ENG116: 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World

Excerpts from Walden by Henry David Thoreau

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days
there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was
not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney,
the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night.
The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and
airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied
that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout
the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain
which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a
traveling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments.

The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains,
bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever
blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but
the outside of the earth everywhere.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had
not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice
resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath
and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to
be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to
the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it
in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it,

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TOPIC 5: Prose- Nonfiction
 ENG116: 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World

whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end
of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men;
like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue
has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.
An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may
add his ten toes, and lump the rest.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a
thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In
the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and
thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and
go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great
calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary
eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is
like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so
that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all
its so- called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such
an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own
traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the
million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern
and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that
it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and
ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live
like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and
devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will
build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we
stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it
rides upon us.

Conclusion

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
Eve or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen

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into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet
of men; and 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 did not wish to take a
cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could
best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his
dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success
unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him;
or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live
with the license of a higher order of beings. 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. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where
they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a
man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different
drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not
important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into
summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality
which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect
a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the
true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not? However mean your life is, meet it
and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when
you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You
may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun
is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the
snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as
contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me
often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive
without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener
happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be
more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much
to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change;
we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as
large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: "From an army of three

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divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and
vulgar one cannot take away his thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject
yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the
heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo! creation
widens to our view." We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of
Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you
are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance,
you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with
the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is
sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by
magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required
to buy one necessary of the soul.

I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow
which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness
to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a
morning star.

THE END

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