Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Chapter 11

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul.

(00:22):
Get decorations from the home depots, cvs and more through
instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders
service fees in terms supply.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
Gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(00:52):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Walden by Henry David Thorough, Chapter eleven, Higher Laws. As
I came home through the woods with my string of
fish trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I
caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path,

(01:22):
and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was
strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw. Not that
I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he
represented once or twice. However, while I lived at the Pond,
I found myself ranging the woods like a half starved

(01:45):
hound with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison
which I might devour. And no morsel could have been
too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar.
I found in myself, and still find an instinct toward

(02:07):
a higher or as it is named spiritual life, as
do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and
savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild,
not less than the good, the wildness and adventure that

(02:29):
are in fishing still recommend it to me. I like
sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my
day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed
to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my
close acquaintance with nature. They early introduce us to and

(02:53):
detain us in scenery with which otherwise at that age
we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, wood choppers, and
others spending their lives in the fields and woods in
a peculiar sense a part of nature themselves, are often
in a more favorable mood for observing her in the

(03:17):
intervals of their pursuits than the philosophers or poets, even
who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to
exhibit herself to them. The traveler on the prairie is
naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri
and Columbia a trapper, and at the falls of Saint

(03:38):
Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveler, learns
things at second hand and by the halves, and is
poor authority. We are most interested when science reports that
those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone
is a true humanity, or a case of human experience.

(04:03):
They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements
because he has not so many public holidays, and men
and boys do not play so many games as they
do in England. For here the more primitive but solitary
amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like have not yet
given place to the former. Almost every New England boy

(04:26):
among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling piece between the ages
of ten and fourteen, and his hunting and fishing grounds
were not limited like the preserves of an English nobleman,
but were more boundless even than those of a savage.
No wonder then that he did not oftener stay to

(04:47):
play on the common. But already a change is taking place,
owing not to an increased humanity, but to an increased
scarcity of game. For perhaps the hunter is the greatest
friend of the animals hunted, not accepting the humane society. Moreover,

(05:09):
when at the pond I wished sometimes to add fish
to my fare for variety, I have actually fished for
the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did.
Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was all
factitious and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I

(05:31):
speak of fishing only now, for I had long felt
differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I went
to the woods. Not that I am less humane than others,
but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected.
I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This

(05:52):
was habit. As for fowling. During the last years that
I carried a gun, my excuse was that I was
studying ornithology, and so only new or rare birds. But
I confess that I am now inclined to think that
there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this.

(06:13):
It requires so much closer attention to the habits of
the birds that if for that reason only, I have
been willing to omit the gun. Yet, notwithstanding the objection
on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt
if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these And

(06:35):
when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about
their boys whether they should let them hunt, I have
answered yes, remembering that it was one of the best
parts of my education. Make them hunters, though sportsmen only
at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that

(06:58):
they shall not find game large enough for them in
this or any vegetable wilderness. Hunters as well as fishers
of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of
Chaucer's nun, who yave not of the text a pulled hen,

(07:19):
that saith that hunters ben not holy men. There is
a period in the history of the individual as of
the race, when the hunters are the best men, as
the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy
who has never fired a gun. He is no more humane,

(07:41):
while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my
answer with respect to those youths who were bent on
this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane,
being past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder
any creature which holds its life by the same tenure

(08:03):
that he does. The hair, in its extremity, cries like
a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do
not always make the usual philanthropic distinctions. Such is oftenest
the young man's introduction to the forest and the most

(08:25):
original part of himself. He goes thither at first as
a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has
the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes
his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist, it may be,

(08:47):
and leaves the gun and fish pole behind. The mass
of men are still and always young in this respect.
In some countries, a hunting parson is no uncommon sight.
Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but

(09:08):
as far from being the good shepherd, I have been
surprised to consider that the only obvious employment except wood chopping,
ice cutting, or the like business whichever, to my knowledge,
detained at Wolden Pond for a whole half day any
of my fellow citizens, whether fathers or children, of the town,

