IV

"What means the fact," he cries, "that a soul which has lost all hope

for itself can inspire in another listening soul such an infinite

confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?" The question

is an echo and an illustration of the words last quoted; and it forms

the key-note of his thoughts on friendship. No one else, to my

knowledge, has spoken in so high and just a spirit of the kindly

relations; and I doubt whether it be a drawback that these lessons

should come from one in many ways so unfitted to be a teacher in this

branch. The very coldness and egoism of his own intercourse gave him a

clearer insight into the intellectual basis of our warm, mutual

tolerations; and testimony to their worth comes with added force from

one who was solitary and disobliging, and of whom a friend remarked,

with equal wit and wisdom, "I love Henry, but I cannot like him."

He can hardly be persuaded to make any distinction between love and

friendship; in such rarefied and freezing air, upon the mountain-tops of

meditation, had he taught himself to breathe. He was, indeed, too

accurate an observer not to have remarked that "there exists already a

natural disinterestedness and liberality" between men and women; yet, he

thought, "friendship is no respecter of sex." Perhaps there is a sense

in which the words are true; but they were spoken in ignorance; and

perhaps we shall have put the matter most correctly, if we call love a

foundation for a nearer and freer degree of friendship than can be

possible without it. For there are delicacies, eternal between persons

of the same sex, which are melted and disappear in the warmth of love.

To both, if they are to be right, he attributes the same nature and

condition. "We are not what we are," says he, "nor do we treat or esteem

each other for such, but for what we are capable of being." "A friend is

one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting all the virtues

from us, and who can appreciate them in us." "The friend asks no return

but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace

his apotheosis of him." "It is the merit and preservation of friendship

that it takes place on a level higher than the actual characters of the

parties would seem to warrant." This is to put friendship on a pedestal

indeed; and yet the root of the matter is there; and the last sentence,

in particular, is like a light in a dark place, and makes many mysteries

plain. We are different with different friends; yet if we look closely

we shall find that every such relation reposes on some particular

apotheosis of oneself; with each friend, although we could not

distinguish it in words from any other, we have at least one special

reputation to preserve: and it is thus that we run, when mortified, to

our friend or the woman that we love, not to hear ourselves called

better, but to be better men in point of fact. We seek this society to

flatter ourselves with our own good conduct. And hence any falsehood in

the relation, any incomplete or perverted understanding, will spoil even

the pleasure of these visits. Thus says Thoreau again: "Only lovers know

the value of truth." And yet again: "They ask for words and deeds, when

a true relation is word and deed."

But it follows that since they are neither of them so good as the other

hopes, and each is, in a very honest manner, playing a part above his

powers, such an intercourse must often be disappointing to both. "We may

bid farewell sooner than complain," says Thoreau, "for our complaint is

too well grounded to be uttered." "We have not so good a right to hate

any as our friend."

"It were treason to our love

And a sin to God above,

One iota to abate

Of a pure, impartial hate."

Love is not blind, nor yet forgiving. "O yes, believe me," as the song

says, "Love has eyes!" The nearer the intimacy, the more cuttingly do we

feel the unworthiness of those we love; and because you love one, and

would die for that love to-morrow, you have not forgiven, and you never

will forgive, that friend's misconduct. If you want a person's faults,

go to those who love him. They will not tell you, but they know. And

herein lies the magnanimous courage of love, that it endures this

knowledge without change.

It required a cold, distant personality like that of Thoreau, perhaps,

to recognise and certainly to utter this truth; for a more human love

makes it a point of honour not to acknowledge those faults of which it

is most conscious. But his point of view is both high and dry. He has

no illusions; he does not give way to love any more than to hatred, but

preserves them both with care like valuable curiosities. A more

bald-headed picture of life, if I may so express myself, has seldom been

presented. He is an egoist; he does not remember, or does not think it

worth while to remark, that, in these near intimacies, we are

ninety-nine times disappointed in our beggarly selves for once that we

are disappointed in our friend; that it is we who seem most frequently

undeserving of the love that unites us; and that it is by our friend's

conduct that we are continually rebuked and yet strengthened for a fresh

endeavour. Thoreau is dry, priggish, and selfish. It is profit he is

after in these intimacies; moral profit, certainly; but still profit to

himself. If you will be the sort of friend I want, he remarks naively,

"my education cannot dispense with your society." His education! as

though a friend were a dictionary. And with all this, not one word about

pleasure, or laughter, or kisses, or any quality of flesh and blood. It

was not inappropriate, surely, that he had such close relations with the

fish. We can understand the friend already quoted, when he cried: "As

for taking his arm, I would as soon think of taking the arm of an

elm-tree!"

