpture only
when they had been incarnated in Greek poetry and conceived
of as bearing the forms of perfect men, and Christian art
could take its rise only after the great revivalists had revealed
the Redeemer as Son of Man, as well as Son of God.
It was, however, foreign to the very fundamental idea
and character of the Hindoo religion to restrict the One who
is at the same time the All by attributing to him a definite —
and therefore limited — personality. He is characterized as :
" Brahma, whose body is ether, whose nature is true,
rejoicing in the senses, delighted in the mind, perfect in
peace and immortal." f
His worshipers strive to divest themselves of any linger-
ing definiteness of conception . Brahma bears no resemblance
to any single created thing :
others think that God created it for His pleasure, as a plaything. No,
it is God's very essence.
It is interesting to compare the expression of thought in Whittier's
" Andrew Rykman's Prayers : "
" Not through blind caprice of will,
Not by cunning slight of skill.
Not through sport of mind or force,
Hast Thou made Thy Universe ;
But as atmosphere and zone
Of thy loving heart alone."
* See Schroeder ; " Indiens Kultur," p. 80-85.
t Yajur-veda, Taitt-Upan, Max Miiller, Vol. IV, p. 49 ; cf. Vishnu
Parana, p. 73.
17
' ' That which cannot be seen or seized, which has no family
and no caste, no eyes nor ears, no hands nor feet, the eternal,
the omnipresent (all-pervading) infinitesimal, that which is
imperishable, that it is which the wise regard as the source of
all beings."*
Thoreau is so impressed by the idea of the omnipresence
and illimitability of the Divine Being, that he fears to limit
the conception by applying to it a name :
' ' God reigns ! I say God. I am not sure that is the
name. You will know who I mean." f
The insistence with which the preachers and teachers
harp upon the personality of God provokes him to sarcasm :
' ' The perfect God in his revelations of himself has never-
got the length of one such proposition as you, his prophets,
state. Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can
you count three ? Do you know the number of God's family ?
Whose friend are you that you speak of God's personality ?" %
He who has really attained to perception will realize the
unknowableness of the Supreme, the boundlessness of the
Infinite. In illustration a parable, which I cite in full as ex-
pressing equally well Thoreau's and the Brahminical view of
the matter :
' ' A good and pious man reclined his head on the bosom
of Contemplation and was absorbed in the ocean of a revery.
At the instant when he awaked from his vision, one of his
friends, byway of pleasantry, said: "What rare gifts have
you brought us from that garden where you have been recre-
ating ?" ;He replied : " I fancied to myself and said : When
I can reach the rose-bower I will fill my lap with flowers
and bring them as a present to my friends; but when I got
there, the fragrance of the roses so intoxicated me that the
skirt dropped from my hands. O bird of dawn ! . . . .
these vain pretenders are ignorant of him they seek after. O
Thou ! who towerest above the flights of conjecture, opinion
* Atharva-Veda, Mund-upan, I, i, 6. Max Miiller, p. 28, Vol. I.
t Letter to H. Blake (1849). Letters, p. 214.
X Week, p. 88-89 ; cf. also Week, p. 98.
i8
and comprehension, whatever has been reported of thee we
have heard and read ; the congregation is dismissed and life
drawn to a close and we still rest at our first enconium of
thee!"*
IV.— Conception of Man.
I. man's relation to nature.
a. Man One with Nature.
As God is immanent in all things, man and nature are
alike his manifestations ; therefore man must know the close-
ness of his relation to nature, amounting to absolute oneness
in the Universal. Thus the Veda explains :
' ' The Brahman ... is the same as the ether which
is around us ; and the ether which is around us is the same
as the ether which is within us. And that ether which is
within us, that is the ether within the heart. That ether in
the heart (as Brahman) is omnipresent and unchanging." f
The idea is expressed by Thoreau in very similar words :
' ' Did not he that made that which is within make that
which is without also ?" J
He who has attained to perception will not fail to recog-
nize that the same elements are in all other natural objects
which are in him ; that he is one with them.
" Doch wer die Wesen hier alle
Wiedererkenni im eignen selbst,
Und sick in allem was lebet.
Der anstigt sich vor keinen mehr." §'
To Thoreau oneness — identity — with Nature is oneness
with the Spirit of Nature :
* Week, p. 99-100 ; cf. Vishnu Purana, p. 114.
t Sama-veda, Chand-Upan, 3, 12, 7, 8, 9. Max Miiller, Vol. I, p. 46.
t Week, p. 504.
§ Yajurved, Ica-Up., 3. Deussen, p. 525. Yet he who recognizes all
creatures here in himself and himself in all that lives, is troubled before
none.
19
" I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er ;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its highest resort
Lies high in my thought." *
Almost a prayer is the longing for perfect oneness with
Nature expressed in a letter to Mrs. Brown (July 21st, 1841) :
'^1 to be Nature, looking into nature with such easy sym-
pathy as the blue-eyed grass in the meadow looks into the
face of the sky." f
b. Respect for plants and animals.
The perception that all creatures in Nature are manifes-
tations of, and one with, the Divitie, induces reverence before
them as interpreters to man of the secrets of the Infinite.
Thus the steer is represented in the Vedas as teacher of Saly-
akama, son of Jabala, and is addressed with the respect due a
learned Brahman :
"The bull of the herd said to him, ' Salyakama ! ' He
replied : ' Sir ! ' The bull said : ' . . . I^ead us to the
home of the teacher and I will declare to you one foot of
Brahman.' ' Declare it, sir,' he replied." J
To Thoreau the animals were all companions whose com-
munications were worthy to be heard :
" I hear faintly the cawing of a crow, far away echoing
from the woodside. What a delicious sound ! It is not
merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me, too. I am
part of one great creature with him.^'%
The birds were messengers of the Most High :
" These migratory sparrows all bear messages that concern
my life." \\
* Walden, p. 303.
t Letters, p. 42.
t.Samar Chand, 5, i, 2, 7. Max Miiller, Vol. I, p. 61.
§ Winter, p. 164.
II Summer, p. 286.
"The sense of oneness with natural objects and the ani-
mals is often expressed in the language of human relation-
ship.
Thus Thoreau addresses the ' ' Queen of Night, ' ' the
moon :
' ' My dear, my dewy sister, let thy dews descend on me, ' ' *
and exclaims in his eulogy of the hardy little tree : ' ' What
cousin of mine is the scrub oak ?" f
It is interesting to compare with such expressions re-
marks like the following, in Sakontala's conversation with
her friends in the garden :
' ' Ich fiihle wirklich die Neigung einer Schwester zu
diesen jungen Pflanzen." %
c. Abstinence from meat-eating.
Out of the conception that plants and animals are em-
anations of the Divine and bear the closest relationship to
man, follows naturally the anxiety not to injure any living
thing, and its expression in the abstinence of the Hindoos
from meat-eating. The Heetopades define religion as :
" Compassion for all things that have life." || The Laws of
Menu command abstinence from flesh-meat :
' ' Not a mortal exists more sinful than he who
desires to enlarge his own flesh with the flesh of another
creature. . . . He who gives no creature willingly the
pain of confinement or death, but seeks the good of all sentient
beings, enjoys bliss without end." §
The Persian scriptures, too, take the same attitude with
regard to the preservation of all life. The Zenda Vesta coun-
sels the devout against the felling of trees, and gives a form
of sacrifice to be offered when the injury of tree-life is una-
voidable. **
• V. Sanborn, " H. D. Thoreau," p. 259.
t Autumn, p. 367.
t Sakontala, p. 9. "I really feel the inclination of a sister toward
these young plants."
II Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sama, p. 62.
§ Laws of Menu, p. 150-151 (46, 48, 52).
** V. Zenda Vesta, p. 188. Compare also the Buddistic Suttas, p, 191.
21
Thoreau's extremely sensitive care not to injure any
living thing is shown in the following record in his diary :
" Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against
the tree shakes them down in showers upon one's head and
shoulders. But I cannot excuse myself for using the stone.
I was affected as if I had cast a rock at a sentient being," * etc.
It is interesting, further, to note that Thoreau uses the
same phrase, " sentient being," as is used in the passage from
the Laws of Menu cited above, f
For Thoreau as naturally as for the Hindoos, abstinence ■
from the eating of meat was an article of religion- He thus
writes concerning it. citing at the same time the Vedas on the
subject :
< < Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of
those privileged to whom the Veda refers when it says that
" He who has true faith may eat all that exists, /. e., is not
bound to inquire what is his food or who prepares it." " And
even in their case it is to be observed that a Hindoo commen-
tary has remarked that the Vedant limits the privilege to times
of distress." %
2. R1SLATION TO GOD.
As nature is one with God and is God, so is man one with
God and
a. Identical with God.
The conception of man as one with the Divine Being —
* Autumn, p. 144-145 (Oct. 23d, 1855).
t Line 105, of the poem "Mountains" (v. " Poems of Nature," p.
loi), read originally, "and seem to milk the sky." Margaret Fuller, to
whom, as editor of the "Dial" the poem was sent, wrote Thoreau (Oct.
i8th, 1841) : " Leave out, ' and seem' to milk the sky. ' The image is too
low. Mr. Emerson thought so, too." No doubt Thoreau got this ex-
pression from the " Laws of Menu." P. 5 (23), where Brahma is said to
" milk out" the fire, air and sun. That Thoreau possessed the transla-
tion by Sir Wm. Jones from which I have quoted, is clear from Week,
p. 162; cf. also the same expression, "Laws of Menu," p. 32 (76).
Thoreau uses the expression, " I milk the sky and the earth," in his diary
of Nov. 3d, 1853. Autumn, p. 203.
X Walden, p. 217 ; cf. "Laws of Menu," p. 150 (43).
23
the individual soul, as no other than the Universal soul — is
very frequently expressed in the sacred book of the East :
" He from whom all works, all desires, all sweet odors
and tastes proceed, who embraces all this, who never speaks
and who is never surprised, he, myself within the heart, he is
that Brahman.*
When the wise man appears before the throne of Brahma
the God will ask :
" "Who art thou ?" and he shall answer : "I am a season
and the child of the seasons, sprung from the womb of endless
space, from the light (from the luminous Brahman). The
light, the origin of the year, which is the past, which is the
present, which is all living things and all elements, is the
Self. Thou art the self. What thou art that am /. " f
A youth, Kabala, a descendant of Keishitaki, questioned
the seer :
" Yagnavalkya," he said, "tell me the Brahman which
is visible, not invisible, the Self (atman) who is within
all." Yagnavalkya replied : " This is thy Self who is within
all." J
This unity, orjrather identity, of God and man, finds un-
mistakable expression in Thoreau :
" I see, smell, taste, hear, feel that everlasting Something
to which we are allied, at once our Maker, our Abode, our
Destiny, our very selves." \\ •— —
From an ethical point of view, this gives him courage to
* Sama-Veda, Chand-Upan, 3, 14, 4, Max Miiller, Vol. I, p. 48.
t Rig- Veda, Kaush-Upan, i, 6. Max Miiller, Vol. I, Part I, p. 278.
X Yajur-Veda, Brih-Upan, 4, i. Muller, Vol. XV, p. 128. The foot
note to Max Miiller runs : Deussen translates : "Das inmanente, nicht
transcendente Brahman," which is right but too modern.
II Week, p. 226. The same thought is beautifully expressed in Long-
fellow's translation of the Aphorisms of Johannes SchefHer (Angelus
Silesius) which Thoreau may have known, as the translation was made
in 1839 :
" Pray' St thou how looks my God?
Go and thyself behold ;
Who sees himself in God,
Sees God's own very mould."
23
recognize how entirely lie must depend upon himself and, at
the same time, how certainly his resources are equal to the
demands made upon them, since he is one with the All-pow-
erful :
' ' There is something proudly^thxiUing: in-the-thought that
t his obedi g nce t o conscience and trust in God which is so sol-
emnly preached m extremities and arduous circumstances, is
only a retreat to one' s self and reliance on one' s own strength ^ *
This inner, metaphysical self revealed itself through the
eyes, the " windows of the soul."
" The person that is seen in the eye, that is the Self.
This is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman." \
To Thpreau it seemed that if his fellow man were con-
scious of his oneness with the Infinite soul, and let the whole
power of that soul reveal itself, he would be as unable to
support the revelation as were the children of Israel, who
could not look upon the face of Moses after his communion
with the Eternal One upon Mount Sinai : ""^
j^ <i>Pq jjg awake is to be alive. I have never yet seen a
/man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in/
the face?" J ' —
^"^^ The lack of understanding on the part of scientific men,
who pretend to get at the secret of life itself moves him to
the sharp criticism :
" Men of science when they pause to contemplate the
power, wisdom and goodness of God, or as they sometiraes call
him, "The Almighty Designer," speak of him as a total
stranger, whom it is necessary to treat with the highest con-
sideration. They seem suddenly to have lost their wits.' ' §
The Hindoo regarded even the faintest glimmer of per-
ception that the Eternal is not a stranger but a man's own
self, as a great advance in spiritual life :
"Then he (the Brahman) said to them all : ' You eat your
* Winter, p. 279.
t Sama-Veda, Chan-Upan, 4, 15, i. Max Miiller, I, p. 67.
