years past it would probably astonish those who know nothing about it.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still
on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken, concerning them,
describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one
or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even
seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to
recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
How many mornings, summer and winter, before any neighbour was stirring
about his business, have I been about mine! So many autumn, aye, and
winter days, spent outside the town trying to hear what was in the
wind, to hear and carry it. At other times waiting at evening on the
hill-tops for the sky to fall that I might catch something, though I
never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the
sun.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain
storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then
of forest paths. I looked after the wild stock of the town. I have
watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle tree, the
red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet,
which might have withered else in dry seasons.
My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live
dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest
obstacles.
_House Building_
When I consider my neighbours, the farmers of Concord, I find that for
the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years,
that they may become the real owners of their farms; and we may regard
one-third of that toil as the cost of their houses. And when the farmer
has got his house he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and
it be the house that has got him. The very simplicity and nakedness
of men's life in the primitive ages imply that they left him still
a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he
contemplated his journey again. He dwelt as it were in the tent of this
world. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on
earth and forgotten Heaven.
Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the
woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house,
and began to cut down some tall, arrowy, white pines, still in their
youth, for timber. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered
with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small
open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up.
Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree,
having become better acquainted with it.
By the middle of April my house was framed and ready for raising.
At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of
my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for
neighbourliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my
house. I began to occupy it on the 4th of July, as soon as it was
boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and
lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain, but before
boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney. I built the chimney after
my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing
my cooking in the meantime out of doors on the ground, early in the
morning. When it stormed before my bread was baked I fixed a few boards
over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some
pleasant hours in that way.
The exact cost of my house, not counting the work, all of which was
done by myself, was just over twenty-eight dollars. I thus found that
the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at
an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually.
_Farming_
Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by
some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses,
I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it,
chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas,
and turnips. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the ploughing,
though I held the plough myself. My farm outgoes for the first season
were, for employment, seed, work, etc., 14 dollars 72-1/2 cents. I got
twelve bushels of beans and eighteen bushels of potatoes, besides some
peas and sweet corn. My whole income from the farm was 23 dollars 43
cents, a profit of 8 dollars 71-1/2 cents, besides produce consumed.
The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land that I
required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience
of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on
husbandry, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop which he
raised, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that
it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plough it, and
he could do all his necessary farm work, as it were, with his left hand
at odd hours in the summer.
My food for nearly two years was rye and Indian meal without yeast,
potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses and salt, and my
drink water. I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost
incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food even in this
latitude, and that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals and
yet retain health and strength.
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes,
which I baked before my fire out of doors, but at last I found a
mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. I made a
study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, going back
to the primitive days. Leaven, which some deem to be the soul of bread,
I discovered was not indispensable.
Thus I found I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was
concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get
clothing and fuel. My furniture, part of which I made myself, consisted
of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass, three inches
in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a
frying pan, a dipper, a wash bowl, two knives and forks, three plates,
one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned
lamp. When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which
contained his all, I have pitied him, not because it was his all, but
because he had all that to carry.
_Earning a Living_
For more than five years I maintained myself solely by the labour of
my hands, and I found that by working for about six weeks in the year
I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as
well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have
thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were out of
proportion to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to
say think and believe accordingly; and I lost my time into the bargain.
I have tried trade; but I have learned that trade curses everything
it handles; and though you trade in messages from Heaven, the whole
curse of trade attaches to the business. I found that the occupation of
day-labourer was the most independent of any, especially as it required
only thirty or forty days in the year to support me. The labourer's
day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote
himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labour; but his
employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one
end of the year to the other.
But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say.
I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic
enterprises. However, when I thought to indulge myself in this respect
by maintaining certain poor persons as comfortably as I maintain
myself, and even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they one
and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor.
_The Life with Nature_
When I took up my abode in the woods I found myself suddenly neighbour
to the birds, not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself
near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly
frequent the garden and orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling
songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager.
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal
simplicity, and I may say, innocence, with Nature herself. I have been
as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. Morning brings back
the heroic ages. Then, for an hour at least, some part of us awakes
which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? As for work, we
haven't any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance, and
cannot possibly keep our heads still. Hardly a man takes a half hour's
nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks:
"What's the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels.
"Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this
globe." And he reads over his coffee and rolls that a man has had his
eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River, never dreaming the
while that he lives in the dark, unfathomed mammoth cave of this world,
and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
Let us spend our day as deliberately as Nature. Let us rise early and
fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation. Let us not be
upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a
dinner situated in the meridian shadows.
