September 8, 2025 • 36 mins
16 - Chapter 11. Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
Walden, series of 18 essays by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. An important contribution to New England Transcendentalism, the book was a record of Thoreau’s experiment in simple living on the northern shore of Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts (1845–47). Walden is viewed not only as a philosophical treatise on labour, leisure, self-reliance, and individualism but also as an influential piece of nature writing. It is considered Thoreau’s masterwork.
Walden, series of 18 essays by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. An important contribution to New England Transcendentalism, the book was a record of Thoreau’s experiment in simple living on the northern shore of Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts (1845–47). Walden is viewed not only as a philosophical treatise on labour, leisure, self-reliance, and individualism but also as an influential piece of nature writing. It is considered Thoreau’s masterwork.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information, please visit librivoxt o
r G. This reading by Gordon mackenzie Walden by Henry
David Thorough, Chapter eleven Higher Laws. As I came home
(00:28):
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, and felt a strange
thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize
and devour him raw. Not that I was hungry then,
(00:49):
except for that wildness which he represented once or twice. However,
while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging
the wood like a half starved hound with a strange abandonment,
seeking some kind of venison which I might devour. And
(01:09):
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 a hire or as
it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and
(01:30):
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 are in fishing
still recommend it to me. I like sometimes to take
(01:50):
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 detain us in scenery
(02:11):
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
(02:32):
in the 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
(02:53):
Saint Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveler,
learns things at second hand and 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 account of human experience. They
(03:19):
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 among
(03:42):
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 play
(04:03):
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,
(04:25):
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
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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 pursue that my feelings were much affected.
I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This
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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.
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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
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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
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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,
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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,
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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,
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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 unity of seeing the pond all
the while, they might go there a thousand times before
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the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and
leave their purpose pure. But no doubt such a clarifying
process 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
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so 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
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pond itself impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even
in civilized munities, 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.
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I have 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,
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yet so are 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,
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I am 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,
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.
It is a significant fact stated by entomologists. I find
it in Kirby inspss that some insects in their perfect state,
though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them,
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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 a fly, content themselves
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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 is a man in
the larva state. And there are whole nations in that condition,
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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 not offend the imagination. But this,
I think, is to be fed. When we feed the body,
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they should both sit down at the same table. Yet
perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need
not make us a sha aimed of our appetites, nor
interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into
your dish, and it will poison you. It is not
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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 for them by others. Yet
till this is otherwise we are not civilized. And if
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gentlemen and ladies are not true men and women, 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
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a carnivor animal? True, he can and does live in
a great measure by preying on other animals. But this
is a miserable way, as any one who will go
to snaring rabbits or slaughtering lambs may learn, and he
will be regarded as a benefactor of his race. Who
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shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent
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
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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
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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
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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
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life omits 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 you have cause momentarily
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to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest
from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt. If they exist,
we soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps
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the facts, most astounding and most real, are never communicated
by man to man. The true harvest of my daily
life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints
of mourning or evening. It is a little star dust
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caught a segment of the rainbow, which I have clutched
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
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water so long. For the same reason that I prefer
the natural sky to an opium eater's heaven, I would
fain keep sober always. And there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.
I believe that water is the only drink for a
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wise man. Wine is not so noble a liquor. And
think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a
cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a
dish of tea. Ah, how low I fall when I
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am tempted by them. Even music may be intoxicating. Such
apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy
England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer
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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 drink
coarsely also, But to tell the truth, I find myself
at present somewhat less particular in these respects. I carry
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less religion to the table, ask no blessing, not because
I am wiser than I was, but I am obliged
to confess because, however much it is to be regretted,
with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps
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these questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe
of poetry. My practice is nowhere, my opinion is here. Nevertheless,
I am far from regarding myself as one of those
privileged ones to whom the ved refers when it says
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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?
And even in their case it is to be observed,
as a Hindu commentator has marked that the Vedant limits
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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
that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross
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sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate,
that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside
had fed my genius. The soul, not being mistress of herself,
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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 never be
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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,
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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,
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile in 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, but never change its nature. I fear
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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 health and vigor distinct from the spiritual.