\ Walden, p. 142 ; cf. also Spring, p. 138.
§ Spring, p. 91.
24
food knowing that Vaisvanara Self as if it were many.
But he who worships the Vaisvanara Self as a span long as
identical with himself, he eats the food in all worlds, in all
beings in all selfs.' " *
b. Dualism.
Yet in spite of the frequent expressions of the Brahman's
absolute oneness with the Universal, a sense of dualism, of
division yet to be overcome, is ever present. Often we find
after such an avowal of faith as :
"He (who is) my self within the heart, is that Brah-
man."
In the very next line :
' ' (And) when I shall have departed from hence I shall
obtain that self, "f
This oneness is then not complete, but even now in process of
becoming :
" Das Wesen in sich selbst schantnd,
Das Wesen in der Aussenwelt,
Zu ihm werdend, in ihm ruhend,
Halt er treu an dem Wesen fest.'' J
Thoreau, too, enjoys but ecstatic moments when he is fully
one with Nature and God ; the serenity of complete and as-
sured oneness is not yet reached :
' ' I fear we are such Gods or demi-gods merely as fauns
and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts." §
Oft despair and hope are mingled in an outburst of long-
ing for perfect union with the Universal :
"Why were my ears given to hear those everlasting
strains which haunt my life and yet to be profaned by these
perpetual dull sounds ? . . . Why, God, did you include
me in your great scheme ? Will you not make me a partner at
last r'W
* Sama-Veda, Upan-Chand, 5, 18, i. Max Miiller, I, p. 88.
t Sama-Veda, Upan-Chand, 3, 14, 4. Max Miiller, I, p. 48.
X Atharva-Veda, Mand-Kar, 2, 38, Deussen, p. 587. "Seeing the
Essence in himself and in the outer world, becoming one with it, resting
in it, he holds fast to the Essence."
§ Walden, p. 342.
II Spring, p. 112.
25
The realization of such a partnership is the mainspring of
his life. He himself gives it as the reason for his withdrawal
to Walden Woods : C
^^ " I wished io ally myself to the powers that rule the Universe,
C^ live as far away as a man can think." * — —
What is then the significance of this consciousness of
Identity with God, which at the same time is a consciousness
of a lack of perfect Oneness with God ? Thoreau quotes a
Hindoo story in explanation :
" I have read in a Hindoo book that there was a
king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native
city, was brought up a forester, and, growing up to maturity
in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous
race with which he lived. One of his father's ministers hav-
ing discovered him, revealed to him what he was and the mis-
conception of his character was removed and he knew himself
to be a prince.
"So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, " from the
circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own charac-
ter, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and
then it knows itself to be Brahma." f
c. Original Sinlessness.
The figure is already interpreted for us. The soul is of
kingly origin, heaven- born, one with the Divine Father. As
identical with the 'Perfect One, the soul was originally perfect,
pure and sinless.
"The beings . . . created by Brahma were at first
endowed with righteousness and perfect faith, . . . their
hearts were free from guile, they were pure, etc' ' J
The Vedas affirms :
" Alle seelen sind ursprunglich,
Frei von Dunkel und Fleckenlos
Urerweckt schon und urerlost." §
* Walden, p. 342.
t Walden, p. 151, 152.
X Vishnu Purana, p. 45.
§ Atharva-Veda Mand.-Upan, v. 98. Deussen, p. 604. All souls are
originally free from darkness and spotless, awakened and redeemed
from the beginning. Cf. Deussen, Geschichte der, Philosophie I, p. 310.
26
Thoreau, too, held the doctrine of original sinlessness :
' ' How careful we must be to keep the crystal well we are
made clear / " *
He holds the true self to be absolutely incapable of sin
and not responsible for the deeds of the unreal, worldly self :
" A great soul will not consider its sins as its own, but be
more absorbed in the prospect of that valor and virtue for the
future which is more properly itself than in these improper ac-
tions which, by being sins, discover themselves to be not itself" f
An interesting passage in the Zenda Vesta forms d par-
allel to this :
" All good thoughts, words and works are done know-
ingly ; all bad thoughts, words and actions are not done know-
ingly."!
d. Sin.
This, then, is the meaning and significance of sin. As
the king's son in the far country forgot his origin and consid-
ered himself merely a barbarian, man's soul in the world has
lost sight of its original Oneness with the Divine. This is
the Vedic conception of sin :
' ' Ihr kenut ihn nicht der diese Welt gemacht hat ; ein
andere schob sick zwischen euch und ihm." §
The Vishnu Purana explains the advent of sin in the
world thus :
" ... After awhile . . . that portion ofHari
which has been described as Kala (Time) infused into created
beings sin." \\
Thoreau's definition of sin is in the same strain :
' ' Sin, I am sure, is not in overt acts nor indeed in acts of
* Autumn, p. 153 .
t Winter, p. 144.
% Zenda Vesta, Vol. Ill, p. 19.
§ Rig- Veda, 10, 31. 'Deussen, p. 139. "Ye know not Him who has
made this world ; another shoved himself between you and Him."
II Vishnu Purana, p. 45 ; cf. also, p. 47. Thoreau uses the same word
" Time," the Hari of the Vishnu Purana.
27
any kind, but is in proportion to that time which has come
behind us and displaced eternity, to the degree in which our
elements are mixed with the elements of earth." *
3. PURPOSE OF LIFE.
It was then the highest purpose — the only meaning — of
life for the Hindoo devotee, to free himself from the delusion,
of Time and the world, to realize to the full his Oneness with
Brahma — that is, otherwise expressed — to refind his true self :
" The Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from
death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing
but what it ought to desire and imagines nothing but what it
ought to imagine, it is which we must search out, that it is
which we must try to understand." f
This idea appears in Thoreau clothed in mystical lan-
guage :
•' I will only hint at some of the enterprise I have cher-,
ished. I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse and a turtle dove,
and am still on their trail." %
To this '^self" is granted the perception of the One in
AH — " the pure in heart shall see God."
"When a man's nature has become purified by the se-
rene light of knowledge, then he sees him, meditating on him
as without parts." §
Thoreau expressed frequently the thought that absolute
purity of heart and mind is the source of that pure_Vision
which can even discern the Infinite :
" Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity
is open." II "Chastity is perpetual acquaintance with the
All." **
The Hindoo philosophy does not, however, consider this
perception of God as perception of something outside of, or
* Winter, p. 25.
t Samaveda, Chan-Upan, 8, 7, i. Max Miiller, Vol. I, p. 134.
X Walden, p. 29.
§ Atharva Veda, Mund-Upan, 3, i, 8. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 39.
II Walden, p. 353.
** Walden, p. 342.
28
apart from, a man's self. The soul recognizes itself to be
Brahma ; the dualism vanishes ; the individual is absorbed
into the Universal spirit :
"As the flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their
name and their form, thus a wise man, freed from name and
form, goes to the Divine Person, who is greater than the
great." *
Thoreau, too, is possessed by an intense longing to free
himself from all foreign elements, and lose himself in the
ocean of the Universal ;
" Fain would I stretch me by the mountain side,
To thaw and trickle with the melting snow,
That, mingled soul and body with the tide,
I, too, may through the pores of nature flow."t
j'-- The aim of life in this world is, then, for Thoreau as for
/the Brahman, to regain that purity of soul which he possessed
originally as «ne with the Great Spirit, before taking on this
individual form, to purge the soul of the delusion of a sepa-
rate existence, that, free from all consciousness of an indi-
vidual self, which consciousness is sin (as disharmony), he
may be absorbed into the Universal.
The whole course of progress to the perception of the
Real is one of abstraction of the mind from the things which
are but apparent ; of renunciation of all that pertains to the
apparent or material life and is the consciousness of individ-
uality, for the attainment of the purely spiritual. It is the
resolution of the finite into the Infinite.
4. CONDITIONS OP FUI,PILLING LIFE'S PURPOSB.
a. Negation of (the apparent) Self.
The first condition of realization of the true self is there-
fore the negation of the apparent self. The father of Prat-
rida taught his son that renunciation is the highest. f
* Atharva Veda, Mund-Upan, 3, 2, 8. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 41 ;
cf. Deussen, Gesch d. Phil. II, p. 317.
fWinter, p. 156.
jYajur-Veda, Brih-Upan. Deussen Einleitung, 5, 12, p. 495. Max
Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 194.
29
" A mortal who has heard this and embraced it, who has
separated from it all qualities and has thus reached the subtle
Being rejoices, because he has obtained what is a cause for
rejoicing." *
Thoreau makes the same distinction between the external,
seeming self and the real self :
" Do you separate distinctly enough the support of your
body from that of your essence ?" f
If we but cease to devote all our energies to caring for
this individual, we shall be like undisturbed water able to
reflect eternal reality :
" When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance
and not the reality ? Why should the appearance appear ?
When we are weary with the burden of life, why do we not lay
down this load of falsehoods which we have volunteered to
sustain and be refreshed as never mortal was ? . . . Let
things alone, let them weigh what they will, let them soar or
fall. To succeed in letting one thing alone — what an achieve-
ment I Methinks it lightens through the dusky universe.
If for a moment we made way with our petty selves,
what shall we not reflect !" %
*Yajur-Veda, Kath-Upan, i, 2, 13. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 10.
t Letter to H. Blake (1849). Letters, p. i8.
X Letter to H. Blake (1849), P- 2i3-i4- This entire renunciation of
self excludes all anxiety about the well-being of the personal self ; it,
therefore, negates care and sorrow. Of the Hindoo Yogi it is written :
' ' Von ihm weicht alle Wehklage, weicht
In ihm ist keine Sorge mehr,
Ganz befriedigt, mit Licht eins, ist,
Festes, furchtloses Sinnes er."
(Artharva-Veda, Mand-Ka, 3, 37. Deussen, p. 59r.)
' ' All plaints of sorrow are foreign to him, in him there is no care, en-
tirely satisfied, one with light, he is firm and fearless in mind."
There is, therefore, no place in Thoreau' s scheme of life for a Phil-
osophy of Sorrow. Grief exists only through lack of understanding of,
or harmony with, the designs of the Universal. " Every man casts a
shadow, not his body only but his imperfectly mingled spirit. That is
his grief." (Week, p. 315. ) In the fullest faith and resignation peace is
to be found :
" I must receive my life as passively as the willow-leaf that flutters
30
That this negation of self demands retirement from the
world to a life of absolute seclusion will be considered in detail
in another section ; I will here only cite a record from Thoreau's
diary from the year 1841, in which year the project of the
hermitage seems first to have taken form in his mind :
" I want to go soon and live away by the pond where I
shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds. It will
be success enough if I have left myself behind."^
b. Negation of the World.
The renunciation of the external and apparent carries with
it as inner necessity the negation of all worldly aspirations.
The world is a hindrance in the struggle towards perfection as
it continually distracts from the contemplation of the soul's
high destiny and presents motives which appeal to egotism, to
the desire for present" realization of the apparent self. Hence
the Vedas consider entire withdrawal from the world a
necessity of spiritual life.f Krishna, too, warns the young
Arjoon against the infection of worldliness :
" The busy world is engaged from other motives than the
worship of the Deity. Abandon, then, O Son of Koontee all
selfish motives and perform thy duty to me alone. ' '%
This was one of Thoreau's messages to America :
"I think, there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed
to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant
business. "§
Over and over he gives expression to the highest principle
which governs his life :
over the brook. I must not be for myself, but for God's work and that
is always good. I will await the breeze patiently and grow as they shall
determine. . . . I feel as if I could at any time resign my life and
the responsibility into God's hands and become as innocent and Jree from
care as a plant or stone." (Spring, p. iii.)
* Winter, p. 13.
t V. labala-Upan, p. 460.
tBhagvat Geeta, p. 15.
§ Miscellanies, p. 255.
31
" I must not be for myself, but for God's work."*
" I must not live for it (the world) but in it for the Gods,
they are my correspondent.!
The serenity of such a life will permit insight into the
eternal truths :
" What are three-score years and ten hurriedly lived ; to
moments of divine leisure when your life is coincident -with the
life of the Universe."X
Avoidance of Disturbing Influences.
The Vedas counsel holding the soul aloof from all external
influe'nces :
" As rain-water that has fallen on a mountain ridge runs
down the rocks on all sides, thus does he who sees a difference
between qualities run after them on all sides. " As pure water
poured into pure water, remains the same, thus O Gautama, is
the self of a thinker who knows. "§
Thoreau held the receiving of many impressions from
without to be but a waste of force :
' ' Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject
yourself to so many influences, to be played upon. It is all dis-
sipation. II
(a) Solitude.
