"We must have our bread." But what is our bread? Is it baker's bread?
Methinks it should be very _home-made_ bread. What is our meat? Is it
butcher's meat? What is that which we _must_ have? Is that bread which
we are now earning sweet? Is it not bread which has been suffered to
sour, and then been sweetened with an alkali, which has undergone the
vinous, the acetous, and sometimes the putrid fermentation, and then
been whitened with vitriol? Is this the bread which we must have? Man
must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, truly, but also by the
sweat of his brain within his brow. The body can feed the body only. I
have tasted but little bread in my life. It has been mere grub and
provender for the most part. Of bread that nourished the brain and the
heart, scarcely any. There is absolutely none on the tables even of
the rich.
There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed
those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary
does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body
should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and
then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the
brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both;
otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought
body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will
come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.
How shall we earn our bread is a grave question; yet it is a sweet and
inviting question. Let us not shirk it, as is usually done. It is the
most important and practical question which is put to man. Let us not
answer it hastily. Let us not be content to get our bread in some
gross, careless, and hasty manner. Some men go a-hunting, some
a-fishing, some a-gaming, some to war; but none have so pleasant a
time as they who in earnest seek to earn their bread. It is true
actually as it is true really; it is true materially as it is true
spiritually, that they who seek honestly and sincerely, with all their
hearts and lives and strength, to earn their bread, do earn it, and it
is sure to be very sweet to them. A very little bread,--a very few
crumbs are enough, if it be of the right quality, for it is
infinitely nutritious. Let each man, then, earn at least a crumb of
bread for his body before he dies, and know the taste of it,--that it
is identical with the bread of life, and that they both go down at one
swallow.
Our bread need not ever be sour or hard to digest. What Nature is to
the mind she is also to the body. As she feeds my imagination, she
will feed my body; for what she says she means, and is ready to do.
She is not simply beautiful to the poet's eye. Not only the rainbow
and sunset are beautiful, but to be fed and clothed, sheltered and
warmed aright, are equally beautiful and inspiring. There is not
necessarily any gross and ugly fact which may not be eradicated from
the life of man. We should endeavor practically in our lives to
correct all the defects which our imagination detects. The heavens are
as deep as our aspirations are high. So high as a tree aspires to
grow, so high it will find an atmosphere suited to it. Every man
should stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible. How can any
man be weak who dares _to be_ at all? Even the tenderest plants force
their way up through the hardest earth and the crevices of rocks; but
a man no material power can resist. What a wedge, what a beetle, what
a catapult, is an _earnest_ man! What can resist him?
It is a momentous fact that a man may be _good_, or he may be _bad_;
his life may be _true_, or it may be _false_; it may be either a shame
or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man
destroys himself.
But whatever we do we must do confidently (if we are timid, let us,
then, act timidly), not expecting more light, but having light enough.
If we confidently expect more, then let us wait for it. But what is
this which we have? Have we not already waited? Is this the beginning
of time? Is there a man who does not see clearly beyond, though only a
hair's breadth beyond where he at any time stands?
If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his
doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them, That we have
but little faith is not sad, but that we have but little faithfulness.
By faithfulness faith is earned. When, in the progress of a life, a
man swerves, though only by an angle infinitely small, from his proper
and allotted path (and this is never done quite unconsciously even at
first; in fact, that was his broad and scarlet sin,--ah, he knew of it
more than he can tell), then the drama of his life turns to tragedy,
and makes haste to its fifth act. When once we thus fall behind
ourselves, there is no accounting for the obstacles which rise up in
our path, and no one is so wise as to advise, and no one so powerful
as to aid us while we abide on that ground. Such are cursed with
_duties_, and the _neglect of their duties_. For such the decalogue
was made, and other far more voluminous and terrible codes.
These departures,--who have not made them?--for they are as faint as
the parallax of a fixed star, and at the commencement we say they are
nothing,--that is, they originate in a kind of sleep and forgetfulness
of the soul when it is naught. A man cannot be too circumspect in
order to keep in the straight road, and be sure that he sees all that
he may at any time see, that so he may distinguish his true path.
You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my philosophy. Of acute
sorrow I suppose that I know comparatively little. My saddest and most
genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets. The place of
sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately
barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake largely of
its dull patience,--in winter expecting the sun of spring. In my
cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be
"seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me. I
know very well what Goethe meant when he said that he never had a
chagrin but he made a poem out of it. I have altogether too much
patience of this kind. I am too easily contented with a slight and
almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the
woodchucks.
Methinks I am never quite committed, never wholly the creature of my
moods, but always to some extent their critic. My only integral
experience is in my vision. I see, perchance, with more integrity than
I feel.
But I need not tell you what manner of man I am,--my virtues or my
vices. You can guess if it is worth the while; and I do not
discriminate them well.
I do not write this at my hut in the woods. I am at present living
with Mrs. Emerson, whose house is an old home of mine, for company
during Mr. Emerson's absence.
You will perceive that I am as often talking to myself, perhaps, as
speaking to you.
* * * * *
Here is a confession of faith, and a bit of self-portraiture worth
having; for there is little except faithful statement of the fact. Its
sentences are based on the questions and experiences of his
correspondent; yet they diverge into that atmosphere of humor and
hyperbole so native to Thoreau; in whom was the oddest mixture of the
serious and the comic, the literal and the romantic. He addressed
himself also, so far as his unbending personality would allow, to the
mood or the need of his correspondent; and he had great skill in
fathoming character and describing in a few touches the persons he
encountered; as may be seen in his letters to Emerson, especially, who
also had, and in still greater measure, this "fatal gift of
penetration," as he once termed it. This will be seen in the contrast
of Thoreau's correspondence with Mr. Blake, and that he was holding at
the same time with Horace Greeley,--persons radically unlike.
In August, 1846, Thoreau sent to Greeley his essay on Carlyle, asking
him to find a place for it in some magazine. Greeley sent it to R. W.
Griswold, then editing _Graham's Magazine_ in Philadelphia, who
accepted it and promised to pay for it, but did not publish it till
March and April, 1847; even then the promised payment was not
forthcoming. On the 31st of March, 1848, a year and a half after it
had been put in Griswold's possession, Thoreau wrote again to Greeley,
saying that no money had come to hand. At once, and at the very time
when Mr. Blake was opening his spiritual state to Thoreau (April 3,
1848), the busy editor of the _Tribune_ replied: "It saddens and
surprises me to know that your article was not paid for by Graham;
and, since my honor is involved, I will see that you are paid, and
that at no distant day." Accordingly, on May 17, he adds: "To-day I
have been able to lay my hand on the money due you. I made out a
regular bill for the contribution, drew a draft on G. R. Graham for
the amount, gave it to his brother in New York for collection, and
received the money. I have made Graham pay you seventy-five dollars,
but I only send you fifty dollars," having deducted twenty-five
dollars for the advance of that sum he had made a month before to
Thoreau for his "Ktaadn and the Maine Woods," which finally came out
in _Sartain's Union Magazine_ of Philadelphia, late in 1848. To this
letter and remittance of fifty dollars Thoreau replied, May 19, 1848,
substantially thus:--