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There will never be a really free and enlightened State, untilthe State comes to recognize the individual as a higher andindependent power, from which all its own power and authorityare derived, and treats him accordingly. (18)

Can there not be a government in which majorities do notvirtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? (2)

In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau seems quite plainly to be advocating a Statein which the individual, through his conscience, is a higher authority towhich even the law should be subject. As Heinz Eulau declares, Thoreau’s

entire political thought is built on “the theoretical premise of individual conscienceas the only true criterion of what is politically right and just” (510).1 It is nosurprise then that many have interpreted “Civil Disobedience” along the linesWilliam Earle has construed it: as an appeal for “the withdrawal of allegiancefrom government and law in favour of the final accreditation by each man of hisown solitary and ultimate conscience” (308; my italics).

But such an interpretation is dangerous, and as this paper will argue,not wholly accurate. Those eager to take up Thoreau’s call for a “better government”may be mistakenly led into what Earle predicts would be “the moral tyranny ofone conscience over others and over the very government which it set up” (308);on the other hand, those who foresee problems of such a kind and consequentlydismiss Thoreau’s arguments as simplistic or naïve may risk overlooking thevaluable insights he has put forth. This paper will argue that the interpretationof Thoreau’s conscientious individual as possessive of final and ultimate moralauthority requires clarification. It will show that Thoreau’s text reflects anawareness of the fallible nature of conscience when it is used by the individual asa moral guide, and through this, it will argue that Thoreau’s “exaltation ofconscience” (quoted in Rhinelander 920) for which he is so well known shouldnot be conflated with an elevation of the conscientious individual as a moralauthority. This point will be further developed through a consideration of theindividual’s role and relation to the “higher law.” Finally, the paper will examine

The Conscientious Individualin Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”: A Clarification

Chan Yan Ru

16 • thoreau’s “civil disobedience”

and clarify the conscientious individual’s relation to the State’s law and arguethat rather than advocating an anarchical society whereby the individual is elevatedas a supreme authority, Thoreau is urging for a State in which law and theconscientious individual can work together towards the attainment of what heconceives to be a perfect, just State.

Because nowhere in his essay Thoreau himself explicitly defines“conscience,” it is necessary first to examine what he might mean in his referencesto it. There is, on a first reading, a strong sense that his conception of conscienceis indeed in line with what Eulau has observed. Thoreau alludes to “a governmentin which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice” (2) beforesuggesting the better alternative—a government in which conscience decidesright and wrong. The reasoning here, of course, is that a government ruled byconscience will, or is at least more likely to, be based on justice. This suggeststhat conscience, or more particularly the individual’s conscience—for “acorporation has no conscience” (2), in Thoreau’s mind is the only reliable andperhaps even an infallible guide for what is right. Thoreau goes on to say, “but acorporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience,” emphasisingonce again the individual’s conscience specifically.

However, other instances in the text cast doubt on such a representationof Thoreau’s idea of “conscience.” In one telling moment, he qualifies his stand assuch: “But one cannot be too much on his guard in such a case, lest his action bebiassed by obstinacy, or an undue regard for the opinions of men” (15). Thisseems to run counter to the idea of conscience as always a reliable guide. Is this anattempt on Thoreau’s part to weaken or soften his stand? Not so, for he immediatelyreasserts, “let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour.”How can we understand this simultaneous assertion of the imperative authorityand fiercely self-reliant nature of the individual’s conscience with the allowanceof the possibility that an individual’s judgement may be biased and require thecorrective opinions of others?

A consideration of a particular characteristic of conscience, in my opinion,clarifies matters and provides a possibility for reconciling these seeminglydiscordant strands of thoughts in Thoreau’s text. Earle summarises thischaracteristic as follows: “The conscience with which each man is born is nothingbut a sense of right and wrong; it is not also already provided with the facts andinterpretation of facts necessary for its own exercise. If conscience then seemsinfallible, it is only because we are taking it in its abstract purity” (307). ThatThoreau advocates at least a certain degree of “regard for the opinions of men”(15) and warns against the possibility of bias as a result of “obstinacy” indicates

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that he is certainly not blind to the fallibility of the individual’s moral judgementwhen exercised in the presence of multiple perspectives and differing opinions.That he nevertheless holds on so steadfastly to his call for the individual to followhis conscience further suggests that when Thoreau confers upon “conscience” theauthority to decide right and wrong, he is working on the notion of conscience asan infallible authority “in its abstract purity” and not when exercised by theindividual “in the concrete domain” (Earle 307).