To secure this freedom from distraction it is necessary to
be much alone. The Bhagvat Geeta defines wisdom :
" Wisdom is a constant and invariable worship paid to
me alone, worshipping in a private place and a dislike to the
society of men"**
It is interesting to note that the teaching of Buddha also
lays particular stress upon this point :
* Letters, p. 213 ; cf. Confucius saying : "The wise man busies him-
self not with worldly matters." v. Analects, III. p. 27.
t Winter, p. 350.
% Winter, p. 45.
§ Yajur-Veda, Kath-Upan, 14, 15, Max Miiller, Vol XV. p. 17
II Walden, p. 326.
** Bhagvat Geeta, p. 65.
32
" Let him (the wise man) be devoted to that quietude
which comes from within, let him not drive back the ecstacy of
contemplation, let him look through things, let him be much
alone," *
Thoreau found solitude a necessity of his fullest, most
perfect life. Thus he writes in his diary :
/ thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only
one day in a week, I find that the value of the week to me has
been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, etc."t
The presence of others hindered the mystic perception of
the inner soul behind all phenomena :
' ' I saw through and behind them (the white pines) to a
distant snow-clad hill, and also to oaks red with their dry leaves
and maple limbs mingled with the pines. I was on the
verge of seeing something, but I did not. If I had been alone
I might have had something to report."X
(/) Silence.
The Hindoo sage in his isolation does not interrupt the
highest communion with the eternal self by any speech or
sound :
" Hoher ist, als die Grundsilbe
Der Punkt, hoher als er der Hall,
Die Silbe mit dem Laut schwindet,
Lautlos die hochste Static ist."%
Thoreau, too^ has his doctrine of silence :
' ' As the truest society approaches always nearer to soli-
tude, so tlie m,ost excellent speech falls into silence. . . Silence
iswhen we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly.
Who has not heard her infinite din ! She is Truth's speaking-
trumpet, for through her all revelations have been made."||
*Akankhenya Sutta, p. 210 : cf. " Confucius," p. 27.
t{Dec. 28th, 1856), Winter p. 49 : cf. also p. 354.
JWinter, p. 150.
§ Dhyam, 4. Deussen Gesch. der Philos., 1, p. 351. " Higher than
the ground syllable (Om) is the point, higher than that the sound, the
syllable vanishes with the tones, the highest is soundlessness."
II Week, p. 515-6.
33
He would hold his life as secluded as that of a Hindoo
devotee ;
"What- is fame to a living man. If he live aright the
sound of no man's voice will resound through the aisles of his
secluded life. . . . His life will be a hallowed silence, a
pooiy^
Silence is natural when the mind is fixed in contempla-
tion ;
' ' Silence is the communication of a conscious soul with itself.
If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, there is
silence. "t When deeper thoughts upswell, the jarring dis-
cord of harsh speech is hushed, and senses seem as little as
may be to share the ecstasy." J
c. Negation of Desire.
Negation of the apparent self includes the mortifying of
every desire which characterizes that self. The Eternal One,
than which there is none other, is free from all desire, all
passion ; on the realization of man's oneness with him, the
Infinite, follows the death of desire. Poverty of worldly
goods is, of course, implied. Thoreau ohose it as voluntarily
as the Indian ascetic. Though his religion only required of the
Brahman that he withdraw to a solitary life in the forest after
he had fulfilled his duty as founder of a family, yet the Veda
relates concerning the sages :
' ' What shall we do with ofispring, they said, we who
have this Self and this world (of Brahman)? And they,
having risen above the desire for sons, wealth and new worlds,
wander about as mendicants. ' '§
This negation of every human passion is essential to per-
ception :
" He who hath faith findeth wisdom, and above all he
who hath gotten the better of his passions.'" ||
* Spring, p. 128-9.
t Autumn, p. 435.
. X Summer; p. 348.
§ Yajur-Veda, Brih-Upan, IV, 4, 22. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 179-80.
II Bhagvat Geeta, p. 24 ; cf. also, " Laws of Menu," p. 186 (96).
34
This is indeed the very definition of wisdom :
" A man is said to be confirmed in wisdom when he for-
saketh every desire which entereth his heart, andj)f himself is
happy and contented in himself." *
The Vedas declare this mastery of self to be the only
true knowledge :
" The mind, it is said, is of two kinds, pure or impure ;
impure from the contact with lust, pure when free from lust.
. . . The mind (manas, desire) must be restrained in
the heart till it comes to an end — that is knowledge, that is
liberty." t
The Heetopades of Vishnu Sarma even go so far as to
characterize self restraint as the distinguishing qualify of soul :
' ' What hath he to do with a soul who doth not keep his
passions in subjection ?" J
Thoreau, too, considered freedom from desire the "flow-
ering of man :"
" He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out
in him day by day and the Divine being established." §
He quotes from the Vedas, with his endorsement :
" A command over our passions and over the external senses
of the body and good acts are declared by the Ved to be in-
dispensable in the mind's approximation of God. Yet the
spirit can for the time, pervade and control every member of
the body and transmute what in form is grossest sensuality
into purity and devotion." ||
d. Negation of Works.
In the complete giving up of self, not only must the evil
in man be annihilated, but even good works carry a danger
with them, in that they are an assertion of individuality, and
form an obstacle to uninterrupted contemplation of the Uni-
versal :
* Bhagvat Geeta, p. 12.
t Maitr-Upan, 6, 34. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 333-4.
X Heetopades, p. 22.
§ Essays, p. 242.
II Walden, p. 342.
35
" Because those who depend on good works are, owing to
their passions, improvident, they fall and become miserable
when their life is finished. Considering sacrifice and good
works as the best, these fools know no higher good and having
enjoyed their reward on the height of the heaven gained by
good works, they enter again this world or a lower one." *
To Thoreau the occupation with good works was inde-
scribably petty and trivial in comparison with life's true pur-
pose which must be all-absorbing :
"What a foul subject is this of doing good I Instead of
minding one's life which should be his business. ... As
if the sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the
splendor of a man, or a star of the sixth magnitude and go
about like a Robin Goodfellow peeping in at every cottage
window . . . instead of increasing his genial heat and
beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can look
him in the face ; and, then, in the meantime, 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." t
X^So much energy spent in doing leaves none for being :
/ " Even the wisest and best are apt to use their lives as the ^
[occasion to do something else than to live greatly. IVhai
[man does compared with what he is, is a small party J,
Thoreau quotes, further, from the Bhagvat Geeta con- /
cerning /
. . ' ' The forsaking of works taught by Krishna to the
first of men. In wisdom is to be found every work without
exception." §
To him who has attained to wisdom, the uselessness of
works are appirent. The Veda teaches :
* Mund-Upan, 1,9, 10. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 32.
t Walden, p. 117.
X Spring, p. 248.
§ Week, p. 118.
36
"All works, the good as well as the bad, become as
nothing when wisdom is attained:" *
(a) Faith.
This wisdom is the perfection of insight of which the fruit
and source alike is faith.
' ' When one believes, one perceives. One who does not
believe, does not perceive. Only he who believes, perceives. "f
For the next world — as for this — works efiFect but little in
comparison with this supreme faith through which knowledge
of the eternal is attained ;
' ' Those who in the forest follow faith and austerities go
to light and from light to day, . . . This is the path of
the Devas. But they who, living in a village, practice
sacrifices, works of public utility, and alms, they go to the
smoke, from smoke to night. "J
To Thoreau, also, Faith appeared of infinitely more value
than works :
' ' I think we may safely trust a great deal more than we
do."§
"• " Faith indeed is all the reform that is needed, it is in itself
a reform." 1 1
" In the serene 'Sky of evening he sees a picture of what
his life should be ;
"Just such a piece of art merely, infinitely sweet and
good, did it appear to me, and Just as little were any active duties
required of me."**
Divine moments of perception of the supreme were granted
to him through perfect faith, which is the full yielding up of
self:
*Mund-Upan, 2,2, 8. Max Miiller XV., p. 37, also Yajur-Veda,
Kath-Upan, 6, 12, p. 23. ' ' The fetter of the heart is broken, all doubts
are solved, all his works (and their effects) perish, when he has been
beheld who is high and low."
tSama-Veda Chan-Upan 7, 19, i, p. 122. Max Miiller, Vol.1.
JSama-Veda, Chand-Upan 5, 12, 3. Max Miiller, Vol I, p. 80.
§ Walden, p. 19.
II Miscellanies, p. 63.
** Autumn, p. 197.
37
' ' Sometimes in a summer morning, I sat in my sunny
doorway till noon, rapt in a reverie, among the pines and
hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness.
I grew in those seasons like corn in the night. ... I
realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the
forsaking of works. ' '*
The forsaking of works was indeed a necessity to that
' ' reclining on the bosom of contemplation " which the Hindoo
worshipper considered the chief means of attaining to oneness
with the All — that absolute concentration which is tantamount
to death of the outer senses that the inner (spiritual) senses
may be free to perceive the invisible world Thoreau had in
some degree experienced this, for he records:
" Drifting on a sultry day on the sluggish waters of the
pond, I almost cease to live and begin to be.^
{b) The Yoga.
The highest exercise of this power of abstraction is the
practice of the Yoga.J
Thoreau writes concerning it :§
"The Yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his
degree to creation ; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears
wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing
him and, united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes,
he acts as animating original matter. || To some extent and
at rare intervals, /, too, am a Yogi. Free in this world as the
birds of the air, disengaged from every kind of chain those
*Walden, p. 175.
t Spring p. 316.
X Concerning the almost incredible power of abstraction possessed by
the Hindoo devotees see Warren Hastings letter for the preface of the
Bhagvat Geeta, Wilkin's Translation.
§ cf. Yogat, I Dhyamat 3 ; Deussen, Gesch. der Phil., I, p. 354.
II cf . Creuzer-Guignauts characterization of the Yoga practice.
" C'est I'oubll de tont Individuality: c'est le renoncement le plus
complet au moi," (Religions de 1' Antiquity : Vol I, p. 281).
38
who have practiced the Yoga find in Brahma the certain fruit of
their works. Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am,
/ would fain practice the Yoga faithfully. ' '*
The complete giving up of all bodily and even mental
faculties and permitting self to lose itself in the All, appeared
to Thoreau as a direct path " making for righteousness."
" My most essential progress must be to me a state of
absolute rest."\ Time's stream seems settling in a pool, a still-
ness not as if Nature's breath were held, but expired. Let me
know that such hours are the wealthiest in Nature" s gift." %
We have seen that the Hindoo ideal of life was, by com-
plete renunciation of self and all that pertains to individual
existence to regain harmony with the Universal spirit of which
he is an emanation. Therein he finds the soul-cleansing,
pristine purity, perfection.
The consideration in the foregoing sections showing that
Thoreau possessed the same ideal of life, makes his withdrawal
out of the world seem as inevitable an outcome of his faith as
the life of the Brahminical ascetic in the Indian forest.
v.— Immortality.
I. Death- METAMORPHOSIS.
The faith in its Oneness with the Universal mind, pre-
cluded from the Hindoo mind any thought of real death or dis-
solution. Death could only mean for man as for all nature,
metamorphosis.
" I<ook back how it was with those who came before, look
forward how it will be with those who come here after. A
mortal ripens like corn, like corn he springs up again. "§
Or as the Bhagvat Geeta expresses the same thought :
" As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on
new, even so the soul having quitted its mortal frames entereth
into others which are new." 1 1
* Letters to H. Blake, (1849) : Letters, p. 210-11.
t Autumn, p. 121.
X Winter, p. 191 .
§ Yajur Veda, Kath-Upan i, 16, 3. Max Muller.Vol. XV. p. 3.
II Bhagvat Geeta, p. 98-9.
39
To Thoreau, too, no thought of death could come ;
" That Eternity which I see in Nature I predict for myself
also."*
The fall of the leaves which in their decay give birth to
new generations of leaves, is for him a symbol of the change
that we call death. "Likelast year's vegetation our human life
but dies down to its root and still puts forth its green blade
into eternity."!
2. TRANSMIGRATION
In considering the Hindoo conception of immortal life,
that which first suggests itself is the belief in pre- existence
and in the transmigration of the soul into other bodies after
the death of the present body :
"Some enter the womb in order to have a body as
organic beings, others go into inorganic matter, according to
their work and according to their knowledge." J
Thoreau^^often^jipeaks of himself as having existed in
earlier ages :
" And Hawthorne, too, I remember as one with whom I
sauntered in old heroic times along the banks of the Scaman-
der amid the ruins of chariots and heroes." § ||
The character of the body which the soul assumes in the
next succeeding birth depends on the character of the present
life and of the works performed in it : The work remains
over (after death) as seed of the next birth.
