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

they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring

compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his

shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his

commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long

run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this

tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared

with the savage’s. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred

dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of

the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and

paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper

pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how

happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a

_poor_ civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a

savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the

condition of man,—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve

their advantages,—it must be shown that it has produced better

dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is

the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged

for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this

neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this

sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if

he is not encumbered with a family;—estimating the pecuniary value of

every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others

receive less;—so that he must have spent more than half his life

commonly before _his_ wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a

rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage

have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?

It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding

this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far

as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral

expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.

Nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the

civilized man and the savage; and, 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 all the advantage

without suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that

the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour

grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?

“As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to

use this proverb in Israel.”

“Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul

of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”

When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least

as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they

have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become

the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with

encumbrances, or else bought with hired money,—and we may regard one

third of that toil as the cost of their houses,—but commonly they have

not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh

the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great

encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well

acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am

surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town

who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of

these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man

who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that

every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in

Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large

majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally

true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them

says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine

pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements,

because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that

breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and

suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in

saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than

they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards

from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but

the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex

Cattle Show goes off here with _éclat_ annually, as if all the joints

of the agricultural machine were suent.

The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a

formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his

shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he

has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence,

and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the

reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect

to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As

Chapman sings,—

“The false society of men—

—for earthly greatness

All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.”

And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the

poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand

it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which

Minerva made, that she “had not made it movable, by which means a bad

neighborhood might be avoided;” and it may still be urged, for our

houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather

than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own

scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who,

for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the

outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to

accomplish it, and only death will set them free.

Granted that the _majority_ are able at last either to own or hire the

modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been

improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to

inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create

noblemen and kings. And _if the civilized man’s pursuits are no

worthier than the savage’s, if he is employed the greater part of his

life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he

have a better dwelling than the former?_

But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found, that just

in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above

the savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one

class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side

is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and “silent poor.” The

myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed

on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason