Life Without Principle

by Henry David Thoreau

with that vision of the diggings still before me, I asked myself why I

  might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest

  particles- why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me,

  and work that mine. There is a Ballarat, a Bendigo for you- what

  though it were a sulky-gully? At any rate, I might pursue some path,

  however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with

  love and reverence. Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and

  goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road,

  though ordinary travellers may see only a gap in the paling. His

  solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two.

  Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to

  be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite

  extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away

  from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think

  themselves most successful. Is not our native soil auriferous? Does

  not a stream from the golden mountains flow through our native valley?

  and has not this for more than geologic ages been bringing down the

  shining particles and forming the nuggets for us? Yet, strange to

  tell, if a digger steal away, prospecting for this true gold, into the

  unexplored solitudes around us, there is no danger that any will dog

  his steps, and endeavor to supplant him. He may claim and undermine

  the whole valley even, both the cultivated and the uncultivated

  portions, his whole life long in peace, for no one will ever dispute

  his claim. They will not mind his cradles or his toms. He is not

  confined to a claim twelve feet square, as at Ballarat, but may mine

  anywhere, and wash the whole wide world in his tom.

  Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed

  twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: "He soon

  began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full

  gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew

  who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody

  wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed

  against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." I think,

  however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his

  brains out against the nugget. Howitt adds, "He is a hopelessly ruined

  man." But he is a type of the class. They are all fast men. Hear

  some of the names of the places where they dig: "Jackass Flat"-

  "Sheep's-Head Gully"- "Murderer's Bar," etc. Is there no satire in

  these names? Let them carry their ill-gotten wealth where they will, I

  am thinking it will still be "Jackass Flat," if not "Murderer's

  Bar," where they live.

  The last resource of our energy has been the robbing of graveyards

  on the Isthmus of Darien, an enterprise which appears to be but in its

  infancy; for, according to late accounts, an act has passed its second

  reading in the legislature of New Granada, regulating this kind of

  mining; and a correspondent of the "Tribune" writes: "In the dry

  season, when the weather will permit of the country being properly

  prospected, no doubt other rich guacas [that is, graveyards] will be

  found." To emigrants he says: "do not come before December; take the

  Isthmus route in preference to the Boca del Toro one; bring no useless

  baggage, and do not cumber yourself with a tent; but a good pair of

  blankets will be necessary; a pick, shovel, and axe of good material

  will be almost all that is required": advice which might have been

  taken from the "Burker's Guide." And he concludes with this line in

  Italics and small capitals: "If you are doing well at home, STAY

  THERE," which may fairly be interpreted to mean, "If you are getting a

  good living by robbing graveyards at home, stay there."

  But why go to California for a text? She is the child of New

  England, bred at her own school and church.

  It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral

  teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.

  Most reverend seniors, the illuminati of the age, tell me, with a

  gracious, reminiscent smile, betwixt an aspiration and a shudder,

  not to be too tender about these things- to lump all that, that is,

  make a lump of gold of it. The highest advice I have heard on these

  subjects was grovelling. The burden of it was- It is not worth your

  while to undertake to reform the world in this particular. Do not

  ask how your bread is buttered; it will make you sick, if you do-

  and the like. A man had better starve at once than lose his

  innocence in the process of getting his bread. If within the

  sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is

  but one of the devil's angels. As we grow old, we live more

  coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent,

  cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the

  extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more

  unfortunate than ourselves.

  In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and

  absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted

  its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether

  the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it. Why must we

  daub the heavens as well as the earth? It was an unfortunate discovery

  that Dr. Kane was a Mason, and that Sir John Franklin was another. But

  it was a more cruel suggestion that possibly that was the reason why

  the former went in search of the latter. There is not a popular

  magazine in this country that would dare to print a child's thought on

  important subjects without comment. It must be submitted to the

  D.D.'s. I would it were the chickadee-dees.

  You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a

  natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all the world.

  I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly

  liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you

  endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in

  which they appear to hold stock- that is, some particular, not

  universal, way of viewing things. They will continually thrust their

  own low roof, with its narrow skylight, between you and the sky,

  when it is the unobstructed heavens you would view. Get out of the way

  with your cobwebs; wash your windows, I say! In some lyceums they tell

  me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do

  I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I

  have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast

  of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never

  suspected what I was about. The lecture was as harmless as moonshine

  to them. Whereas, if I had read to them the biography of the

  greatest scamps in history, they might have thought that I had written

  the lives of the deacons of their church. Ordinarily, the inquiry

  is, Where did you come from? or, Where are you going? That was a

  more pe
rtinent question which I overheard one of my auditors put to

  another one- "What does he lecture for?" It made me quake in my shoes.