"For . . . what they praised was Karman, . . .
namely that a man becomes good by good work, and bad by
bad work." **
The same idea finds expression in Thoreau thus :
* Excursions, p. 331.
t Autumn, p. 187.
t Yajur-Veda, Kath-Upan, 2, 5, 8. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 19.
§ Letter to Emerson (1843). Letters, p. no.
II Poems of Nature, p. 52. See also Winter {p. 247 ; Week, p. 28).
(Poem on the death of his brother John.)
** Yajur-Veda, Birh-Upan, 3,2, 13. Max Miiller, Vol. XV, p. 227.
40
" Methinks the hawk that soars so loftily and circles so
steadily and apparently without effort, has earned this power
by faithfully creeping on the ground as a reptile in a former state
of existence. " *
3. FORM OF THE SOUL ETERNAL.
Any changes in the bodily shape which the soul assumes
are, however, merely changes in the matter of the soul, its
form remains eternal, unchanging :
"This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living
Self has left it ; the living Self dies not." f
Thoreau expresses this conception in platonic language :
" They^rwi of the soul is eternal, and this we can retain
and express not by a foreign material and art, but by our own
lives." X
4. DEATH OF THE BODY MEANS ITS REUNION WITH
NATURE.
Assured of the eternity of the soul as one with the eternal
himself, death lost all its terrors. The dissolution of the body
was natural and beautiful as a return to the bosom of the
divine mother. Nature. This is most beautifully expressed in
an exquisite funeral hymn of the Rig- Veda :
" So gehe ein zur mutterlichen Erde
Sie offnet sich zu gutigem Empfang !
Denn frommen, zart und linde wie ein madchen
Sie schutze fortan dich vor dem Verderben.
Du, Erde, thue dich auf fiir ihn und sei nicht eng,
Den Eintritt mach ihm leicht, er schmieg' sich an dich an ;
Bedeck ihn wie die Mutter die
Das Kind in ihr Gewand verhiillt." ||
* Autumn, p. 255.
t Sama-Veda, Chand, 6, 11, 3. MaxMiiller, Vol. I, p. 103 ; cf. Plato,
Phaedon, chaps. 52-54.
% Winter, p. 252.
II Geldner ; Siebenzig Lieder d. Rigveda, p. 151-2. " Then go into
the bosom of mother earth, it opens in kindly welcome. May she, gentle
and tender as a maiden, henceforth protect thee, the pious one, from de-
cay. Thou, earth, open up for him and be not narrow ; make his entrance
easy that he may nestle close to thee ; shelter him as a mother wraps a
child in her garments.' '
41
Thoreau looks forward to death as to the attainment of
that harmony with nature which has been the goal of his
life's ambition :
' ' Even death will take place when I have made my peace
with my body and set my seal to that treaty which divine
justice has so long required. I shall at length join interest
with it. I anticipate a more thorough sympathy with Na-
ture when my thigh-bones shall strew the ground like the
boughs which the wind has scattered. ' ' *
5. SLEEP.
a. Dreams.
The nearest approach to that absorption into the Uni-
versal which death brings in fullness is a deep and dreiamless
sleep. A dream, on the other hand, does not differ from life
itself, and scenes which pass before the dreamer are not more
unreal than those which meet his waking eyes. Dreaming or
awake, he apprehends a multiplicity of phenomena where
there is only one reality.
" Des Tr.-iumenszustand und Wachens
Als derselbe dem Weisen gilt
Denn gleich ist beiden die Vielheit ;
Aus diesem wohlerwiesenen Grund." t
The real life in th e world is as unreal as dream-life and
perception~of reality is not to^5e~~afrtvea^at. "^TEus the com-
mentary Cankara explains :
" Auch das Wachen ist ein Traumenssustand Aa. ein Wachen
des wirklichen selbstes nicht stattfindet, und man eine un-
wirkliche Realitat wie im Traume schaut."J
* Winter, p. 202.
t Altharva-Veda, Mand-Kar, II, 5, p. 583. "The states of dreaming
and waking are seen by the wise man to be the same, for multiplicity (of
phenomena) is common to both."
J Cankara Commentar, v Deussen, Upanishad's, p. 270. "The con-
dition of being awake is also a dream, since an awakening of the real self
does not take place and one views an unreal reality as in a dream."
42
Thoreau, without going into details, expresses the same
idea :
" I do not know how to distinguish between our waking
life and a dream. Are we not always leading the life that we
imagine we are ?" *
b. Deep Sleep.
As a dream corresponds to our apparent life, a dreamless
sleep' in which the delusion of the existence of a multiplicity
of objects vanishes, and every idea of anything as outside of,
or apart from the true self is lost, corresponds to our real
life. It is equivalent to the death of all separate existence,
return into our own true being.
Uddalaka Aruni spoke to his son :
"When a man sleeps here, then, my dear son, he becomes
united with the True, he is gone to his own (Self). There-
fore, they say svapiti, he sleeps, because he is gone (apita) to
his own (sva)." f
The following passage in Thoreau bears almost the char-
acter of a translation of the foregoing :
" At night we recline and nestle and infold ourselves in
our being.''' J
Under a figure the Hindoo philosopher expresses the taking
up of the individual spirit into the Universal in deep sleep ;
" Now as a man embraced by a beloved wife, knows
nothing that is without, nothing that is within, thus this per-
son, when embraced by the intelligent self, knows nothing that
is without, nothing that is within. This is indeed the (true)
form in which his wishes are fulfilled, in which the self (only)
is his wish, in which no wish is left."§
Thoreau attaches the same meaning to deep and dreamless
sleep:
* Autumn, p. 259.
t Sama-Veda, Chand-'Upan, 6, 8, 2. Max Miiller, Vol. I, p. 98-9.
X Autumn, p. 69.
§ Yajur-Veda, Brih-Upan, 4, 3. 2i- Max Miiller, Vol. XV., p. 168.
43
" / am conscious of having in sleep transcended the limits
of the individual. . . . As if in sleep our individual fell
into the Universal and infinite mind and at the moment of
awakening we find ourselves on the confines of the latter. On
awakening we resume our enterprises, take up our bodies and
become limited mind again." * *• T
6. WIND THE BREATH OF SPIRIT.
It was probably not wholly due to the feeling of relation-
ship to the elements, but also to the custom of burning the
bodies of the dead, that the Hindoos regarded the wind which
carried the smoke of the funeral pyre to the sky, as the bearer
of the soul to heavenly regions. It is written in the Vedas :
" When the person goes away from this world, he comes
to the wind. "t
The funeral service contained the formula :
' ' Nun werde Hauch, zum, Winde dem Unsterblichen und
dieser I<eib mag endigen in Asche."I
Thoreau contemplating the manner of death by shipwreck
finds almost a fascination in such a giving up of life in the
arms of the element ;
' ' The strongest wind cannot stagger a spirit ; it is a spirit 's
breath r%
7. UNCONCERN REGARDING THE FUTURE
It was a source of dissatisfaction, almost of anxiety to
Thoreau's Puritan friends, that he concerned himself so little
♦Spring, p. 157.
tYajur-Veda, Brih-Upan,s, 10. Max Miiller Vol. XV., p. 193.
X Yajur-Veda, Ifa-Upan, 12. Deussen p. 528. " Become O breath !
Wind for the immortal, and this body may end in ashes."
An interesting parallel passage to the above occurs in Meister Eckart
(v. Preger, Geschichte der deut. Mystik p. 346): " Eia! wo ist der Seele
Wohning? Sie ist auf den Federn der Winde. Die Federn sind die
Krafte gottlicher Natur."
( " Eia ! Where is the dwelling of the soul ? It-is on the wings of the
wind. The wings are the forces of divine nature." ) .
§ Cape Cod, p. 13.
44
about the future life. In truth this could furnish no matter
for contemplation to one who had resigned self with all its
interests :
" Lighthearted, thoughtless, shall I take my way,
Wh.en I to thee this being have resigned,
Well knowing at some future day
With usurer's craft, more than myself to find."*
The Hindoo sage could exhibit the same indifference to
the future and for the same reason :
" O Yanaka, du hast den Frieden erlangt I " [Erkenntnis
der EinheitJt Fxir den solches Wissenden hat die Frage wohin
die Seele nach dem Tode gehe, keine Bedeutung mehr."J
*Autumn, p. 297.
t Yajur-Veda, Brih-Upan, 4, 2, 4 Deussen, p. 463.
X V. Deussen's Introduction to 41, p. 457. O Yanaka, thou hast attained
to peace ! (knowledge of oneness). For him who perceives this, the
question of where the soul goes after death has no longer any importance.
CHAPTER II.
Music.
CHAPTER II.
Music.
Significance of Art.
Introductory.
Thoreau's conception of the meaning and significance of
art is a natural and organic outgrowth of his conception of the
meaning of life itself. Man originates in God, and is one with
God.
" Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home."*
At the outset of life man is one with the Eternal ; no dual-
ism exists, no distinction between subject and object. But the
world with " the dross of sin derived from time "f separates
him far from his divine source ;
" We have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We
have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a
family tomb." Then follows Thoreau's most general defini-
tion of the purpose of Art :
" The best works of Art are an expression of man's
struggle to free himself from this condition ' 'J
What is in the nature of Art that it can redeem us from
earthiness and restore us to oneness with the Divine ? It is
not easy to express. Thoreau, the poet, does not under-
take to build up a consequent metaphysics of music and art ;
in bursts of rhapsody, in light- flashes, he reveals his concep-
tion of their deepest significance.
* Wordsworth, Ode ; Intimations of Immortality, p. 157.
t Vishnu Pinana definition of Sin, p. 47.
X Walden, p. 61.
48
MUSIC.
Music is a revelation of the Universal. It is the expression
of the real world, ' ' the sound of universal laws promulgated. "*
It expresses the essence of life, the idea of the world. " It is
God's voice, the divine breath audible."!
The composer utters no fact within his experience, but an
inspiration from the universal soul.
' ' Orpheus does not hear the strains which issue from his
lyre, but only those which are breathed into it. "J
It is the objectivation of the Supreme will, an emanation of
Him who is the origin of the world of whom nature and man
are other emanations :
"We hear the kindred vibrations, music I and we put
forth our dormant feelers into the limits of the universe." ||
It annihilates time and space and reveals that unity which
exists through all the apparent multiplicity of phenomena.
It reveals the divine himself. On hearing music in the night.
Thoreau writes ;
" Then idle time ran gadding by, and left me with Eter-
nity alone ;
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the verge of sight,
I see, smell, taste, hear, feel that everlasting something to
which we are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny,
our very selves. I have seen how the foundations of the
world are laid." §
* Week, p. 228. Thoreau makes very few references to color Art •
he writes almost exclusively of music. This was probably owing to the
circumstances in which he was placed and his life of isolation in the
woods, which did not present opportunities for the consideration of paint-
ing and Architecture. The music of which he writes is also of the
simplest character. A drum or a flute, the distant playing of a piano or
music-box ; or — what gave him especial musical pleasure — the wind play-
ing on the telegraph wires — the "telegraph-harp."
' t Summer, p. 258.
■ X Week, p. 549.
II Winter, p. 172-3.
§ Week, p. 226.
49
As an expression of the eternal will, the very material of
music lies outside of Time ; hence no history of music, prop-
erly speaking, is possible :
" Most lecturers preface their discourses on music with a
history of music. It has no history more than God. It cir-
culates and resounds for ever and only flows like sea or air.
. . . I might as well try to write the history of my as-
pirations. There is no past in the soul." *
a. Transcends Thought.
As music does not treat of phenomena, but of reality not
of the facts of the world but of its inner character, so its mes-
sage bears the character of a revelation which transcends all
thought.
" O music 1 thou opeuest my senses to catch the least
hint and givest me no thought .' " f
Indeed all perception of the divine must be without
and beyond the province of reason. The Hindoo philosopher
wrote concerning the apprehension of the Supreme :
' ' He (the Self) cannot be reached by speech, by mind or
by the eye. How can it be apprehended except by him who
says ■ He is ? ' . . . When he has been apprehended by
the words ' He is,' then his reality reveals itself." %
b. Speaks with Assurance.
Music, then, as the supreme revelation of the Eternal,
lifts to regions which no thought can penetrate :
" Aye, there was a logic'va. them (the strains of music) that
the combined sense of mankind could never make me doubt their
conclusions." §
No demonstration of its truth is necessary. This is the
very meaning of its measured time :
" In the steadiness and equanimity of music lies its di-
vinity. It is the only assured tone." ||
* Spring, p. 86.
t Winter, p. 413.
t Yajur-Veda, Kath-Upan, 2, 6, 12-13. Max Miiller, vol. XV, p. 23.
