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

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СКАЧАТЬ on vegetable food solely, for

      it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes

      a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of

      bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with

      vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite

      of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some

      circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries

      merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.

      The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by

      their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to

      have been cared for. According to Evelyn, “the wise Solomon prescribed

      ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors have

      decided how often you may go into your neighbor’s land to gather the

      acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to

      that neighbor.” Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut

      our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter

      nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have

      exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But

      man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what

      he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have

      been thy failures hitherto, “be not afflicted, my child, for who shall

      assign to thee what thou hast left undone?”

      We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance,

      that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of

      earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some

      mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are

      the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different

      beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the

      same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as

      our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to

      another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through

      each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the

      world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry,

      Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling

      and informing as this would be.

      The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to

      be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good

      behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say

      the wisest thing you can, old man,—you who have lived seventy years,

      not without honor of a kind,—I hear an irresistible voice which invites

      me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of

      another like stranded vessels.

      I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may

      waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

      Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The

      incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of

      disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do;

      and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick?

      How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid

      it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our

      prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and

      sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying

      the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are

      as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is

      a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place

      every instant. Confucius said, “To know that we know what we know, and

      that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” When

      one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his

      understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives

      on that basis.

      Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which

      I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be

      troubled, or, at least, careful. It would be some advantage to live a

      primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward

      civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life

      and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over

      the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most

      commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the

      grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little

      influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons,

      probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.

      By the words, _necessary of life_, I mean whatever, of all that man

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