What this distinction means is that even if it is clear that Thoreau regardsconscience as an absolute moral authority, it does not automatically follow thatthe conscientious individual holds or should be given such authority. Indeed,while Thoreau may conceive of the individual’s conscience by itself, in its abstractform, as possessive of or capable of attaining the highest moral truths, it is evidentin “Civil Disobedience” that even the individual who diligently follows hisconscience does not have the highest moral authority. Thoreau himself pronouncesthat he would “cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I” (18); ona similar note, he declares, “they only can force me who obey a higher law than I”(12). If we may presume that he considers himself to practise what he preaches,this provides a clear indication that the conscientious individual is not the ultimateauthority, for it is subject to “a higher law of rectitude and justice, not made byany human fiat but discoverable intuitively by the conscientious mind, to whichall counsels of expediency, whether legal or moral, must be subordinated”(Rhinelander 925). It is not our task to determine whether this “higher law”exists or, if it does, whether it can indeed be discerned by the individual’s mind;what we should note, however, is the way in which Thoreau portrays the individualin relation to this higher law: those who seek “purer sources of truth” (17), hedescribes, “gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage towardits fountain-head.” As Rhinelander’s description accurately captures, theconscientious individual does not immediately have truth at his disposal; rather,he has to make a continuous pilgrimage, a constant journey and persistent effort,in order to discover this higher law.

This portrayal is quite unlike Earle’s depiction of Thoreau’s “descendants”who without hesitation “bring each choice before their private consciences andrule upon that choice with a frightening finality” (311). Earle explains, and quiterightly so, that this is often the frightening consequence of elevating theindividual’s conscience to be the ultimate moral authority (311). But such anerror can only be made without an adequately close examination of Thoreau’stext. Thoreau juxtaposes and contrasts the conscientious individual who seeksthe higher truth with those who “know of no purer sources of truth” (17) and so

18 • thoreau’s “civil disobedience”

“stand ... by the Bible and the Constitution,” desiring to go no further. The noteof finality in such an image of resolutely standing by these laws suggests thatThoreau does not promote, but in fact directly disapproves of, the kind ofabsolutism which Earle is warning us about. Thoreau’s alternative to standing bythe Constitution with absolute resolution is not standing by one’s own judgementwith similar absoluteness; instead, it requires the conscientious search withinand beyond one’s very own moral judgement—a conscientious search into one’svery own conscience,2 if you will. This is in line with Earle’s observation that “ifconscience is conscientious enough, it will look into itself” (311).

Thoreau’s verdict may be very absolute indeed on the part of “actionfrom principle—the perception and the performance of right” (7), but his idea ofhow the “perception” or “principle” of right may be grasped by the individual isby no means simple or absolute. He is quite absolutely contemptuous of theindividual who, having made a moral opinion, merely “entertains” it not becausehe suspects he might be wrong but merely because the law says otherwise.However, his demand for a conscientious search into one’s conscience suggeststhat it is insufficient to conceptualise the conscientious individual’s responsibilityas merely constituting the “obligation ... to do at any time what I think right”(2). Performance is important, but so is perception; H.D. Lewis elucidates this double-faceted responsibility perfectly: “the individual must in the last analysis obey hisown conscience, yet, as part of his duty to find out what is his duty, there is muchin the meantime that he requires to do to correct the limitations of his privatepoint of view” (244). The individual’s conscience is the final authority to theindividual only after it has already formed a moral opinion by going through theprocess of diligently searching within and without to correct its limitedperspective.

Yet, if the conscientious individual himself cannot be seen as a reliableor absolute moral authority, how can we understand Thoreau’s appeal for theState to recognise the individual as “a higher and independent power” from whichit own power is derived? For in his call for an “enlightened State” (18), he asksnot for the conscience, but for the individual, to be recognised as a higher authority.

