Name:

PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING

from Walden

Henry David Thoreau

BACKGROUND

From 1845 to 1847, Henry David Thoreau lived alone in a one-room cabin he built at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. This experience led him to write Walden, a blend of natural observation, social criticism, and philosophical insight. It remains one of the greatest examples of nature writing in American literature.

from Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

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10I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike1 as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”2

11Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with

cranes:3 it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

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I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning,4 and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion….The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers,5 and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. . . .

1. Spartanlike adj. like the people of Sparta, an ancient Greek state whose citizens were known to be hardy, stoical, simple, and highly disciplined.

2. “glorify … forever” the answer to the question “What is the chief end of man?” in the Westminster catechism.

3. like … cranes In the Iliad, the Trojans are compared to cranes fighting against pygmies.

4. dead reckoning navigating without the assistance of stars.

5. sleepers n. ties supporting railroad tracks.

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12Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and forepaws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere here-abouts; so by the divining rod6 and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine. . . .

from The Conclusion

13 I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

14I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. . .

6. divining rod a forked branch or stick alleged to reveal underground water or mineral

A. Level Questions:

Level 1 –

Level 2 –

Level 3 –

B. Personal Response: If you were given the opportunity to live in the woods as Thoreau did, would you? Why or why not?

C. Directions: Respond to these questions. Use textual evidence to support your responses.

1.(a) In Walden, what advice does Thoreau offer to his “fellows” about ownership of land or property? (b) Interpret What does Thoreau mean by his comment, “It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail”?

2.(a) According to Thoreau in Walden, by what is our life “frittered away”?(b) Interpret What does Thoreau mean by his advice to “simplify, simplify”?

3.(a) Deduce What did Thoreau hope to achieve by living at Walden Pond? (b) Make a Judgment Do you believe Thoreau felt his time at Walden Pond was well spent?

PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING

from Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau

BACKGROUND

The Mexican War was a conflict between Mexico and the United States that took place from 1846 to 1848. The war was caused by a dispute over the boundary between Texas and Mexico, as well as by Mexico’s refusal to discuss selling California and New Mexico to the United States. Believing that President Polk had intentionally provoked the conflict before gaining congressional approval, Thoreau and many other Americans strongly objected to the war. In protest, Thoreau refused to pay his taxes and was forced to spend a night in jail. Afterward, he wrote “Civil Disobedience,” urging people to resist governmental policies with which they disagree.

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1heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”;1 and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to

I

this, which also I believe: “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments

are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

1. “That … least” the motto of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, a literary-political journal.

from Walden • from Civil Disobedience 223

The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present

Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.

2This American government—what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow; yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain2 succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber,3 would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

3But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.❧

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2. fain adv. gladly.

3. India rubber form of crude rubber.

A. Level Questions:

Level 1 –

Level 2 –

Level 3 –

B. CCCC Response: Does Thoreau’s argument effectively persuade the reader to join this cause/act on his call to action for the audience?

Claim:

Cite:

Clarify:

Connect:

C. Directions: Respond to these questions. Use textual evidence to support your responses.

1. (a) Summarize In “Civil Disobedience,” what is Thoreau asking his readers to do? (b) Evaluate Does Thoreau present a convincing argument for acting on one’s principles?

2. (a) Criticize What arguments might you use to counter Thoreau’s objections to the idea of a standing government? (b) Analyze What examples might support an argument that government benefits individuals?

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