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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