§ Week, p. 225.
II Winter, p. 172.
5°
2. ETHICAL VALUE OF MUSIC.
a. Reveals Unreality of the Apparent World.
Herein, then, lies the power of music to redeem our lives.
In the revelation of the real world, it makes plain that noth-
ingness of this present world :
' ' The telegraph harp again I Always the same unremem-
berable revelation it is to me. It stings my ear with ever-
lasting truth. I get down the railroad till / hear that which
makes all the world a lie."*
It shows the perfection of the perfect life and so makes
this mean life impossible :
' ' Music has caught a higher pace than any virtue that I
know. It is the arch reformer. It is the sweetest reproach, a
measured satire. When I hear this, I think of that everlast-
ing something which is not mere sound, but is to be thrilling
reality. What, then, can I do to hasten that other time, or
space where there shall be no time, and where these things
shall be a more living part of my life, where there will be no
discords in my life." f
The whole pettiness of our life in the world, the falseness
and hoUowness of our organizations is seen in the light of
music's strains :
" It is remarkable that our institutions can stand before
music, it is so revolutionary .^^ %
b. Reveals the Possibility of Harmo7iy with the Eternal
Desig?is.
The recognition of the meanness of life, the revelation of
how inexpressibly far we are from harmony with the designs
of the supreme will and from Oneness with the Universal
spirit which thus reveals itself, induces the sadness which
music awakens, and which is akin to repentance. The song
of the wood-thrush in the still twilight is not sad ; yet heard
remote from the world, when the sensibilities are most easily
* Winter, p. 146.
t Winter, p. 140.
X Autumn, p. 120.
51
reached by the communication which it makes, the eyes are
filled with tears, the heart with an indefinable longing. Thus
Thoreau writes :
" A sad cheer I feel when I hear these lofty strains, be-
cause there must be something as lofty in me that hears. . . .
The sadness is the echo which our lives make and which alone we
hear."*
This voice out of the eternal Harmonies reveals to man's
consciousness how far he has wandered from that oneness with
the All which is his due portion, a loneliness as of one in a
far country steals over him ; a sense of lost joy, a soul-long-
ing for the perfection of harmony :
" We feel a sad cheer when we hear it, perchance because
we that hear are not one with that which is heard.
Therefore a torrent of sadness deep,
Through the strains of the triumph is heard to sweep.
The sadness is ours. The Indian poet Calidas says, in the
Sacontala :
" Perhaps the sadness of men on seeing beautiful forms
and hearing sweet music arises from some faint remem-
brance of past joys and the traces of connections in a former
state of existence. "t
But in the sadness of music lies not only the desire of future
perfection but the promise of it :
' ' There are such strains in music that far surpass any
man's faith in the loftiness of his destiny.J
Man is brought by it into touch with the Infinite himself ;
"This wire of the telegraph-harp is my redeemer; it
always brings me a special and a general message from the most
high.'%
The message is none other than a revelation of our Eternity,
of our relation to the Universal :
" Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a
* Winter, p. 140.
t Week, p. 227.
t Winter, p. 140.
§ Winter, p. 146.
52
strain of music exhibits to me. The field of my life becomes
a boundless plain glorious to tread, with no death or disap-
pointment at the end of it. All meanness and trivialness dis-
appear.*
c. Lifts Above the Limits of Personality .
In this vision of the All-pervading Spirit and our essen-
tial oneness with it, all consciousness of individuality is lost:
" No particulars survive this expansion. Persons do not
survive it. In the light of this strain, there is no thou or /.
We are actually lifted above ourselves. "'\
It is momentary release from the confinement of the indi-
vidual, absorption in the All ;
" As I hear, I realize and see clearly what at other times
I only dimly remember. I get the value of the earth's extent
and the sky's depth. It gives me the freedom of all bodies, of all
nature. I leave my body in a trance and accompany the
zephyr and the fragrance. ' 'J
d. Effects Oiieness with the Universal.
Indeed, for Thoreau, who gave himself so fully to be per-
meated by music, who yielded himself so entirely to its sway,
the vision was indeed a "trance," a condition of ecstasy such
as was attained by the Myotics of the Middle Ages through
contemplation of the Divine :
" The strain of the ^Solian harp and of the wood thrush
are the truest and loftiest preachers that I now know left upon
the earth. They lift us up in spite of ourselves. They in-
toxicate and charm us. When was that strain mixed into
which the world was dropped ? I would be drunk, drunk,
dead drunk to this world with it forever. The contact of sound
with the human ear whose hearing is pure is equivalent to
ecstasy. "%
* Winter, p. i8i.
t Winter, p. i8i.
i Winter, 78-9.
§ Winter, p. 78-9.
53
3. THB HEARING OP MUSIC A RELIGIOUS ACT.
Such then being the significance of music, he who has
ittained to perception should attend to it as to a sacrament, a
communication from the Most High.
' ' Listen to music religiously as if it were the last strain you
might hear."*
The opera maybe a temple where man can commune with
God:
' ' Men go to the opera because they hear there a faint
expression of this news which is never distinctly proclaimed, "f
This conception of the meaning of music is very similar
to that of Plato. Thoreau himself recognizes the similiarity
and cites from Plutarch :
" Plato thinks the Gods never gave men music, the science
of melody and harmony for mere delectation or to tickle the
ear, but that the discordant parts of the circulation and beaute-
ous fabric of the soul and that of it that roves about the body
many times for want of time and air breaks forth into many
extravagances, might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound
up to their former consent and agreement."!
a. Music Only for the Virtuous.
But the communication from the Universal mind and heart
can only be heard by such as are still near enough the Divine
to understand the message, in whose memory is still some
Lingering of :
"those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all one day
Are yet a master light of all our seeing." II
Beauty and music are, therefore only for the virtuous :
" We never see any beauty but as the garment of some
virtue."§
* Summer, p. io8 : cf. also p. 119-
t Letters, p. 260.
X Week, p. 150.
II Ode — Intimations of Immortality. Wordw., p. 358.
§ Autumn, p. 61 .
54
To him whose soul is pure the divine voice is ever audible.
"The profane never hear music, the holy ever hear it." *
4. MUSIC UNrVERSAL AND PBRPETUAL.
It is not even necessary that music be expressed by means
of any instrument ;
Debauched and worn-out senses require the violent vibra-
tions of an instrument to excite them but sound and still
youthful senses, not enervated by luxury, hear music in the
wind and rain and running water. . . . Music is perpetual
and only hearing is intermittent." \
It is interesting to note a similar expression of the univer-
sality of music in Wordsworth :
" Many are the notes
Which in his toneful course the wind draws forth
From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths and dashing shores :
, . . . Theirs, too, is the song
Of stream and headlong flood that never fails ;
Nor have nature's laws
Left them imgifted with a power to yield
MiMic of a finer tone ; a harmony,
So do I call it, though it be the hand
Of silence, though there be no voice" etcX
a. Nature and Music are One.
But Thoreau's conception of the essential oneness (z e. one-
ness in essence) of music and nature goes much deeper than a
recognition of the musical quality of natural sounds. Music
is an objectivation of the divine mind or will as nature is, ||
and the seeing soul discerns through both alike the inner
character being of the world ; one suggests the other :
* Summer, p. 258. cf. Shakespeare expresses the same idea from
the negative point of view :
" The man who hath no music in his soul,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, etc.
, ,„. M. of Venice, v. sc. i.
t Wmter, p. 353.
X Excursions, 11. , p. 438.
II Cf. Schopenhauer " Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," Vol. I,
p. 351. "1st die ganze Welt als Vorstellung nur die Sichtbarkeit des
Willens, so ist die Kunst die Verdeutlichung dieser Sichtbarkeit."
55
' ' There is something creative and primal in the cool
mist ; it does not fail to suggest music to me, fertility, the
origin of things." *
The distinction commonly made between nature and art
calls forth Thoreau's criticism of a blind and deaf generation :
' ' It has come to this, that a lover of art is one and a lover
of nature another. It is monstrous when one cares but little
about trees and much about Corinthian columns. Any perfect
work of man's art would also be wild or natural." f
b. Music of the Spheres.
Nature is in what it expresses, one with music ; the
meaning of creation reveals itself in the universe musically.
The inner life and design of nature, the world and world-
systems is a melody which resounds through the soul of him
who has reached out over the confines of limited individual
perception to apprehend the idea of a universe in eternal har-
mony with itself. It is so impossible to express an idea of
such comprehensiveness that Thoreau has made use of the
Platonic explanation of the Pythagorean doctrine of sphere-
harmony as the nearest approach to putting it into words :
" Pythagoras did not procure himself a thing of this kind
through instruments or the voice, but, employing a certain
ineflFable divinity he extended his ears and fixed his intellect
in the sublime symphonies of the world, he alone hearing and
understanding, as it appears, the universal harmony and con-
sonance of the spheres and the stars that are moved through
them, and which produce a fuller and more intense melody
than anything efiFected by mortal sound." %
5. BEST MUSIC WOR%DI<ESS.
As music is the expression, not of any single fact, but of
Universal I,aws — of the world's essence — the most perfect
music will be wordless, since words must necessarily limit the
application to one particular case,
* Summer, p. 97.
t Autumn, p. 89.
% Week, p. 151.
56
Words, even the noblest, are by their very nature only
fitted to the utterance of a definite, i. e., limited thought
and inadequate to the expression of the Infinite.
" There are no words worthy to be set to music — it is eter-
nal melody independent of any particular sense." *
a. Silence the most Perfect Music.
But not only is music zwexpressible in words, at its di-
vinest it transcends even the limitation of audible sounds. In
moments of uplifting above ourselves into that boundlessness
in which we have our being, into unity with
"That light whose smile kindles the universe,
That beauty in which all things live and move." t
A supersensuous sense apprehends the divinest music where
to the human ear there is no sound.
" Silence alone is worthy to be heard. The silence sings.
It is musical. I remember a night when it was audible. I
heard the unspeakable." %
6. MUSIC AND THE YOGA PRACTICE.
Music leads along the same path to redemption which the
Brahman follows in his highest religious exercise, the Yoga.
In contemplation of the One, the Supreme, the delusion of the
dualism of subject and object is overcome, the narrowing con-
sciousness of personal existence is lost ; the individual is one
with the Universal, the finite exalted to Infinity.
* Week, p. 292.
t Shelley, Alastor, LIV, p. 375.
t Winter, p. 218.
CHAPTER III
Love.
CHAPTER III.
Love,
Thoreau and the i^nglish Pantheistic Poets.
Introductory.
i. i.ove to nature.
We have seen (chap. I) that Thoreau, from his intense
consciousness of the Oneness of all things in God, was im-
bued with the sense of his near relationship to the plant and
animal life in nature. The expression of this sense of rela-
tionship, and the love of natural objects which grew out of
it, finds, interesting parallels in the poetry of such English
pantheistic poets of his own century as Wordsworth, Shelley
and Byron,* to which we will refer in considering in detail
Thoreau 's attitude to Nature.
2. RELATIONSHIP TO NATURAI< OBJECTS.
Thus Thoreau 's heart went out to the striped bream in
Walden Pond, in affection which bore almost the character of
a human friendship :
' ' My contemporary and neighbor ! I can only think of
precious jewels, of music, poetry and beauty and the mystery
of life. I have a contemporary in Walden. It has fins where
I have legs and arms. Acquaintance with it is to make my
life more rich and eventful." f
Wordsworth's nature poetry is permeated with this feeling
of the love and consideration due from man to God's other
creatures ; thus :
* That these three poets belong in one group of which Wordsworth
may be regarded as the head, has been demonstrated by Gillardon, Diss.,
1900.
t Autumn, p. 361.
6o
" Birds and beasts
And the mute fish that
Glances in the stream
he loved them all.
Their rights acknowledging,
He felt for all." *
Shelley, too, undoubtedly influenced by this passage in
the Excursion, expresses the same idea in Alastor.f
"If no bright bird, insect or gentle be'ast I consciously
have injured, but still loved and cherished these my kindred."
Thoreau is sensible of the closest relationship to all mani-
festations of the Universal, not only to this earth, but to those
other worlds so high above him, the stars :
' ' What a consolation the stars are to men 1 It is surely
some encouragement to know that the stars are my fellow
creatures. ''^X
Byron thus expresses the reaching out of the human soul
over the confines of its finiteness to claim oneness with the
Universal :
" Ye stars — 'tis to be forgixen
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'er leap their mortal state,
And claim a kiiidred with you." §
3. — 1,0 VE OF NATURE A PASSION.
The sense of affinity with the earth may bear almost the
character of an appetite. Thus Wordsworth writes of his
early love for nature :
" Nature then
To me was all in all —
I cannot paint what then I was ; the tall rock
The mountains and the deep and gloomy rock
Their colors and their forms were to me an appetite. "||
Thoreau uses the simile of human hunger to characterize
his longing for close contact with nature.
*'Excursions, II., p. 433. 41-47.
t Alastor, p. 85. 13-15. v. Ackermann "Shelley."
{Excursions, p. 178.
§ Childe Harold, III. LXXXVIII.
II Tintem Abbey.
6i
"O dear nature I A remembrance of pine woods I
come to it as a hungry man to a crust of breadJ''''^ "I love and
could eat the brown earth. "f
A passion akin to human passion leads him to seek the
society of natural objects. The dear wholesome colour of
scrub-oak leaves so clean and firm ! . . / love and could
embrace the scrub-oak, with its scanty garment of leaves,
rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me, akin to winter
thoughts, and sunsets, and all virtue ; coverts which the hare
and the partridge seek and I too seek. Rigid as iron, clean as
the atmosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a
maiden is the scrub-oak. "J
4.— MANIFESTATIONS OP THE DIVINE IN NATURE THE
SOURCE OF NATURE I<OVE.
But when the full significance of Nature as objectivation
of the eternal mind and soul is perceived, all phenomena in
Nature are loved with a reverent and mystic love, as manifes-
tations of that indwelling spirit. Thoreau always approached
Nature in this attitude of reverence. Mr. Burroughs says of him:
" It was supernatural Mx'sX.Qxy xd^hsx than natural hSstory
that he studied ;"§ and this makes itself felt in his relations to
all living things.
"I tread in the steps of the fox with such tip-toe of ex-
pectation, as if I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which
resides in the wood and expected soon to catch it in its lair."||
I^ife in nature signifies to him communion with this
spiritual presence :
"It is as if I have always met in those places some
grand, serene immortal infinitely encouraging yet invisible
companion and communed with him I love and
celebrate nature even in detail, because I love the scenery of
these interviews and translations. ' '**
* Autumn, p. 420.
t Summer, p. 105.
t Autumn, p. 367.
§ Century Magazine, April, 1882.
II Excursions, p. i44-
** Winter, p. 135.
62
Wordsworth, too, stood in just such near and serene com-
munion with the Spirit of All :
" And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.
And the round ocean, and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
A motion and a Spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore I am still
A lover of the meadows, and the woods and mountains. ''*
5. — THE SPIRIT OF NATURB 13 THE SPIRIT OF I<OVB.
This all-pervading Spirit is for Thoreau, one with the
Spirit of I/)ve, which permeates the Universe. I^ove is the
mainspring and significance of all the manifold life in Nature.
" I<ove is the burden of all nature's odes, the song of
birds is an epithalamium, a hymeneal. ... In the deep
water, in the high air, in woods and pastures and the bowels
of the earth, this is the condition of things. " f
Shelley gives expression to the same thought :
" Hearest thou not the sounds in the air which speak the love
Of all articulate beings, "t
The very elements seem to Thoreau but breathings of
love ;
" The light of the sun is but the shadow of love. Love
is in the wind, the tides, the waves, the sunshine. Its power
is incalculable ; it never ceases ; it never slacks. "§
So also Shelley :
"Where the air we breathe is love
Which in the winds and on the wave doth move.
Harmonizing the earth with what we feel above. "||
*Tintem Abbey.
t Spring, p. 35.
t Prometheus Unbound, Act II., sc. v.
§ Miscellanies, p. 68.
II Prometheus Unbound, Act II. sc. v.
63
Byron is impressed by this " power incalculable," as he
contemplates the beauty of the mountain-landscape and finds
love
A pervading life and light so shown
Not on these summits solely, nor alone
In the still cave and forest ; o'er the flower
His eye is sparkling and his breath hath blown,
His soft and summer breath whose tender power
Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hours."*
Love is Omnipresent, omnipotent, the Power and Spirit
of Nature itself— God. Thus Byron apostrophizes the Spirit:
" Vast and deep as night and heaven,
Nature or God or Love."f
6. — LOVB THB ATMOSPHERB OP LIFE IN NATURE.
He who recognizes the perfect Oneness of all things in
nature — that is, in God — rests on the bosom of love. This
love of God to man, bore for Wordsworth a personal character ;
it brought with it the idea of protection and watchful
providence:
" The being that is in the clouds and air
That is in the green leaves among the groves.
Maintains a deep and reverential care /or
The unoffending creatures whom he loves. "%
For Thoreau, on the other hand, it remained ever the all-
pervading spirit, an atmosphere in which he moved and
breathed ;
" I will not doubt for ever more
Nor falter from a steadfast faith ;
I will not doubt the love untold
Which not my worth nor want hath brought,
Which wooed me young, and woos me old
And to this evening hath me brought. "§
' ' The love wherewith we are loved is already declared and
*Childe Harold, III. p. loo.
t Laon and Cyntha, V.
% Hart-Leap Well, II. p. 125-
§ Poems of Nature, " Inspiration," p. 8.
64
afloat in the atmosphere, and our love is only the inlet to it.
It grows on every bush, and let not those complain of their
fates who will not pluck it."*
II.— I,ove and Friendship.
I — PI,AT0NIC LOVE.
The love of man to natural objects has, then, its source
in the perception of the Universe as an incorporation of
the Universal Spirit. One with the All, we are related to
every other manifestation of it. True love of man to man
exists upon the same ground. It is not so much sympathy of
the human with the human, as sympathy which holds in itself
the necessity of a struggle to secure the dominance of spirit,
and of a striving towards fuller beauty, truth and perfection of
life. This was already the highest truth of the Platonic con-
ception of love :
" And the true order of going. ... to the things of
love is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upward
for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only,
and from one going on to two and from two to all fair forms
and from fair forms to fair practices and from fair practices to
fair notions until from fair notions we arrive at the notion of
absolute beauty and at last know what the essence of beauty
is. . . . Remember how in that communion only . . .
he will be able to bring forth not images of beauty, but
realities, and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to
become the friend of God. "J
Thoreau's contemporary, Emerson, adopted with some
modifications, the platonic conception as is clear from the fol-
lowing passage in his Essay on " Love " ;
. . . "By conversation with that which is in itself excel-
lent, magnanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes to a warmer
love of these nobilities and a quicker apprehension of them.
Then he passes from loving them in one to loving them in all.
% Winter, p. 201.
t Symposium, p. 580-81.
65
and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through which
he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. . . .
And beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty
. . . the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love
and knowledge of Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created
souls."*
2. — LOVB- COMMUNITY OF IDEALS.
Thoreau held to the Emersonian cpnception, though he
never expressed it with such clear consequence, but only gave
expression to his passion for the ideal in disjointed and often
mystic utterances. lyove bears no touch of individualism or
of superficial attraction ; it can only have to do with the inner
aspiration :
" As soon as I see people loving what they see merely and
not their own high hopes that they form of others, I pity them and
do not want their Love. Did I ask thee to love me who hate
myself? No I Love that which I love and / will love thee that
loves it."t
Love, is, then community of ideals :
"I value those who love and praise my aspiration rather
than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me,
but look whither I am looking and farther, then my education
could not afibrd to dispense with your company."!
Thus love demands the highest and noblest of which the
lover is capable :
" Love is a severe critic ; hate can pardon more than love.
They who aspire to love worthily, subject themselves to an
ordeal more rigid than any other." §
a. Love Detects Faults.
He who loves, lives, as it were, under the searching light
of an eternal perfection, though but in ideal, which reveals
the slightest defect :
* Essay on Love : " Complete note," p. 48.
t'Spring, p. 133.
X Week, p. 369.
§ Letters, p. 240.
66
" The infusion of love from a great soul gives color to our
faults, which will discover them as lunar caustic detects
impurities in water."*
From its nature, then, love precludes the association of
those who love on any other than the plain of upward aspira-
tion :
"The luxury of affection — there's the danger I There
must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter
morning. . . . The love which takes us as it finds zts degrades
us." t
b. The Place of Hate in Love.
Thus in perfect love, hate must have a place — hatred and
absolute cutting off of all that does not tend to that per-
fection which is the final aim of Love ;
' ' Let us love by refusing not by accepting one another. Love
and lust are far asunder. We must love our friend so much
that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts
alone."!
" Let such pure hate still underprop our love,
That we may be
Each other's conscience.
And have our sympathy mainly from thence. "§
3. — LOVE UNIVERSAL NOT PERSONAL.
It will be seen that this love does not in any degree bear
a worldly character, but is a going out of soul to soul in the
hope and faith of aspiration ;
' ' Friendship as not so kind as is imagined ; it has not much
human blood in it. It requires immaculate and God- like qualities
full-grown, and exists at all only by condescension and anticipation
of the remotest future y^
Such love transcends the limits of the individual ; it con-
fines itself to wo person, but is the high passion for virtue and
perfection. Thoreau would thus address his friend :
* Spring, p. 56.
t Letters, p. 249 : "Love and Friendship."
X Letters, p. 248 : "Love and Friendship."
§ Week, p. 379.
II Week, p. 393.
67
" I love you not as something private and personal, which
IS your own, but as something universal and worthy of love,
which I have found. . You are purely good. . This is
what I would like — to be as intimate with you as our spirits are
intimate — respecting you as I respect my ideal." *
When this plane of ideal communion is reached even
association is not necessary. Thus he continues :
" Between us, if necessary, let there be no acquaintance.
I have discovered you ; how can you be concealed from me ?' 'f
a. Death Cannot Interrupt Love''s Intercourse.
Absence or death cannot interrupt such high intercourse.
Thoreau writes of the death of his friend Wheeler ;
" Distance forsooth from my weak grasp hath reft
The empty husk and clutched the useless tare.
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.
// / but love that virtue which he is,
Though it be scented in the morning air,
Still shall we be truest acquaintances,
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare."t
4. — ETHICAI, VAiUB OF LOVE.
Such love cannot fail to effect the redemption of our
lives from all sin and imperfection :
' ' Love tends to purify and sublime itself : it mortifies and
triumphs over the flesh, and the bond of its union is holiness. §
III. — I,ove and Marriage.
Thoreau conceives of the love which finds its expression
in marriage as existing upon the same ideal ground. In this
most perfect faith and oneness of aspiration the highest dream
of perfection should be attainable, and the redemption of the
human race effected :
" A true marriage will differ in no wise from an illumina-
*Week, p. 355.
tWeek, p, 3SS-
\ "Sympathy," Poems of nature, p. 24-5.
§ Winter, p. 232.
68
tion. . . . No wonder that out of such a union, not as
an end but as an accompaniment, comes the undying race of
man. . . . the offspring of noble men and women . as
superior to themselves as their aspirations are."*
IV. — I/Ove to Mankind.
I. NOT PHILANTHROPY.
Thoreau's interpretation of love to mankind bears the
same ideal character as his conception of friendship. There
must be no yielding to the weakness of humanity, no dispro-
portionate care for the material and earthly in life. lyove is
by no means synonymous with charity in the narrow sense of
philanthropy. The high value commonly placed upon this
phase of it is but an evidence of our meanness and egotism :
" Philanthropy is the only virtue which is sufficiently
appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated, and it
is our selfishness which overrates it.
' ' The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed
than its spiritual fathers and mothers." f
It is possible to give ourselves more greatly, not merely in
benevolence, which is, "as it were, but stem and leaves," but
the whole flower and fruit of our lives. Thoreau considered
the force of his life's example his peculiar gift to the Ameri-
can people. Even to those whose need demanded material
relief, its simplicity could bring the surest aid :
' ' We can render the best assistance by letting meji see how
rare a thing it is to need any assistance. I am not in haste to
help men any more than God is." %
2. UNIVERSAL IN CHARACTER.
Thoreau had for himself solved the problem of eradi-
cating the struggle for subsistence from his life, hence his
sympathy went out to his fellow-men not on account of their
weakness and need, but in spite of it — above and beyond it — in
* " Chastity and Sensuality," Letters, p. 250-251.
t Walden, p. 121-122.
X Winter, p. 213.
69
love which was but the effluence of a life making for that vir-
tue and perfection which alone could redeem the weakness and
forever satisfy the needs.
' ' The great and solitary soul will expend its love as a
cloud drops rain upon the fields over which it floats." '^ ''
" The good how we can trust,
Only the wise are just ;
. . . No partial sympathy \h&y itfA,
With private woe or private weal ;
But with the Universe joy or sigh,
Whose knowledge is their sympathy." f
v.— Oneness with the Spirit of I^ove is the Goal
of l/ove.
llik all^mbracing sympathy is akin Jto the devotion of
^&e Bud^ist saint, which passes the bounds of the limited^
and individual" into the illimitable and universal :
' ' He lets his mind pervade one quarter of the universe
with thoughts of love, and so the second and so the third and
so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above, below,
around and everywhere does he continue to pervade with heart of
Love , far-reaching and beyond measure.'^ J
This boundless love amounts to knowledge of Divinity,
sympathy with supreme intelligence. We become one with
the Universal, with Love itself.