Time 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 glides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper, fish
in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.
_Reading_
My residence was more favourable, not only to thought but to serious
reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the
morning circulating library I had more than ever come within the
influence of those books which circulate round the world. I kept
Homer's "Iliad" on my table through the summer, though I looked at his
pages only now and then. To read well--that is to read true books in
a true spirit--is a noble exercise and one that will task the reader
more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. Books must
be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. No wonder
that Alexander carried the "Iliad" with him on his expeditions in a
precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics.
_In the Sun_
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did
better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice
the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or
hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes on a summer morning,
having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise
till noon, rapt in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and
sumachs in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang
around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling
in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's waggon on the
distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those
seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work
of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my
life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realised what
the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. Instead
of singing like the birds I silently smiled at my incessant good
fortune. This was sheer idleness to my fellow townsmen, no doubt, but
if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard I should not
have been found wanting.
_Night Sounds_
Regularly at half past seven, in one part of the summer, the
whip-poor-wills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on
a stump by my door, or upon the ridge pole of the house. When other
birds were still the screech owls took up the strain, like mourning
women their ancient u-lu-lu. Wise midnight hags! I love to hear their
wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside. They give
me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our
common dwelling. _Oh-o-o-o-o that I had never been bor-r-r-r-n_! sighs
one on this side of the pond, and circles, with the restlessness of
despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then: _That I had never
been bor-r-r-r-n_! echoes another on the further side with tremulous
sincerity, and _bor-r-r-r-n_! comes faintly from far in the Lincoln
woods. I require that there are owls. They represent the stark twilight
and unsatisfied thoughts which all have.
I am not sure that ever I heard the sound of cock crowing from my
clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while to keep a
cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once
wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird's,
and if they could be naturalised without being domesticated it would
soon become the most famous sound in our woods.
I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have
said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds, neither the churn nor
the spinning wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing
of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort me; only squirrels on the
roof, a whip-poor-will on the ridge pole, a bluejay screaming beneath
the window, a woodchuck under the house, a laughing loon on the pond,
and a fox to bark in the night.
This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense and
imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange
liberty in Nature, a part of herself. Sympathy with the fluttering
alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the
lake, my serenity is rippled, but not ruffled. Though it is now dark
the wind still blows and roars in the woods, the waves still dash, and
some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never
complete. The wildest animals do not repose but seek their prey now.
They are Nature's watchmen--links which connect the days of animated
life.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. I never
found the companion that was never so companionable as solitude. A man
thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. I am
no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud. God is
alone, but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal
of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single dandelion
in a pasture, or a humble bee, or the North Star, or the first spider
in a new house.
_Visitors_
In my house I have three chairs: one for solitude, two for friendship,
three for society. My best room, however--my withdrawing room--always
ready for company, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in Summer
days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless
domestic swept the floor and kept the things in order.
I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my visitors. Girls
and boys, and young women generally, seemed glad to be in the woods.
They looked in the pond and at the flowers, and improved their time.
Men of business, even farmers, thought only of solitude and employment,
and of the great distance at which I dwelt from something or other; and
though they said that they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it
was obvious that they did not. Restless, committed men, whose time was
all taken up in getting a living, or keeping it, ministers, who spoke
of God as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, and who could not
bear all kinds of opinions, doctors, lawyers, and uneasy housekeepers,
who pried into my cupboard and bed when I was out, young men who had
ceased to be young, and had concluded that it was safest to follow the
beaten track of the professions--all these generally said that it was
not possible to do as much good in my position.
_Interference_
After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing in the forenoon, I usually
bathed again in the pond, washed the dust of labour from my person,
and for the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled
to the village. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and the
squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and the boys.
Instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle.
One afternoon near the end of the first summer, when I went to the
village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into
jail, because I did not pay a tax to, or recognise the authority
of, the State. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But
wherever a man goes men will pursue and paw him with their dirty
institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their
desperate Odd Fellows society. However, I was released the next day,
obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get my
dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was never molested by
any person but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt
but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my
latch or window. I never fastened my door night or day, and though I
was absent several days my house was more respected than if it had been
surrounded by a file of soldiers.