(09:30):
with just one exception, was fishing. Commonly, they did not
think that they were lucky or well paid for their
time unless they got a long string of fish. Though
they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while,
they might go there a thousand times before the sediment

(09:52):
of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their
purpose pure. But no doubt such a clarifying process as
would be going on all the while the governor and
his council faintly remember the pond, for they went a
fishing there when they were boys. But now they are
too old and dignified to go a fishing, and so

(10:15):
they know it no more forever. Yet even they expect
to go to heaven at last. If the legislature regards it,
it is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to
be used there. But they know nothing about the hook
of hooks with which to angle for the pond itself,

(10:38):
impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized communities,
the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.
I have found repeatedly of late years that I cannot
fish without falling a little in self respect. I have

(11:00):
tried it again and again. I have skill at it, and,
like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it
which revives from time to time. But always when I
have done, I feel that it would have been better
if I had not fished. I think that I do
not mistake It is a faint intimation, yet so are

(11:23):
the first streaks of mourning. There is unquestionably this instinct
in me, which belongs to the lower orders of creation.
Yet with every year I am less a fisherman, though
without more humanity or even wisdom. At present, I am

(11:44):
no fisherman at all, but I see that if I
were to live in a wilderness, I should again be
tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. Beside,
there is something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh,

(12:06):
and I begin to see where housework commences, and whence
the endeavor which costs so much to wear a tidy
and respectable appearance each day, to keep the house sweet
and free from all ill odors and sights. Having been
my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as
the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I

(12:29):
can speak from an unusually complete experience. The practical objection
to animal food in my case was its uncleanness. And besides,
when I had caught and cleaned, and cooked and eaten
my fish, they seemed not to have fed me. Essentially,
it was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it

(12:53):
came to a little bread or a few potatoes would
have done as well with less trouble and filth. Like
many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years
used animal food, or tea or coffee, et cetera. Not
so much because of any ill effects which I had

(13:14):
traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to
my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the
effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more
beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects,

(13:38):
and though I never did so, I went far enough
to please my imagination. I believe that every man who
has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic
faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to

(13:58):
abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.
It is a significant fact stated by entomologists. I find
it in Kirby and Spence that some insects in their
perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding, make no

(14:20):
use of them, and they lay it down as a
general rule that almost all insects in this state eat
much less than that of larvae. The voracious caterpillar when
transformed into a butterfly, and the gluttonous maggot when become

(14:43):
a fly, content themselves with a drop or two of
honey or some other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the
wings of the butterfly still represents the larvae. This is
the tidbit which tempts his insectivorous fate. The gross feeder

(15:05):
is a man in the larva state. And there are
whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination,
whose vast abdomens betray them. It is hard to provide
and cook so simple and clean a diet as will

(15:25):
not offend the imagination. But this, I think, is to
be fed. When we feed the body, they should both
sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may
be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us
ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But

(15:50):
put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will
poison you. It is not worth the while to live
by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught
preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether
of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared

(16:12):
for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise, we
are not civilized. And if gentlemen and ladies are not
true men and women.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
gramma secret pecan pie, recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the yams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(16:47):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes. Plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(17:18):
Get decorations from the home depots, CBS and more through
instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders.
Service fees in terms ofpply.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
This certainly suggests what change is to be made. It
may be vain to ask why the imagination will not
be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that
it is not. Is it not a reproach that man
is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live

(17:50):
in a great measure by preying on other animals. But
this is a miserable way, as anyone who will go
to snaring rabbits or slaughtering lambs may learn, and he
will be regarded as a benefactor of his race. Who
shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent

(18:11):
and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I
have no doubt that it is a part of the
destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to
leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes

(18:31):
have left off eating each other when they came in
contact with the more civilized. If one listens to the
faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true,
he sees not to what extremes or even insanity it
may lead him. And yet that way, as he grows

