Life Without Principle

by Henry David Thoreau

  1863

  LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE

  by Henry David Thoreau

  AT A LYCEUM, not long since, I felt that the lecturer had chosen a

  theme too foreign to himself, and so failed to interest me as much as

  he might have done. He described things not in or near to his heart,

  but toward his extremities and superficies. There was, in this sense,

  no truly central or centralizing thought in the lecture. I would have

  had him deal with his privatest experience, as the poet does. The

  greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what

  I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as

  delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of

  me, as if he were acquainted with the tool. Commonly, if men want

  anything of me, it is only to know how many acres I make of their

  land- since I am a surveyor- or, at most, what trivial news I have

  burdened myself with. They never will go to law for my meat; they

  prefer the shell. A man once came a considerable distance to ask me to

  lecture on Slavery; but on conversing with him, I found that he and

  his clique expected seven eighths of the lecture to be theirs, and

  only one eighth mine; so I declined. I take it for granted, when I am

  invited to lecture anywhere- for I have had a little experience in

  that business- that there is a desire to hear what I think on some

  subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country- and not

  that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will

  assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong

  dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and

  I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all

  precedent.

  So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since you

  are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I will not

  talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I

  can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and

  retain all the criticism.

  Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

  This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am

  awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It

  interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see

  mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I

  cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly

  ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in

  the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If

  a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple

  for life, or seared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted

  chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for business! I think that

  there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to

  philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

  There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the

  outskirts of our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under the

  hill along the edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his

  head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three

  weeks digging there with him. The result will be that he will

  perhaps get some more money to board, and leave for his heirs to spend

  foolishly. If I do this, most will commend me as an industrious and

  hard-working man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors

  which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be

  inclined to look on me as an idler. Nevertheless, as I do not need the

  police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything

  absolutely praiseworthy in this fellow's undertaking any more than in

  many an enterprise of our own or foreign governments, however amusing

  it may be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education at a

  different school.

  If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he

  is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole

  day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald

  before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising

  citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them

  down!

  Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in

  throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely

  that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily

  employed now. For instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning,

  I noticed one of my neighbors walking beside his team, which was

  slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by

  an atmosphere of industry- his day's work begun- his brow commenced to

  sweat- a reproach to all sluggards and idlers- pausing abreast the

  shoulders of his oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of his

  merciful whip, while they gained their length on him. And I thought,

  Such is the labor which the American Congress exists to protect-

  honest, manly toil- honest as the day is long- that makes his bread

  taste sweet, and keeps society sweet- which all men respect and have

  consecrated; one of the sacred band, doing the needful but irksome

  drudgery. Indeed, I felt a slight reproach, because I observed this

  from a window, and was not abroad and stirring about a similar

  business. The day went by, and at evening I passed the yard of another

  neighbor, who keeps many servants, and spends much money foolishly,

  while he adds nothing to the common stock, and there I saw the stone

  of the morning lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn

  this Lord Timothy Dexter's premises, and the dignity forthwith

  departed from the teamster's labor, in my eyes. In my opinion, the sun

  was made to light worthier toil than this. I may add that his employer

  has since run off, in debt to a good part of the town, and, after

  passing through Chancery, has settled somewhere else, there to

  become once more a patron of the arts.

  The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead

  downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to

  have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the

  wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.

  If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular,

  which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the

  community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to

  render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State

  does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet

  laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of

  royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps anothe
r

  poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my

  own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most

  satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should

  do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I

  observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer

  commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most

  correct. I once invented a rule for measuring cord-wood, and tried

  to introduce it in Boston; but the measurer there told me that the

  sellers did not wish to have their wood measured correctly- that he

  was already too accurate for them, and therefore they commonly got

  their wood measured in Charlestown before crossing the bridge.

  The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a

  good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a

  pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so

  well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends,

  as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do

  not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for

  love of it.

  It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to

  their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them

  off from their present pursuit. I see advertisements for active young

  men, as if activity were the whole of a young man's capital. Yet I

  have been surprised when one has with confidence proposed to me, a

  grown man, to embark in some enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely

  nothing to do, my life having been a complete failure hitherto. What a

  doubtful compliment this to pay me! As if he had met me half-way

  across the ocean beating up against the wind, but bound nowhere, and

  proposed to me to go along with him! If I did, what do you think the

  underwriters would say? No, no! I am not without employment at this

  stage of the voyage. To tell the truth, I saw an advertisement for

  able-bodied seamen, when I was a boy, sauntering in my native port,

  and as soon as I came of age I embarked.