  To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a

  world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and

  flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select

  granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build

  fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of

  granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.

  What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought

  with the purest and subtilest truth? I often accuse my finest

  acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners

  and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the

  lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of

  steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly

  mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each

  other.

  That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but

  superficial, it was!- only another kind of politics or dancing. Men

  were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed

  only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man

  stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning

  on another, and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world

  rest on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a

  serpent, and had nothing to put under the serpent. For all fruit of

  that stir we have the Kossuth hat.

  Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary

  conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward

  and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet

  a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper,

  or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only

  difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the

  newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our

  inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the

  post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away

  with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive

  correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.

  I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I

  have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not

  dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees

  say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires

  more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

  We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard

  in our day. I did not know why my news should be so trivial-

  considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the

  developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part,

  is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition. You are often

  tempted to ask why such stress is laid on a particular experience

  which you have had- that, after twenty-five years, you should meet

  Hobbins, Registrar of Deeds, again on the sidewalk. Have you not

  budged an inch, then? Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to

  float in the atmosphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi, and

  impinge on some neglected thallus, or surface of our minds, which

  affords a basis for them, and hence a parasitic growth. We should wash

  ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet

  explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health

  we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live

  for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world

  blow up.

  All summer, and far into the autumn, perchance, you unconsciously

  went by the newspapers and the news, and now you find it was because

  the morning and the evening were full of news to you. Your walks

  were full of incidents. You attended, not to the affairs of Europe,

  but to your own affairs in Massachusetts fields. If you chance to live

  and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the

  events that make the news transpire- thinner than the paper on which

  it is printed- then these things will fill the world for you; but if

  you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be

  reminded of them. Really to see the sun rise or go down every day,

  so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane

  forever. Nations! What are nations? Tartars, and Huns, and Chinamen!

  Like insects, they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them

  memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is

  individuals that populate the world. Any man thinking may say with the

  Spirit of Lodin-

  "I look down from my height on nations,

  And they become ashes before me;-

  Calm is my dwelling in the clouds;

  Pleasant are the great fields of my rest."

  Pray, let us live without being drawn by dogs, Esquimaux-fashion,

  tearing over hill and dale, and biting each other's ears.

  Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how

  near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some

  trivial affair- the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe

  how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish- to permit

  idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on

  ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public

  arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table

  chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself- an

  hypaethral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it

  so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are

  significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which

  are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is,

  for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is

  important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect. Think of

  admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into

  our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum

  sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very bar-room

  of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the

  street had occupied us- the very street itself, with all its travel,

  its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts' shrine!

  Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? When I have been

  compelled to sit spectator and auditor in a court-room for some hours,

  and have seen my neighbors, who were not compelled, stealing in from

  time to time, and tiptoeing about with washed hands and faces, it

  has appeared to my mind's eye, that, when they took off their hats,

  their ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for sound, between

  which even their narrow heads were crowded. Like the vanes of

  windmills, they caught the broad but shallow stream of sound, which,


  after a few titillating gyrations in their coggy brains, passed out

  the other side. I wondered if, when they got home, they were as

  careful to wash their ears as before their hands and faces. It has

  seemed to me, at such a time, that the auditors and the witnesses, the

  jury and the counsel, the judge and the criminal at the bar- if I

  may presume him guilty before he is convicted- were all equally

  criminal, and a thunderbolt might be expected to descend and consume

  them all together.

  By all kinds of traps and signboards, threatening the extreme

  penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only

  ground which can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it

  is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I

  prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian streams,

  and not the town sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes

  to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is

  the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court.

  The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the

  character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to

  which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by

  the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts

  shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be

  macadamized, as it were- its foundation broken into fragments for

  the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will

  make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce

  blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds

  which have been subjected to this treatment so long.

  If we have thus desecrated ourselves- as who has not?- the remedy

  will be by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make

  once more a fane of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is,

  ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are,

  and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their

  attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

  Conventionalities are at length as had as impurities. Even the facts

  of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a

  sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews

  of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details,

  but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes

  through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts,

  which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used.

  How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate

  whether we had better know them- had better let their peddling-carts

  be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bride of

  glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest

  brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no culture, no

  refinement- but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil?- to

  acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false

  show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and

  living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut

  burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?

  America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to

  be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense

  that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself

  from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and

  moral tyrant. Now that the republic- the respublica- has been settled,

  it is time to look after the res-privata- the private state- to see,

  as the Roman senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-PRIVATA

  detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment.

  Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from

  King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to

  be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any