(18:55):
more resolute and faithful. His road lies the faintest assured objection,
which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over
the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed
his genius till it misled him, though the result were

(19:21):
bodily weakness. Yet perhaps no one can say that the
consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life
in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the
night are such that you greet them with joy, and

(19:41):
life emits a fragrance, like flowers and sweet scented herbs,
is more elastic, more starry, more immortal. That is your success.
All nature is your congratulation, and and you have cause
momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are

(20:07):
farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt. If
they exist, we soon forget them. They are the highest reality.
Perhaps the facts, most astounding and most real are never

(20:29):
communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my
daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the
tints of morning or evening. It is a little star
dust caught a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

(20:57):
Yet for my part, I was never unusually squeamish. I
could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish,
if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk
water so long. For the same reason that I prefer
the natural sky to an opium eater's heaven, I would

(21:19):
fain keep sober always, And there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.
I believe that water is the only drink for a
wise man. Wine is not so noble a liquor. And
think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a

(21:40):
cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a
dish of tea. Ah, how low I fall when I
am tempted by them. Even music may be intoxicating. Such
apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy

(22:06):
England and America. Of all ebriosity. Who does not prefer
to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I have
found it to be the most serious objection to coarse
labors long continued that they compelled me to eat and

(22:26):
drink coarsely also, But to tell the truth, I find
myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects, I
carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing, not
because I am wiser than I was, but I am

(22:48):
obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted,
with years I have grown more coarse and in different
Perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth, As most
believe of poetry, my practice is nowhere, my opinion is here. Nevertheless,

(23:18):
I am far from regarding myself as one of those
privileged ones to whom the ved refers when it says
that he who has true faith in the omnipresent supreme
Being may eat all that exists. That is, is not
bound to inquire what is his food or who prepares it,

(23:41):
And even in their case it is to be observed
as a Hindu commentator has remarked that the Vedant limits
this privilege to the time of distress. Who has not
sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in which
appetite had no share. I have been thrilled to think

(24:06):
that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross
sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the
palate that some berries which I had eaten on a
hill side, had fed my genius, the soul not being

(24:30):
mistress of herself, says cheng Tsu. One looks and one
does not see. One listens and one does not hear,
One eats and one does not know the savor of food.
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can

(24:53):
never be a glutton. He who does not cannot be. Otherwise,
a puritan may go to his brown bread crust with
as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle.
Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man,

(25:17):
but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is
neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to
the sensual savors. When that which is eaten is not
a veand to sustain our animal or inspire our spiritual life,

(25:42):
but food for the worms that possess us. If the
hunter has a taste for mud turtles, muskrats, and other
such savage tidbits, the fine lady indulges a taste for
jelly made of a calve's foot, or for sardines from
over the sea, and they are even he goes to

(26:07):
the mill pond, she to her preserve pot. The wonder
is how they how you and I can live this slimy,
beastly life, eating and drinking. Our whole life is startlingly moral.

(26:29):
There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails. In the
music of the harp, which trembles round the world, it
is the insisting on this which thrills us. The harp

(26:50):
is the traveling patterer for the universe's insurance company, recommending
its laws, and our little goodness is all the assessment
that we pay. Though the youth at last grows indifferent,
the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are

(27:13):
forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to
every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there,
and he is unfortunate who does not hear it. We
cannot touch a string or move a stop, but the

(27:35):
charming moral transfixes us many. An irksome noise go a
long way off is heard as music, a proud, sweet
satire on the meanness of our lives. We are conscious
of an animal in us which awakens in proportion as

(27:59):
our higher nature. Slumbers. It is reptile and sensual and
perhaps cannot be wholly expelled. Like the worms, which, even
in life and health, occupy our bodies, possibly we may
withdraw from it.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(28:42):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes. Plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe or Toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(29:13):
Get decorations from the home depot, CVS and more through
instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders,
service fees in terms ofply, but.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
Never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy
a certain health of its own, that we may be
well yet not pure. The other day I picked up
the lower jaw of a hog with white and sound
teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal

(29:44):
health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded
by other means than temperance and purity. That in which
men differ from brute beasts, says Mensius, is a thing
very inconsiderable. The common herd lose it very soon. Superior

(30:08):
men preserve it carefully. Who knows what sort of life
would result if we had attained to purity. If I
knew so wise a man as could teach me purity,
I would go to seek him forthwith a command over

(30:29):
our passions and over the external senses of the body.
And good acts are declared by the ved to be
indispensable in the mind's approximation to God. Yet the spirit
can for the time pervade and control every member and

(30:51):
function of the body, and transmute what in form is
the grossest sensuality into purity and of the generative energy, which,
when we are loose dissipates and makes us unclean, when
we are continent, invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the

(31:17):
flowering of man, and what are called genius, heroism, holiness,
and the like are but various fruits which succeed it.
Man flows at once to God. When the channel of
purity is open by turns our purity inspires and our

(31:42):
impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured
that the animal is dying out in him day by day,
and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but
has cause for shame on account of the inferior and

(32:03):
brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that
we are such gods or demigods only as fawns and
satires the Divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite,
and that to some extent our very life is our disgrace.

(32:27):
How happy is he who hath due place assign'd to
his beasts and disaphorested his mind can use this horse, goat, wolf,
and every beast, and is not ass himself to all
the rest else man. Not only is the herd of swine,

(32:52):
those devils too, which did incline them to the headlong rage,
and made them worse. All sensuality is one, though it
takes many forms. All purity is one. It is the
same whether a man eat or drink, or cohabit or

(33:16):
sleep sensually. They are but one appetite. And we only
need to see a person do any one of these
things to know how great a sensualist he is. The
impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the
reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he

(33:39):
shows himself at another. How shall a man know if
he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have
heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.
We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard.

(34:01):
From exertion come wisdom and purity. From sloth and ignorance
and sensuality. In the student, sensuality is a sluggish habit
of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one,

(34:21):
one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on, prostrate,
who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness
and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning.
A stable nature is hard to be overcome, but she

(34:45):
must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian?
If you are not purer than the heathen, if you
deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious.
I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish, whose

(35:05):
precepts fill the reader with shame and provoke him to
new endeavors. Though it be to the performance of rites
merely I hesitate to say these things. But it is
not because of the subject. I care not how obscene
my words are, but because I cannot speak of them

(35:27):
without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of
one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We
are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the
necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries,

(35:51):
every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law.
Nothing was too trivial for the Hindu lawgiver, however offensive
it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void,
excrement and urine, and a like, elevating what is mean,

(36:16):
and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his
body to the God. He worships after a style purely
his own, Nor can he get off by hammering marble. Instead,
we are all sculptors and painters, and our material is

(36:38):
our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins
at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality,
to imbrute them. John Farmer sat at his door one
September evening after a hard day's work, his mind still

(37:01):
running on his labor. More or less. Having bathed, he
sat down to recreate his intellectual man. It was a
rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending
a frost. He had not attended to the train of
his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on

(37:21):
a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still
he thought of his work, but The burden of his
thought was that, though this kept running in his head,
and he found himself planning and contriving it against his will,
yet it concerned him very little. It was no more

(37:44):
than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off.
But the notes of the flute came home to his
ears out of a different sphere from that which he
worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered

(38:05):
in him. They gently did away with the street and
the village, and the state in which he lived. A
voice said to him, why do you stay here and
live this mean, moiling life when a glorious existence is

(38:28):
possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields
than these. But how to come out of this condition
and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of
was to practice some new austerity, to let his mind

(38:50):
descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself
with ever increasing respect. End of chapter eleven.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart, Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths, but you have twelve windows.
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(39:32):
Get decorations from the home depots, cvs and more through
instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders,
service fees.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
In terms ofpply, the holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for

(39:59):
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply