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

for these oversights successive generations have to pay. I think that

it would be _better than this_, for the students, or those who desire

to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation themselves. The

student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by

systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an

ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience

which alone can make leisure fruitful. “But,” says one, “you do not

mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of

their heads?” I do not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he

might think a good deal like that; I mean that they should not _play_

life, or _study_ it merely, while the community supports them at this

expensive game, but earnestly _live_ it from beginning to end. How

could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment

of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as

mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and

sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is

merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any

thing is professed and practised but the art of life;—to survey the

world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural

eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or

mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites

to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond

he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm

all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar.

Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,—the boy who

had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted,

reading as much as would be necessary for this,—or the boy who had

attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while,

and had received a Rodgers’ penknife from his father? Which would be

most likely to cut his fingers?... To my astonishment I was informed on

leaving college that I had studied navigation!—why, if I had taken one

turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the _poor_

student studies and is taught only _political_ economy, while that

economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even

sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he

is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt

irretrievably.

As with our colleges, so with a hundred “modern improvements”; there is

an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The

devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early

share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are

wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious

things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which

it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston

or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph

from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing

important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man

who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but

when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his

hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and

not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and

bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the

first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear

will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all,

the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most

important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round

eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried

a peck of corn to mill.

One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to

travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the

country.” But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest

traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who

will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety

cents. That is almost a day’s wages. I remember when wages were sixty

cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot,

and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week

together. You will in the mean while have earned your fare, and arrive

there some time to-morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky

enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will

be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad

reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and

as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should

have to cut your acquaintance altogether.

Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with

regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To

make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent

to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct

notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades

long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and

for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor

shouts “All aboard!” when the smoke is blown away and the vapor

condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are

run over,—and it will be called, and will be, “A melancholy accident.”

No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that

is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their

elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best

part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable

liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the

Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he

might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have

gone up garret at once. “What!” exclaim a million Irishmen starting up

from all the shanties in the land, “is not this railroad which we have

built a good thing?” Yes, I answer, _comparatively_ good, that is, you

might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that

you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.

Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by

some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses,

I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it

chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas,

and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to

pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight

dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was “good for

nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on.” I put no manure whatever

on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and not

expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all

once. I got out several cords of stumps in ploughing, which supplied me

with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mould,

easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of