"The object of love expands and grows before us to
eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all
that can love." %
* Spring, p. 139-
tWeek, p. 371-
t Tevigga Sutta, p. 191.
§ Essay on Love, Letters, p. 245.
CHAPTER IV.
Politics.
CHAPTER IV.
Politics.
I . — INTRODUCTORY.
In his still life of isolation and contemplation, Thoreau
would fain have concerned himself little about the political
happenings which had their place in that external world
which, with its busy, trivial interests, was to him but a puppet
show. In his earliest work he writes :
' ' To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the
true state of things, the political state can hardly be said to
have any existence whatever. It is unreal, incredible and in-
significant to him and for him to endeavor to extract the truth
from such lean material is like making sugar from linen rags,
when sugar-cane may be had." *
Emerson accounted for Thoreau's attitude towards politics
by citing Aristotle to the effect that : ' ' One who surpasses his
fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city.
Their law is not for him since he is a law to himself." f*
But when flagrant abuses of government were manifest,
such as the unjust war with Mexico — entered upon by the
American government from motives of greed — and the enact-
ment of Webster's Fugitive Slave Bill, Thoreau felt himself
compelled to recall to the minds of his countrymen the
meaning and purpose of government.
2. — CIVHIZATION CORRUPT.
Civilization seems to Thoreau to be but a doubtful good.
The manifold business of the world, the over-valuing of the
merely material and unimportant in life, diverts attention from
the true source and meaning of life itself :
* Week, p. i66.
t R. W. Emerson, Biographical Sketch, Miscellanies (Preface), p. 26.
74
" . . 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. ... 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. . . . The nation, itself, with all its so-
called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all ex-
ternal and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and over-
grown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up
by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense."*
a. Remedy: Return to Nature.
The remedy is simplicity and naturalness of life, f It is
necessary to cast off the clogging weights with which society
)& hung about, and to lead once more a natural life.
" In society you will not find health, but in nature. As
nature feeds my imagination she will also feed my body.
There is not necessarily any gross or ugly fact which may
not be eradicated from the life of a man." \
3. — THOREAU AND ROUSSEAU.
This criticism of civilized life and advocacy of return
to nature cannot fail to recall Rousseau, who proclaimed
the same message to society in the preceding century — a mes-
sage which had been echoed by the American constitution
itself. That Rousseau exercised any direct influence upon
Thoreau's political views is impossible to establish as Tho.
reau does not once mention him in his writings. There is,
however, almost no possibility that he did not know Rousseau
as he was well acquainted with French literature.
Their political ideas bear in many points a resemblance
to each other which may be interesting to note in connection
with the statement of Thoreau's political principles.
* Walden, p. 144-5.
t V. Letter to H. Blake (1848). Letters, p. 194.
t Letters, p. 199.
75
4- — BASIS OF GOVERNMENT THE INDIVIDUAI<.
Since civilization, though evil, is, nevertheless, estab-
lished, it is necessary to seek the best method of overcoming
its drawbacks. Thus Thoreau states in general terms his
reason for devoting any attention to the political situation
which he had formerly criticized as having no existence for him:
" No doubt they have designs on us for our benefit in
making the life of a civilized people an institution in which
the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed in
order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish
to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained
and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure the ad-
vantages without suffering any of the disadvantages. ' ' *
Rousseau maintained in opposition to the prevailing
political doctrines established by Grote and Hobbes, that the
government was made for man and not man for the govern-
ment. According to Rousseau, the state originated in the
voluntary association of free individuals for joint protection
and aidi in the struggle to maintain life in the face of all the
dangers which beset them singly, f The object of the social
contract must be then to find
" Une forme d'association qui d6fende et protege de toute
la force commune la nersonne et les biens de chaque associe,
et par laquelle chacinas'unissaut h, tous, n' obeisse pourtant qu'^
lui-mime et reste aussi libre qu' auparavant." %
The basis of the state is the individual. Thoreau ex-
presses it more directly and emphatically :
" Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to
regard the individual as the base of the empire. . . .
There will never be a really free and enlightened state,
until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher
and independent power, from which all power and authority are
rfrnzj^^, and treats him accordingly." §
* Walden, p. 52.
t Contrat Social, p. 29.
X Contrat Social, p. 19.
§ Miscellanies, p. 169.
76
5. — DEMOCRACY THE BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT.
The best form of Government is, therefore, that under
which the rights of the individual receive the most considera-
tion. Thoreau held the democratic to be the most desirable
constitution :
' ' The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy,
from a monarchy to a democracy is a progress towards a true
regard for the individual. " * ■ ■ \ ''
It would be natural to conclude that Rousseau's ideal
government would also be a democracy, but he considered it
an impossibility.
" II n'a jamais existe de veritable Democratic et il ne'x-
istera jamais. Un gouvernment si parfait ne convteni pas d. des
hommes. f
The main reason, according to Rousseau, why a true
democracy cannot exist is that a nation — especially a great
nation — cannot always remain in congress to decide questions
of government. Representation he held to be impossible.
The bond which holds a nation together is the will of all who
associate themselves to form it and will cannot be represented:
' ' La volontS ne se reprisente point ; les deputes du peuple
ne sont done ni peuvent toe ses rdpresentants, ils ne sont que
ses commissaires."!
When the so-called representative government can take
the liberty to act as it will without further consulting the
people, it is not democratic. Thus Rousseau criticized gov-
ernment by representation as it exists in England :
' ' Le peuple Anglais pense toe libre ; il se trompe fort ;
il ne Test que durant I'election des membres du Parlement ;
sit6t qu'ils sont ^lus, il est esclave, il n'est rien."§
a. Danger of Perversion to Serve Individual Ends.
Thoreau experienced in America the evil consequence of
* Miscellanies, p. 169.
t Contrat Social, p. 90.
t Contrat Social, p. 128.
§ Contrat Social, p. 128.
77
this absolute delegation of all executive power to the govern-
ment for a period of time, without means of holding the gov-
ernment in check during that time :
The government itself, which is only the mode which
the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable
to be abused and perverted before tlie people can act through it.
Witness the present Mexican war, the work oj comparatively few
individuals using the standing government as their tool, for in
the outset the people would never have consented to such a
measure."*
b. Principle of Majority-Government False.
Rousseau thought to get over this danger of the perver-
sion of government to serve individual ends by excluding from
his ideal state all exercise of the individual will. It is one of
the conditions of the framing of the social contract that the
individual will shall sink itself entirely in the common will
(volontd general). What this common will is, what consti-
tutes it and how it is to be arrived at, Rosseau does not explain.
He does not appear to have meant it to be in any sense
synonymous with the will of all or the majority (volont^ de
tous), yet he writes :
' ' Plus les deliberations sont important et grave, plus I'avis,
qui I'emporte doit approcher de runanimite."t
It seems difficult to eliminate the individual element or
to obtain more than government by majority, and the con-
stitution of Rousseau's compacted State is after all scarcely less
framed for perfect beings than the ' ' impossible ' ' democratic
constitution. In America the principle has always prevailed
that the majority carries the day. Thoreau does not consider
this to be based upon any moral law, but upon the purely
brutal " might is right" —
" Majority rules — not because most likely to be in the
right, but because they are physically the strongest. A gov-
ernment in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be
based on justice even as men understand it. "t. ? •\),
* Miscellanies, p. 132.
t Contrat Social, p. 146.
X Miscellanies, p. 133. -
78
Far from the majority being always in right, it is very
liable to be in the wrong :
' ' There is but little virtue in the action of masses of
men. ' '*
The standard of an aggregated or associated body of men,
such as a nation, is invariably much lower than the standard
of the individual citizen. The individual citizen hesitates to
rob or murder his neighbor, but the nation does not hesitate
to enrich itself at the expense of another nation, at whatever
cost of blood ; and the individual as patriot, will do zealously
at the command of the government, what he in his capacity of
private individual would consider criminal. Hence the neces-
sity for an individual not a national or a majority standard :
' ' Must the citizen even for a moment or in the least degree
resign his conscience to the legislator ? Why has every man
a conscience then ? I think we s/iould be meyi first, citizens
afterwards. The only obligation which I have a right to
assume is to do at anytime what I think right, "f
6. — OBJECT OF GOVERNMENT.
But what a man wotdd consider right for the government
depends upon his conception of the end or object of govern-
ment- Here Thoreau takes higher ground than Rousseau.
Rousseau's object in considering the establishment of an ideal
form of government was to preserve the liberty of the people
and their equality (fraternity was very desirable but not indis-
pensable t). and by this means to eradicate from the human
heart those base passions, hatred, envy, cowardice, h3'-pocrisy
which have crept in as accompaniments of civilization and are
foreign to a state of nature. §
a. Kant and Emerson : Morality the Object of Government.
America was, however, at the time Thoreau wrote, feel-
ing the influence of Kant's ideal of government — absolute
* Miscellanies, p. 140.
t Miscellanies, p. 134.
} See " Discours sur rinegalit^,*' p. 103, p. 120, p. no.
§ See " Discours sur I'inegalitd," p. 103, no, 120.
79
justice. * The high ideal of the moral character and purpose
of government as revealed by the German philosopher was
caught up by Carlyle in England, f and through him trans-
mitted to America, where Emerson was the first to proclaim
it, in frequent utterances such as the following :
' ' The end of all political struggle is to establish morality
as the basis of all legislation. 'Tis not free institutions, 'tis not
democracy that is the end, no, but only the means. Morality
is the object of government. ' ' J
Thoreau has no patience with the doctrine that the state
exists to safeguard the rights and further the comforts of its
members. This seems to him but the ideal of " pigs in a litter
which lie close together to keep each other warm. "§ Even
freedom is only of value as it conduces to moral strength :
" Do we call this the land of the free ? . . . What is
the value of political freedom but as a means to moral freedom, !" \\
7. — CHARACTER OF (THB BSST) GOVERNMENT.
a. The Best Men Its Members.
A government which will make for morality demands the
choice of the best men for its members. The opposite occurs
but too often in American politics and calls forth sarcastic
remarks from Thoreau :
" So some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crooked-
ness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane
and an upright man the best ruler." **
b. Representative of the Best Elements of the Nation.
If the end of government is morality, the first requisite
is that its component parts, the deputies of the people, shall
* V. Idee zu einer allg. Geschichte in weltbiirgerlicher Absicht Bd.
IV, 297-309.
t Essays IV, " Com Law Rhymes," etc.
X " Fortune of the Republic," Complete Works, p. 491.
§ Autumn, p. 144.
II Miscellanies, p. 138.
** Excursions, p. 226.
So
represent the highest moral aspirations of the people. Thus
Thoreau exclaims bitterly against the American government in
his protest against the Slave Bill of 1851 :
" We talk about a representative government, but what a
monster of a government is that where the noblest faculties
of mind and the whole heart are not represented. ' ' *
8. RELATION OF THE CITIZEN TO THE GOVERNMENT.
a. Duty of Obedience to tJie law of his own being only.
Since government is representative of the people, the
citizens of the state remain always responsible for it and may
not deposit their responsibility with their votes. Rousseau
acknowledged the right of the people to change the laws : f
Thoreau insisted upon the duty of each citizen to resist any
action of the government which menaces the moral perfection
of the state. This does not imply by any means an anti-gov-
ernmental or unpatriotic attitude, but rather unswerving
loyalty to the highest principles.
" It is not for a man to put himself in opposition to
society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he finds
himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will
never be in opposition to a just govertiment." %
The conscience of the individual to whom the divine
and eternal order of the Universe itself has been revealed,
judges by a higher standard than that known to other
men :
" They who know no purer source of truth, who have
traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by
the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with rev-
erence and humility ; but they who behold where it comes
trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once
more and continue their pilgrimage toward the fountain-
head." §
* Miscellanies, p. 223.
t Contrat Social, p. 71.
X See Page's "Thoreau," p. 196-7.
§ Miscellanies, p. 168.
8i
Again Thoreau expresses the same thought, without the
metaphor, thus :
"Serve God by obeying the eternal and only just Con-
stitution which He, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has
written in your being." *
The perception of the highest meaning and source of law,
frees a man from all bondage to the law ; he is not subject to
the same conditions as his neighbors, he resembles a soldier
who "marches to a music unheard by those about him."
' ' He who lives according to the highest law is in a sense
lawless." t "Live free child of the mist! The man who
takes the liberty to live is superior to all laws, by virtue of his
relation to the law-maker. ' ' J
That those who thus assert their superiority to the gov-
ernment should be regarded by it as its enemies, and not as its
best friends and redeemers, is natural enough :
" A very few (men), as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers
in the great sense and men, serve the state with their conscien-
ces; and so, necessarily, resist it for the most part ; and they
are commonly treated as enemies by it."§
This may not, however, deter the conscientious from
throwing himself with all the might of his conviction into
the balance for right.
b. Right of Resistance.
Rousseau was of the opinion that when the individual
is dissatisfied with the government's actions, his only
resource is to leave the state. || Thoreau holds it for his duty
to remain, under suffering if need be, and effect a reform of the
evil :
" Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the
only true place for a just man is in prison,"^ he affirmed in
* Miscellanies, p. i88.
t Spring, p. 17.
X Excursions, p. 295.
§ Miscellanies, p. 136.
II Contrat Social, p. 138.
\ Miscellanies, p. 149.
82
his impassioned speech in behalf of the emancipation of the
slaves. Nor were these empty words. He himself suffered
imprisonment for denjring allegiance to a state which had
violated the fundamental rights of humanity. He thus records
the experience :
" I was seized and put to gaol because I did not recognize
the authority of a state which buys and sells men, women and
children at the door of its senate-house. ' '*
True loyalty implies and necessitates opposition to such a
government :
" They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law
when the government breaks it. ' 'f
c. Individual Responsibility.
Legislators are not keepers of the consciences of the
citizens, nor depositaries of the responsibility resting upon
every man who has a conscience :
' ' Look not to legislators for your guidance ; nor to any
soulless or incorporated bodies ; but to inspirited or inspired
ones."t
This was the ground of his plea for Capt. John Brown,
imprisoned and hanged for championing the cause of the
slaves against the government :
" This man was an exception, for he did Tiot set up a
political graven image between him and his God."% " No man
in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively
for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man
and the equal of any and all governments.^'' ||
d. Power of One Man.
But the objection was raised on all sides : " It is useless
for one man to oppose the majority." Thoreau answers :
" Alas ! this is the crying sin of the age, this want of
faith in the prevalence of a man. Nothing can be effected but
by one man." **
* Walden, p. 268. § Miscellanies, p. aio.
t Miscellanies, p. 181. || Miscellanies, p. 217.
t Miscellanies, p. 244. ** Miscellanies, p. 6a.
83
A man who stands for the right has God on his side,
supreme might :
' ' Any man more right than his neighbors is a majority of
one already. It matters not how small the beginning may be,
what is once well done, is done for ever. ' ' *
9. — THOREAU's ATTITUDE TOWARDS SOCIALISM.
Thoreau was in no sense a socialist. In his criticism of
the Fourierite scheme, he expresses his views unmistakably.
The aims of the socialists are of too purely material a
character to appeal to him.f The object of national life and of
government is pure morality ; the only endeavor worthy of men
is not to better merely the temporal conditions of life, but the
eternal conditions of the inner life.
10. — IDEAL GOVERNMENT — ABOLITION OP GOVERNMENT.
The perfecting of the inner life, the development of the
individual to perfect virtue would do away with the necessity
of government. In Rousseau's ideal state, the giving up of the
individual will to the common will, rendered but very few laws
necessary. Thoreau dreamed that the merging of the individual
will in the Universal, the attainment by the individual of sym-
pathy with the infinite designs of the All, would abolish law
and government :
" I heartily endorse the motto: ' That government is best
which governs least.' . . . Carried out, it finally amounts
to this, which I also believe, ' That government is best which
governs not at all. ' " J
This is, however, an ideal for the future, and he adds in
consideration of the present :
' ' I ask not at once for no government but at once for a
better government. "§
* Miscellanies, p. 147-8.
fv. Miscellanies, p. 113.
X Miscellanies, p. 137.
§ Miscellanies, p. 133-
APPENDIX.
Chronological Table.
1817 .... Born, July 12.
1818 . . . Family moved to Chelmsford (till 1821).
1821-3 • ■ • Boston.
1823 . . . Concord. School. Academy.
1833 . . . Entered Harvard University.
1834 . . Began the practice of writing ' ' Themes " and " Forensics."
1835. . . . (a) Taught in Maine during vacation.
(6) First record of day's observations, April 20.
(c) Essay on' " Simplicity of Style."
1836 (a) Peddling trip with father to New York.
(*) Essay on " Effect of Story Telling."
1837 . . . (a) Essay on Milton's "II Penseroso" and "L* Allegro."
(6) Essay on " Commercial Life."
(c) Graduation from Harvard.
(d) Met Emerson.
(e) Began the Red Journal in October.
(/) Essay " On the Source of our Feeling for the Sublime."
(g) Essay " On Paley's Common Reasons."
1838 . . . (a) To Maine to obtain position.
{b) First lecture, on " Society," in April.
Second lecture, on " Sound and Silence."
(c) Refused to pay church tax.
1839 . . . . (a) Trip on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers.
{b) Private school in Concord.
(c) Trip to the White Mountains.
1840. . (a) " Aulus Perseus Flaccus, " first published paper in the
"Dial."
(*) Wrote for the " Dial " from July (till 1844).
(c) Meetings of the Concord Circle at Emerson's house.
(rf) Closed the Red Journal in June — 596 pages.
1841 . (a) Began a new journal — 396 pages.
{b) Wrote against the Brook Farm project.
184I . (a) Brother John died.
(b) Hawthorne returned to the "Old Manse " (till 1846).
(c) Alcott and Lane went to Brook Farm (till 1843).
{d) Published "A Natural History of Massachusetts "
in the "Dial."
88
i843 ■ • • (a) Published "A Winter Walk " in the " Dial."
(6) Met Horace Greeley in New York.
{c) Staten Island : tutor to William Emerson's sons.
(d) Published" Walk to Wachusett" in "Boston Miscellany."
(e) Published "Paradise to be Regained," and "The
Landlord," in New York Democratic Record.
(/) Translations from Pindar, published in the " Dial."
{g) Translated " Seven against Thebes " (till 1847 ; never
printed).
(A) Translation of " Prometheus Bound " (1843-4), published
in the "Dial."
Note. — After 1843 wrote little poetry and destroyed
much already written.
1844. . . . (a) " Dial " suspended publication.
(d) Translation of Pindar (continued).
(c) " Herald of Freedom " published in the " Dial."
184s . . . (a) Withdrew to Walden Woods.
(b) In gaol for refusing to pay State taxes.
(c) Essay on Wendell Phillips ; published in the "Liberator."
1846 ... (a) Essay on Civil Disobedience.
(6) First trip to the Maine forests.
1847 (a) At the Emersons ; Emerson in England.
(6) Wrote essay on " Friendship."
(c) Made collections for Agassiz.
((J?) Essay on Carlyle. Published in Graham's Msigazine.
Note. — From 1847 lectured occasionally but regu-
larly every year for twenty years.
1848 . .(a) Essay on "Maine Woods;" published in Union Magazine.
(5) Lectured in Salem Lyceum,
(c) Left Emerson's.
1849 ... (a) At home in Concord.
(6) Published the "Week."
(c) Trip to Cape Cod.
1850 . . . . (a) Journey into Canada.
{6) Second visit to Cape Cod.
1851 . . . (a) "Winter" records in Diary until i860 (according to
seasons).
1852 . . {a) Manuscript of " A Yankee in Canada," given to Greeley
for publication.
1853 . . (a) Second trip to Maine woods.
(b) Publication of " Canada" begun in Putnam's Magazine.
(withdrawn after the third chapter).
1854 . . (a) Met Thomas Cholmondeley.
(i) Publication of Walden.
(c) Slavery in Massachusetts, published in the "Liberator."
89
1855 . . (a) Received 44 vols. Hindoo literature from Cholmondeley.
(*) Trip to Truro.
1856 . . (a) Met Walt Whitman in Brooklyn (with Alcott).
(b) Visited Horace Greeley at Chappaqua (with Alice Carey
and Alcott).
(c) Refused offer of tutorship to Greeley's sons.
1857. • • . (a) Met John Brown. (Introduced by Sanborn.)
{6) Third trip to the Maine Woods.
1858 , . (a) "Chesucook," published in the Atlantic Monthly.
1859 • ••('') John Brown captured October 18.
(b) Speech, "Plea for Captain John Brown, " October 30
and Nov. i .
Speech, for memorial service, Dec. 2.
i860. . . .(a) Outbreak of war between North and South.
(A) Publication of "A Plea for Captain John Brown," in
" Echoes from Harper's Ferry."
Publication of "Last Days of John Brown," in the
"Liberator."
(Delivered as a lecture at North Elba, July 4.)
(c) Publication of "The Succession of Forest Trees," in the
New York weekly Tribune.
1861 . . . . (a) Trip to Minnesota (for his health.)
1862 . ■ . (a) Death.
(*) Emerson's Biographical Sketch in Atlantic Monthly
for August.
(c) Posthumous publication, " Autumnal Tints," in Atlantic
Monthly.
Bibliography,
(Being a list of the works cited in the foregoing Treatise.)
A. Thoreau Literature.
Thoreau's Complete Works, ii Vols. Riverside Edition, Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., New York.
A. LA Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers.
II. Walden, or Life in the Woods.
III. Cape Cod.
IV. The Maine Woods.
V. Summer
VI. Autumn.
VII. Winter
VIII. Early Spring in Massachusetts.
IX. Excursions.
X. Miscellanies : Prefatory Biographical Sketch by R. W.
Emerson.
XL Familiar Letters.
Poems of Nature, Edited by F. B. Sanborn and H . S. Salt.
London, John Lane, Bodley Head.
B. Books and Artici<es on Thoreau .
B. Burroughs John. H. D. Thoreau. Complete Works. River-
side Edition, Vol. VIII. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 1895.
Note. — For a complete list of the books and articles written on
Thoreau, see Bibliography appended to H. S. Sahs' "Henry David
Thoreau."
Emerson, R. W. Biographical Sketch, written for the Atlantic
Monthly. October, 1862. See Preface " Miscellanies."
Lowell, J. R. "My Study Windows." Article "Thoreau."
London, Walter Scott.
Page, H. A. " Thoreau, His Life and Aims." London, Chatto &
Windus.
Salt, H. S. "The Life of Henry David Thoreau." London,
Richard Bentley & Son. 1890.
Sanborn, F. B. " Henry D. Thoreau." London, Sampson, Low,
Searle & Rivington, 1882.
92
C. — Poetical Works.
I . — AMERICAN.
C. Longfellow. Poetical Works.
Whittier. Poetical Works.
2. ENGLISH.
Byron. Poetical Works. Fred Dame & Co., London, 1895.
Shakespeare. Macbeth.
Tempest.
Shelley. Poetical Works.
Wordsworth. Poetical Works.
D. — Miscellaneous I,iterature.
D. Emerson. Complete Prose Works. Ward, Locke & Co. London.
Rousseau, i. Discours sur I'in^galit^. Bibliotheque National,
Paris, 1875.
2. Contrat Social. Marc. Michel. Amsterdam, 1762.
E. — Philosophical Literature.
I . — MISCELLANEOUS .
E. Kant. Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in Weltbiirgerlicher
Absicht.
Schopenhauer. Sammtliche Werke (Vol. I. ) Philip Reclami
Leipzig.
Plato. 1. Phsedon.
2. Symposium. Macmillan & Co. 1892. Vol I. Jow-
ett's Translation.
Preger. Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter.
Leipzig, 1893.
2. — ORIENTAL.
a. Historical.
Creuzer-Guigniaut. Religions de 1' antiquity. Paris, 1814.
Deussen, Paul. Geschichte der Philosophic L and II.
Schroder. Indiens Literatur and Cultur. Leipzig, 1887.
b. Chinese
Confucius. Analecta. Translated by Marschmann. Serampore, 1809.
c. Persian.
Zenoa Vesta. Ubersetzung von Fried. Spiegel. Leipzig, 1871-8.
93
d. Hindoo.
Buddhist SuTT AS. Translated by T. Rhys Davids (ii vols.) Oxford^
1881.
Bhagvat Geeta. Translated by Sir C. Wilkins. New Edition, Bom-
bay, 1887.
Prefatory letter by Warren Hastings.
Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma. Translated by Wilkins. Bath, 1897.
Institutes of Menu. Translated by Sir Wm. Jones. London, 1825.
Sakontala. iJbersetzung v. Georg Foster. Heidelberg, 1820.
Upanishad's des Veda. Ubersetzt v. Dr. Paul Deussen. Leipzig,
Brockhaus, 1897.
Translated by Max Miiller. Vols L and XV. Sacred Books
of the East. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Rig- Veda. Ubersetzt v. F. Grassmann. Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1876.
Rig-Veda. Siebenzig Lieder des, Ubersetzt v. Geldner. Tiibingen,
1875.
Sama-Veda; Hymnen des, Ubersetzt v, H. Bensey. Leipzig, Brock-
haus, 1848.
Vishnu Purana. Translated by H. H. Wilson. Lpndon, 1840.
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