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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 men preserve it carefully. Who knows what
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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 our passions and over the external senses of
the body. And good acts are declared by the ved
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to be indispensable in the minds approximation to God. Yet
the spirit can for the time pervade and control every
member and function of the body, and transmute what in
form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion, the
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generative energy, which, when we are loose dissipates and makes
us unclean, when we are continent, invigorates and inspires us.
Chastity is the flowering of man, and what are called genius, heroism, holiness,
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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
impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured
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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
brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that
we are such gods or demigods only as fawns and satires,
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the Divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and
that to some extent our very life is our disgrace.
How happy is he who hath due place assigned to
his beasts and disaphorested his mind, can use this horse, goat, wolf,
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and every beast, and is not ass himself to all
the rest else man. Not only is the herd of swine,
those devils too, which did incline them to the headlong
rage and made them worse. All sensuality is one, though
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it takes many forms. All purity is one. It is
the same. Whether a man eat or drink, or cohabit
or 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.
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The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When
the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow,
he shows himself at another. How shall a man know
if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We
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have heard of this virtue, but we know not what
it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we
have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity. From sloth
and ignorance and sensuality. In the student, sensuality is a
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sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a
slothful one, 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,
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though it be at cleaning. A stable nature is hard
to be overcome, but she 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
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of religion esteemed heathenish, whose 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
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I cannot speak of them 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.
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In earlier ages, in some countries, 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
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excrement and urine, and the like elevating what is mean,
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,
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we are all sculptors and painters, and our material is
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
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September evening after a hard day's work, his mind still
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
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his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on
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,
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yet it concerned him very little. It was no more
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
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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
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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
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descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself
with ever increasing respect. End of Chapter eleven.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information, please visit librivoxt o
r G. This reading by Gordon mackenzie Walden by Henry
David Thorough, Chapter eleven Higher Laws. As I came home
(00:28):
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, and felt a strange
thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize
and devour him raw. Not that I was hungry then,
(00:49):
except for that wildness which he represented once or twice. However,
while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging
the wood like a half starved hound with a strange abandonment,
seeking some kind of venison which I might devour. And
(01:09):
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 a hire or as
it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and
(01:30):
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 are in fishing
still recommend it to me. I like sometimes to take
(01:50):
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 detain us in scenery
(02:11):
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
(02:32):
in the 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
(02:53):
Saint Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveler,
learns things at second hand and 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 account of human experience. They
(03:19):
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 among
(03:42):
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 play
(04:03):
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,
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
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 pursue that my feelings were much affected.
I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This
(05:07):
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.
(05:28):
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
(05:50):
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
(06:14):
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,
(06:35):
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,
(06:56):
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
(07:19):
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
(07:41):
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,
(08:03):
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
(08:23):
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,
(08:46):
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 unity of seeing the pond all
the while, they might go there a thousand times before
(09:07):
the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and
leave their purpose pure. But no doubt such a clarifying
process 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
(09:31):
so 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
(09:51):
pond itself impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even
in civilized munities, 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.
(10:15):
I have 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,
(10:38):
yet so are 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,
(10:59):
I am 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,
(11:21):
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
(11:44):
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
(12:08):
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
(12:29):
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,
(12:54):
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
(13:14):
abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.
