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

Henry David Thoreau

WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel Henry David Thoreau WALDEN AND ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

Economy

“The evil that men do lives after them.”

COMPLEMENTAL VERSES

Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Reading

Sounds

Solitude

Visitors

The Bean-Field

The Village

The Ponds

Baker Farm

Higher Laws

Brute Neighbors

Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors

Winter Animals

The Pond in Winter

Walden pond map

Spring

Conclusion

ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Impressum neobooks

WALDEN

and

ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

by Henry David Thoreau

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived

alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had

built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts,

and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two

years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life

again.

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if

very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning

my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not

appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances,

very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did

not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been

curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable

purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I

maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no

particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of

these questions in this book. In most books, the _I_, or first person,

is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism,

is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after

all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so

much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my

experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or

last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what

he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send

to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it

must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more

particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers,

they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will

stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to

him whom it fits.

I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and

Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in

New England; something about your condition, especially your outward

condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is,

whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot

be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord;

and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have

appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What

I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in

the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward,

over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders “until it

becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while

from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the

stomach;” or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or

measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast

empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars,—even these

forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing

than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules

were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have

undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could

never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any

labor. They have no friend Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of

the hydra’s head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited

farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more

easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the

open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with

clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them

serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is

condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging

their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man’s

life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they

can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and

smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing

before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never

cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and

wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary

inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a

few cubic feet of flesh.

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon

plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called

necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up

treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through

and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the

end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created

men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:—

Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,

Et documenta damus quâ simus origine nati.

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,—

“From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,

Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.”

So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the

stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere

ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and

superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be

plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and

tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure

for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the

manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the

market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he

remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often

to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously

sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him.