  The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise

  money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough

  to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and

  valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or

  not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder,

  and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose

  that they were rarely disappointed.

  Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I

  feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still

  very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a

  livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent

  serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to

  me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am

  successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased,

  the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should

  sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to

  do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living

  for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess

  of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious,

  and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than

  he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All

  great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must

  sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its

  boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by

  loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a

  hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is

  a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.

  Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be

  born, but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the charity

  of friends, or a government pension- provided you continue to breathe-

  by whatever fine synonyms you describe these relations, is to go

  into the almshouse. On Sundays the poor debtor goes to church to

  take an account of stock, and finds, of course, that his outgoes

  have been greater than his income. In the Catholic Church, especially,

  they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think

  to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the

  fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

  As for the comparative demand which men make on life, it is an

  important difference between two, that the one is satisfied with a

  level success, that his marks can all be hit by point-blank shots, but

  the other, however low and unsuccessful his life may be, constantly

  elevates his aim, though at a very slight angle to the horizon. I

  should much rather be the last man- though, as the Orientals say,

  "Greatness doth not approach him who is forever looking down; and

  all those who are looking high are growing poor."

  It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered

  written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a

  living not merely holiest and honorable, but altogether inviting and

  glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not. One

  would think, from looking at literature, that this question had

  never disturbed a solitary individual's musings. Is it that men are

  too much disgusted with their experience to speak of it? The lesson of

  value which money teaches, which the Author of the Universe has

  taken so much pains to teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether.

  As for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of all

  classes are about it, even reformers, so called- whether they inherit,

  or earn, or steal it. I think that Society has done nothing for us

  in this respect, or at least has undone what she has done. Cold and

  hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men

  have adopted and advise to ward them off.

  The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one

  be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other

  men?- if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does

  Wisdom work in a tread-mill? or does she teach how to succeed by her

  example? Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life? Is she

  merely the miller who grinds the finest logic? It is pertinent to

  ask if Plato got his living in a better way or more successfully

  than his contemporaries- or did he succumb to the difficulties of life

  like other men? Did he seem to prevail over some of them merely by

  indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to live,

  because his aunt remembered him in her will? The ways in which most

  men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a

  shirking of the real business of life- chiefly because they do not

  know, but partly because they do not mean, any better.


  The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely

  of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation

  to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are

  ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of

  others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that

  is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the

  immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The

  philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the

  dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting,

  stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I

  could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I

  would not pay such a price for it. Even Mahomet knew that God did

  not make this world in jest. It makes God to be a moneyed gentleman

  who scatters a handful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble for

  them. The world's raffle! A subsistence in the domains of Nature a

  thing to be raffled for! What a comment, what a satire, on our

  institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself

  upon a tree. And have all the precepts in all the Bibles taught men

  only this? and is the last and most admirable invention of the human

  race only an improved muck-rake? Is this the ground on which Orientals

  and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to get our living,

  digging where we never planted- and He would, perchance, reward us

  with lumps of gold?

  God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and

  raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in

  God's coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like

  the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting

  that the world has seen. I did not know that mankind was suffering for

  want of old. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very

  malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold gild a great

  surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

  The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler

  as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it

  make whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the

  loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever

  checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me

  that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard.

  The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects. The humblest

  observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of

  the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same

  same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets

  what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle,

  and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly

  proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.

  After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one

  evening, I had in my mind's eye, all night, the numerous valleys, with

  their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet

  deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close as they can be dug, and

  partly filled with water- the locality to which men furiously rush

  to probe for their fortunes- uncertain where they shall break

  ground- not knowing but the gold is under their camp itself- sometimes

  digging one hundred and sixty feet before they strike the vein, or

  then missing it by a foot- turned into demons, and regardless of each

  others' rights, in their thirst for riches- whole valleys, for

  thirty miles, suddenly honeycombed by the pits of the miners, so

  that even hundreds are drowned in them- standing in water, and covered

  with mud and clay, they work night and day, dying of exposure and

  disease. Having read this, and partly forgotten it, I was thinking,

  accidentally, of my own unsatisfactory life, doing as others do; and