It is a significant fact stated by entomologists. I find
it in Kirby inspss that some insects in their perfect state,
though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them,
(13:38):
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 a fly, content themselves
(14:02):
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 is a man in
the larva state. And there are whole nations in that condition,
(14:28):
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 not offend the imagination. But this,
I think, is to be fed. When we feed the body,
(14:48):
they should both sit down at the same table. Yet
perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need
not make us a sha aimed of our appetites, nor
interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into
your dish, and it will poison you. It is not
(15:12):
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 for them by others. Yet
till this is otherwise we are not civilized. And if
(15:35):
gentlemen and ladies are not true men and women, 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
(15:59):
a carnivor animal? True, he can and does live in
a great measure by preying on other animals. But this
is a miserable way, as any one who will go
to snaring rabbits or slaughtering lambs may learn, and he
will be regarded as a benefactor of his race. Who
(16:21):
shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent
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
(16:45):
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
(17:09):
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
(17:35):
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
(17:55):
life omits 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 you have cause momentarily
(18:16):
to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest
from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt. If they exist,
we soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps
(18:37):
the facts, most astounding and most real, are never communicated
by man to man. The true harvest of my daily
life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints
of mourning or evening. It is a little star dust
(19:02):
caught a segment of the rainbow, which I have clutched
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
(19:23):
water so long. For the same reason that I prefer
the natural sky to an opium eater's heaven, I would
fain keep sober always. And there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.
I believe that water is the only drink for a
(19:45):
wise man. Wine is not so noble a liquor. And
think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a
cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a
dish of tea. Ah, how low I fall when I
(20:06):
am tempted by them. Even music may be intoxicating. Such
apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy
England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer
(20:28):
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 drink
coarsely also, But to tell the truth, I find myself
at present somewhat less particular in these respects. I carry
(20:53):
less religion to the table, ask no blessing, not because
I am wiser than I was, but I am obliged
to confess because, however much it is to be regretted,
with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps
(21:17):
these questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe
of poetry. My practice is nowhere, my opinion is here. Nevertheless,
I am far from regarding myself as one of those
privileged ones to whom the ved refers when it says
(21:39):
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?
And even in their case it is to be observed,
as a Hindu commentator has marked that the Vedant limits
(22:02):
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
that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross
(22:25):
sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate,
that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside
had fed my genius. The soul, not being mistress of herself,
(22:47):
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 never be
(23:08):
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,
(23:31):
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,
(23:57):
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
(24:21):
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.
(24:44):
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
(25:05):
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
(25:27):
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
(25:49):
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
(26:13):
our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile in 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, but never change its nature. I fear
(26:38):
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 health and vigor distinct from the spiritual.
(27:01):
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 men preserve it carefully. Who knows what
(27:26):
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 our passions and over the external senses of
the body. And good acts are declared by the ved
(27:51):
to be indispensable in the minds approximation to God. Yet
the spirit can for the time pervade and control every
member and function of the body, and transmute what in
form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion, the
(28:15):
generative energy, which, when we are loose dissipates and makes
us unclean, when we are continent, invigorates and inspires us.
Chastity is the flowering of man, and what are called genius, heroism, holiness,
(28:37):
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
impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured
(29:01):
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
brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that
we are such gods or demigods only as fawns and satires,
(29:28):
the Divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and
that to some extent our very life is our disgrace.
How happy is he who hath due place assigned to
his beasts and disaphorested his mind, can use this horse, goat, wolf,
(29:53):
and every beast, and is not ass himself to all
the rest else man. Not only is the herd of swine,
those devils too, which did incline them to the headlong
rage and made them worse. All sensuality is one, though
(30:18):
it takes many forms. All purity is one. It is
the same. Whether a man eat or drink, or cohabit
or 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.
(30:42):
The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When
the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow,
he shows himself at another. How shall a man know
if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We
(31:03):
have heard of this virtue, but we know not what
it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we
have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity. From sloth
and ignorance and sensuality. In the student, sensuality is a
(31:26):
sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a
slothful one, 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,
(31:50):
though it be at cleaning. A stable nature is hard
to be overcome, but she 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
(32:15):
of religion esteemed heathenish, whose 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
(32:38):
I cannot speak of them 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.
(33:01):
In earlier ages, in some countries, 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
(33:23):
excrement and urine, and the like elevating what is mean,
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,
(33:46):
we are all sculptors and painters, and our material is
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
(34:09):
September evening after a hard day's work, his mind still
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
(34:30):
his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on
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,
(34:52):
yet it concerned him very little. It was no more
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
(35:18):
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
(35:40):
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
(36:02):
descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself
with ever increasing respect. End of Chapter eleven.
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