V.

“The only obligation,” says he, “which I have a right to assume is to do

at any time what I think right.” “Why should we ever go abroad, even

across the way, to ask a neighbour’s advice?” “There is a nearer

neighbour within, who is incessantly telling us how we should behave.

_But we wait for the neighbour without to tell us of some false_, _easier

way_.” “The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my

soul to be bad.” To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of

becoming, is the only end of life. It is “when we fall behind ourselves”

that “we are cursed with duties and the neglect of duties.” “I love the

wild,” he says, “not less than the good.” And again: “The life of a good

man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the

inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the

observance, and” (mark this) “_our lives are sustained by a nearly equal

expense of virtue of some kind_.” Even although he were a prig, it will

be owned he could announce a startling doctrine. “As for doing good,” he

writes elsewhere, “that is one of the professions that are full.

Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am

satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I should

not conscientiously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do

the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from

annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater

steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. If you should ever

be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand

know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing.” Elsewhere

he returns upon the subject, and explains his meaning thus: “If I ever

_did_ a man any good in their sense, of course it was something

exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil I am

constantly doing by being what I am.”

There is a rude nobility, like that of a barbarian king, in this unshaken

confidence in himself and indifference to the wants, thoughts, or

sufferings of others. In his whole works I find no trace of pity. This

was partly the result of theory, for he held the world too mysterious to

be criticised, and asks conclusively: “What right have I to grieve who

have not ceased to wonder?” But it sprang still more from constitutional

indifference and superiority; and he grew up healthy, composed, and

unconscious from among life’s horrors, like a green bay-tree from a field

of battle. It was from this lack in himself that he failed to do justice

to the spirit of Christ; for while he could glean more meaning from

individual precepts than any score of Christians, yet he conceived life

in such a different hope, and viewed it with such contrary emotions, that

the sense and purport of the doctrine as a whole seems to have passed him

by or left him unimpressed. He could understand the idealism of the

Christian view, but he was himself so unaffectedly unhuman that he did

not recognise the human intention and essence of that teaching. Hence he

complained that Christ did not leave us a rule that was proper and

sufficient for this world, not having conceived the nature of the rule

that was laid down; for things of that character that are sufficiently

unacceptable become positively non-existent to the mind. But perhaps we

shall best appreciate the defect in Thoreau by seeing it supplied in the

case of Whitman. For the one, I feel confident, is the disciple of the

other; it is what Thoreau clearly whispered that Whitman so uproariously

bawls; it is the same doctrine, but with how immense a difference! the

same argument, but used to what a new conclusion! Thoreau had plenty of

humour until he tutored himself out of it, and so forfeited that best

birthright of a sensible man; Whitman, in that respect, seems to have

been sent into the world naked and unashamed; and yet by a strange

consummation, it is the theory of the former that is arid, abstract, and

claustral. Of these two philosophies so nearly identical at bottom, the

one pursues Self-improvement—a churlish, mangy dog; the other is up with

the morning, in the best of health, and following the nymph Happiness,

buxom, blithe, and debonair. Happiness, at least, is not solitary; it

joys to communicate; it loves others, for it depends on them for its

existence; it sanctions and encourages to all delights that are not

unkind in themselves; if it lived to a thousand, it would not make

excision of a single humorous passage; and while the self-improver

dwindles towards the prig, and, if he be not of an excellent constitution

may even grow deformed into an Obermann, the very name and appearance of

a happy man breathe of good-nature, and help the rest of us to live.

In the case of Thoreau, so great a show of doctrine demands some outcome

in the field of action. If nothing were to be done but build a shanty

beside Walden Pond, we have heard altogether too much of these

declarations of independence. That the man wrote some books is nothing

to the purpose, for the same has been done in a suburban villa. That he

kept himself happy is perhaps a sufficient excuse, but it is

disappointing to the reader. We may be unjust, but when a man despises

commerce and philanthropy alike, and has views of good so soaring that he

must take himself apart from mankind for their cultivation, we will not

be content without some striking act. It was not Thoreau’s fault if he

were not martyred; had the occasion come, he would have made a noble

ending. As it is, he did once seek to interfere in the world’s course;

he made one practical appearance on the stage of affairs; and a strange

one it was, and strangely characteristic of the nobility and the

eccentricity of the man. It was forced on him by his calm but radical

opposition to negro slavery. “Voting for the right is doing nothing for

it,” he saw; “it is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it

should prevail.” For his part, he would not “for an instant recognise

that political organisation for _his_ government which is the _slave’s_

government also.” “I do not hesitate to say,” he adds, “that those who

call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their

support, both in person and property, from the government of

Massachusetts.” That is what he did: in 1843 he ceased to pay the

poll-tax. The highway-tax he paid, for he said he was as desirous to be

a good neighbour as to be a bad subject; but no more poll-tax to the

State of Massachusetts. Thoreau had now seceded, and was a polity unto

himself; or, as he explains it with admirable sense, “In fact, I quietly

declare war with the State after my fashion, though I will still make

what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.”

He was put in prison; but that was a part of his design. “Under a

government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is

also a prison. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred,

if ten men whom I could name—ay, if _one_ HONEST man, in this State of

Massachusetts, _ceasing to hold slaves_, were actually to withdraw from

this copartnership, and be locked up in the county gaol therefor, it

would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how

small the beginning may seem to be; what is once well done is done for

ever.” Such was his theory of civil disobedience.

And the upshot? A friend paid the tax for him; continued year by year to

pay it in the sequel; and Thoreau was free to walk the woods unmolested.

It was a _fiasco_, but to me it does not seem laughable; even those who

joined in the laughter at the moment would be insensibly affected by this

quaint instance of a good man’s horror for injustice. We may compute the

worth of that one night’s imprisonment as outweighing half a hundred

voters at some subsequent election: and if Thoreau had possessed as great

a power of persuasion as (let us say) Falstaff, if he had counted a party

however small, if his example had been followed by a hundred or by thirty

of his fellows, I cannot but believe it would have greatly precipitated

the era of freedom and justice. We feel the misdeeds of our country with

so little fervour, for we are not witnesses to the suffering they cause;

but when we see them wake an active horror in our fellow-man, when we see

a neighbour prefer to lie in prison rather than be so much as passively

implicated in their perpetration, even the dullest of us will begin to

realise them with a quicker pulse.

Not far from twenty years later, when Captain John Brown was taken at

Harper’s Ferry, Thoreau was the first to come forward in his defence.

The committees wrote to him unanimously that his action was premature.

“I did not send to you for advice,” said he, “but to announce that I was

to speak.” I have used the word “defence;” in truth he did not seek to

defend him, even declared it would be better for the good cause that he

should die; but he praised his action as I think Brown would have liked

to hear it praised.

Thus this singularly eccentric and independent mind, wedded to a

character of so much strength, singleness, and purity, pursued its own

path of self-improvement for more than half a century, part gymnosophist,

part backwoodsman; and thus did it come twice, though in a subaltern

attitude, into the field of political history.

* * * * *

NOTE.—For many facts in the above essay, among which I may mention the

incident of the squirrel, I am indebted to _Thoreau_: _His Life and

Aims_, by J. A. Page, or, as is well known, Dr. Japp.