The first thing to note is that Thoreau is not wary of the law exertingauthority against the individual’s will; rather, he is wary of the law exertingauthority against the individual’s will without moral justification. He bemoans thefact that “the State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual ormoral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty,but with superior physical strength” (12). It is only in the State’s attempts to“force” the individual into obedience on the sole basis of superior physical strength

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that Thoreau expresses his disapproval. By contrast, he asserts that “they only canforce me who obey a higher law than I.” It is significant that he retains the notionof “force” here, for this implicitly reinstates the value and original purpose of lawin the first place: as a possible solution to conflicts between differing wills (Earle309)—a purpose which can only be fulfilled if law has the authority to break theindividual’s will.

What Thoreau means in his assertion that the State derives its powerand authority from the individual, then, is less a demand for an anarchical societyin which the individual’s authority is elevated above the law and more a reminderof how and why the law was set up in the first place: by individuals, with the“sole justification ... to settle, by an agreed upon ethical procedure, differencesamong private consciences” (Earle 311). The defining difference between thegovernment he pities and that which he would “cheerfully obey” is not whethereach “force[s]” the individual to obey, but whether their laws fulfil this role as asuperior moral authority. When the State confronts a man’s moral sense throughits obedience to a higher law is when Thoreau would cheerfully obey its laws andurge the individual to similarly “cede to that moral authority, the law” (Earle311). In this light, Thoreau in no way desires to undermine the law, but ratherseeks to restore its original purpose and to guard against the “circle of justification”(Earle 309) that results when the law is claimed to have authority from thegovernment whose authority is then justified on the basis of its law.

Thoreau’s “perfect and glorious State” (18) is one in which the law, havinggone through the tedious process of being corrected by the “seasonable experienceand the effectual complaints of the people,” is morally just, and thus a validmoral authority deserving to be obeyed. In such a State, obedience to the law iscompletely in line with following one’s conscience, for even if the State’s lawcontradicts the individual’s initial judgement, the truly conscientious individualin Thoreau’s sense would ideally realise the moral superiority of the law andthereby rectify his own judgement and act from this newly corrected principle.His place would no longer need to be defined as “man first, subject later,” for hecan willingly and cheerfully be a subject also without losing his ‘manhood’ bywounding the conscience.

Of course, this is merely a distant, if achievable, hypothetical State. Whatinsights does Thoreau contribute about what can be done about our current stateof imperfection? It is important to note that the State’s recognition of theindividual’s authority is but the first step towards this state of perfection. A longand difficult task will have to be taken from there, whereby “just laws and justgovernments must ... be fashioned, slowly and laboriously, by the efforts of fallible

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mortals” (Rhinelander 932). And it is because moral discovery and developmentnecessarily originate in the individual through his conscience that the first stepwhich must be taken to even enable such a development towards a just State isfor the individual’s moral development and opinion to be allowed and recognisedrather than hindered or punished by the law. This will pave the way for a mutuallysupportive if complex relationship whereby the individual fulfils his responsibilityby following his conscience while recognising and making the effort to correcthis fallibility, and the law in turn fulfils its purpose by exerting its authoritywhile recognising its own fallibility by giving room for the individual to play hisrole.

Notes

1 Eulau gleans this conclusion from a few of Thoreau’s works, including“Civil Disobedience.”

2 This is a development of Earle’s observation that “if conscience isconscientious enough, it will look into itself” (311). Although he doesnot apply this idea to Thoreau’s arguments, this paper’s interpretationhas nevertheless found it to be applicable in the case of “CivilDisobedience.”

Works Cited

Earle, William. “Some Paradoxes of Private Conscience as a Political Guide.”Ethics 80.4 (1970): 306-312. Print.

Eulau, Heinz. “Some Remarks on the Politics of Henry David Thoreau.” TheAntioch Review 9.4 (1949): 509-522. Print.

Lewis, H.D. “Obedience to Conscience.” Mind 54.215 (1945): 227-253. Print.Rhinelander, Philip H. “Law, Morality, and Thoreau.” Hastings Constitutional

Law Quarterly 3 (1976): 919-932. Print.Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” “Civil Disobedience” and Other

Essays. New York: Dover. 1-18. Print.