As a matter of fact he experienced but a broken enjoyment in his

intimacies. He says he has been perpetually on the brink of the sort of

intercourse he wanted, and yet never completely attained it. And what

else had he to expect when he would not, in a happy phrase of Carlyle's,

"nestle down into it"? Truly, so it will be always if you only stroll in

upon your friends as you might stroll in to see a cricket match; and

even then not simply for the pleasure of the thing, but with some

afterthought of self-improvement, as though you had come to the cricket

match to bet. It was his theory that people saw each other too

frequently, so that their curiosity was not properly whetted, nor had

they anything fresh to communicate; but friendship must be something

else than a society for mutual improvement--indeed, it must only be

that by the way, and to some extent unconsciously; and if Thoreau had

been a man instead of a manner of elm-tree, he would have felt that he

saw his friends too seldom, and have reaped benefits unknown to his

philosophy from a more sustained and easy intercourse. We might remind

him of his own words about love: "We should have no reserve; we should

give the whole of ourselves to that business. But commonly men have not

imagination enough to be thus employed about a human being, but must be

coopering a barrel, forsooth." Ay, or reading Oriental philosophers. It

is not the nature of the rival occupation, it is the fact that you

suffer it to be a rival, that renders loving intimacy impossible.

Nothing is given for nothing in this world; there can be no true love

even on your own side, without devotion; devotion is the exercise of

love, by which it grows; but if you will give enough of that, if you

will pay the price in a sufficient "amount of what you call life," why

then, indeed, whether with wife or comrade, you may have months and even

years of such easy, natural, pleasurable, and yet improving intercourse

as shall make time a moment and kindness a delight.

The secret of his retirement lies not in misanthropy, of which he had no

tincture, but part in his engrossing design of self-improvement and part

in the real deficiencies of social intercourse. He was not so much

difficult about his fellow human beings as he could not tolerate the

terms of their association. He could take to a man for any genuine

qualities, as we see by his admirable sketch of the Canadian woodcutter

in "Walden"; but he would not consent, in his own words, to "feebly

tabulate and paddle in the social slush." It seemed to him, I think,

that society is precisely the reverse of friendship, in that it takes

place on a lower level than the characters of any of the parties would

warrant us to expect. The society talk of even the most brilliant man is

of greatly less account than what you will get from him in (as the

French say) a little committee. And Thoreau wanted geniality; he had not

enough of the superficial, even at command; he could not swoop into a

parlour and, in the naval phrase, "cut out" a human being from that

dreary port; nor had he inclination for the task. I suspect he loved

books and nature as well and near as warmly as he loved his

fellow-creatures,--a melancholy, lean degeneration of the human

character.

"As for the dispute about solitude and society," he thus sums up: "Any

comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plain at the base

of the mountain instead of climbing steadily to its top. Of course you

will be glad of all the society you can get to go up with. Will you go

to glory with me? is the burden of the song. It is not that we love to

be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar the company

grows thinner and thinner till there is none at all. It is either the

tribune on the plain, a sermon on the mount, or a very private ecstasy

still higher up. Use all the society that will abet you." But surely it

is no very extravagant opinion that it is better to give than to

receive, to serve than to use our companions; and above all, where there

is no question of service upon either side, that it is good to enjoy

their company like a natural man. It is curious and in some ways

dispiriting that a writer may be always best corrected out of his own

mouth; and so, to conclude, here is another passage from Thoreau which

seems aimed directly at himself: "Do not be too moral; you may cheat

yourself out of much life so.... _All fables, indeed, have their morals;

but the innocent enjoy the story._"

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 H. A. Page, _i.e._, as is well known, Dr Japp.

V