_Exhausted Experience_
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 pond side, and though it is five or six years since I trod it,
it is still quite distinct. 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 learned this, at least by my
experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his
dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will
meet with a success unexpected in common hours. 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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville (see Vol. XII, p. 117), being commissioned
at the age of twenty-six to investigate and report on American
prisons, made use of his residence in the United States to
gain a thorough insight into the political institutions and
social conditions of the great Republic. The results of his
observations and reflections were given to the world in 1835,
in the two famous volumes _De la Démocratie en Amérique_, which
were followed in 1840 by a third and fourth volume under the
same title. As an analysis of American political institutions De
Tocqueville's work has been superseded by Mr. Bryce's admirable
study of the same subject; but as one of the great classics of
political philosophy it can never be superseded, and has rarely
been rivalled. With all a Frenchman's simplicity and lucidity
he traces the manifold results of the democratic spirit; though
sometimes an excessive ingenuity, which is also French, leads
him to over-speculative conclusions. The work was received with
universal applause.
_I.--Equality_
The most striking impression which I received during my residence in
the United States was that of the equality which reigns there. This
equality gives a peculiar character to public opinion and to the
laws of that country, and influences the entire structure of society
in the most profound degree. Realising that equality, or democracy,
was rapidly advancing in the Old World also, I determined to make a
thorough study of democratic principles and of their consequences, as
they are revealed in the western continent.
We have only to review the history of European countries from the
days of feudalism, to understand that the development of equality is
one of the great designs of Providence; inasmuch as it is universal,
inevitable, and lasting, and that every event and every individual
contributes to its advancement.
It is impossible to believe that a social movement which has proceeded
so far as this movement towards equality has done, can be arrested
by human efforts, or that the democracy which has bearded kings and
barons can be successfully resisted by a wealthy bourgeoisie. We know
not whither we are moving; we only know that greater equality is found
to-day among Christian populations than has been known before in any
age or in any country.
I confess to a kind of religious terror in the presence of this
irresistible revolution, which has defied every obstacle for the
last ten centuries. A new political science is awaited by a world
which is wholly new; but the most immediate duties of the statesman
are to instruct the democracy, if possible to revive its beliefs, to
purify its morals, to enlighten its inexperience by some knowledge of
political principles, and to substitute for the blind instincts which
sway it, the consciousness of its true interests.
In the Old World, and in France especially, the more powerful,
intelligent, and moralised classes have held themselves apart from
democracy, and the latter has, therefore, been abandoned to its own
savage instincts. The democratic revolution has permeated the whole
substance of society, without those concomitant changes in laws, ideas,
habits, and manners which ought to have embodied and clothed it. So
it is that we indeed have democracy, but without those features which
should have mitigated its vices and liberated its advantages. The
prestige of royal power is gone, without being replaced by the majesty
of law, and our people despise authority as much as they fear it. Our
poor have the prejudices of their fathers without their beliefs, their
ignorance, without their virtues; they have taken self-interest for
a principle without knowing what their interests are. Our society is
tranquil, not in the consciousness of strength and of well-being,
but a sense of decrepitude and despair. That is why I have studied
America, in order that we may ourselves profit by her example. I have
no intention of writing a panegyric on the United States. I have seen
more in America than America herself; I have sought a revelation of
Democracy, with all its characters and tendencies, its prejudices and
its passions.
_II.--Religion and Liberty_
Our first consideration is of great importance, and must never be
lost sight of. The Anglo-American civilisation which we find in the
United States is the product of two perfectly distinct elements, which
elsewhere are often at war with one another, but have here been merged
and combined in the most wonderful way; I mean the spirit of religion
and the spirit of liberty. The founders of New England were at the same
time ardent secretaries and enthusiastic radicals; they were bound
by the narrowest religious beliefs, but were free from all political
prejudice.
Thus arose two tendencies which we may trace everywhere in American
manners, as well as in their lives. All political principles, laws,
and human institutions seem to have become plastic in the hands of the
early colonists. The bonds which fettered the society in which they had
been born fell from their limbs; ancient opinions which had dominated
the world for ages simply disappeared; a new career opened for the
human race; a world without horizons was before them, and they exulted
in liberty. But outside the limits of the political world, they made no
ventures of this kind. They abjured doubt, renounced their desire for
innovation, left untouched the veil of the sanctuary, and knelt with
awe before the truths of religion.
So, in their world of morals, everything was already classed,
arranged, foreseen, and determined; but in their world of politics,
everything was agitated, debated, and uncertain. In the former they
were ruled by a voluntary obedience, but in all political affairs they
were inspired by independence, contempt for experience, and jealous of
every authority.