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THOREAU
by
A. Bronson Alcott
My friend and neighbor united these
qualities of sylvan and human in a more remarkable manner than any whom it has been my
happiness to know. Lover of the wild, he lived a borderer on the confines of civilization,
jealous of the least encroachment upon his possessions.
"Society were all but rude
In his umbrageous solitude."
I had never thought of knowing a man so
thoroughly of the country, and so purely a son of nature. I think he had the profoundest
passion for it of any one of his time; and had the human sentiment been as tender and
pervading, would have given us pastorals of which Virgil and Theocritus might have envied
him the authorship had they chanced to be his contemporaries. As it was, he came nearer
the antique spirit than any of our native poets, and touched the fields and groves and
streams of his native town with a classic interest that shall not fade. Some of his verses
are suffused with an elegiac tenderness, as if the woods and brooks bewailed the absence
of their Lycidas, and murmured their griefs meanwhile to one another,—responsive like
idyls. Living in close companionship with nature, his muse breathed the spirit and voice
of poetry. For when the heart is once divorced from the senses and all sympathy with
common things, then poetry has fled and the love that sings.
The most welcome of companions was this plain
countryman. One seldom meets with thoughts like his, coming so scented of mountain and
field breezes and rippling springs, so like a luxuriant clod from under forest leaves,
moist and mossy with earth-spirits. His presence was tonic, like ice-water in dog-days to
the parched citizen pent in chambers and under brazen ceilings. Welcome as the gurgle of
brooks and dipping of pitchers,—then drink and be cool! He seemed one with things, of
nature’s essence and core, knit of strong timbers,—like a wood and its
inhabitants. There was in him sod and shade, wilds and waters manifold,—the mould and
mist of earth and sky. Self-poised and sagacious as any denizen of the elements, he had
the key to every animal’s brain, every plant; and were an Indian to flower forth and
reveal the scents hidden in his cranium, it would not be more surprising than the speech
of our Sylvanus. He belonged to the Homeric age,—was older than pastures and gardens,
as if he were of the race of heroes and one with the elements. He of all men seemed to be
the native New-Englander, as much so as the oak, the granite ledge; our best example of an
indigenous American, untouched by the old country, unless he came down rather from Thor,
the Northman, whose name he bore.
A peripatetic philosopher, and out-of-doors for
the best part of his days and nights, he had manifold weather and seasons in him; the
manners of an animal of probity and virtue unstained. Of all our moralists, he seemed the
wholesomest, the busiest, and the best republican citizen in the world; always at home
minding his own affairs. A little over-confident by genius, and stiffly individual,
dropping society clean out of his theories, while standing friendly in his strict sense of
friendship, there was in him an integrity and love of justice that made possible and
actual the virtues of Sparta and the Stoics,—all the more welcome in his time of
shuffling and pusillanimity. Plutarch would have made him immortal in his pages
had he lived before his day. Nor have we any so modern withal, so entirely his own and
ours: too purely so to be appreciated at once. A scholar by birthright, and an author, his
fame had not, at his decease, travelled far from the banks of the rivers he described in
his books; but one hazards only the truth in affirming of his prose, that in substance and
pith, it surpasses that of any naturalist of his time; and he is sure of large reading in
the future. There are fairer fishes in his pages than any swimming in our streams; some
sleep of his on the banks of the Merrimack by moonlight that Egypt never rivalled, a
morning of which Memmon might have envied the music, and a greyhound he once had, meant
for Adonis; frogs, better than any of Aristophanes; apples wilder than Adam’s. His
senses seemed double, giving him access to secrets not easily read by others; in sagacity
resembling that of the beaver, the bee, the dog, the deer; an instinct for seeing and
judging, as by some other, or seventh sense; dealing with objects as if they were shooting
forth from his mind mythologically, thus completing the world all round to his senses; a
creation of his at the moment. I am sure he knew the animals one by one, as most else
knowable in his town; the plants, the geography, as Adam did in his Paradise, if indeed,
he were not that ancestor himself. His works are pieces of exquisite sense, celebrations
of Nature’s virginity exemplified by rare learning, delicate art, replete with
observations as accurate as original; contributions of the unique to the natural history
of his country, and without which it were incomplete. Seldom has a head circumscribed so
much of the sense and core of Cosmos as this footed intelligence.
If one would learn the wealth of wit there was
in this plain man, the information, the poetry, the piety, he should have accompanied him
on an afternoon walk to Walden, or elsewhere about the skirts of his village residence.
Pagan as he might outwardly appear, yet he was the hearty worshipper of whatsoever is
sound and wholesome in nature,—a piece of russet probity and strong sense, that
nature delighted to own and honor. His talk was suggestive, subtle, sincere, under as many
masks and mimicries as the shows he might pass; as significant, substantial,—nature
choosing to speak through his mouthpiece,—cynically, perhaps, and searching into the
marrows of men and times he spoke of, to his discomfort mostly and avoidance.
Nature, poetry, life,—not politics, not
strict science, not society as it is,—were his preferred themes. The world was holy,
the things seen symbolizing the things unseen, and thus worthy of worship, calling men
out-of-doors and under the firmament for health and wholesomeness to be insinuated into
their souls, not as idolaters, but as idealists. His religion was of the most primitive
type, inclusive of all natural creatures and things, even to "the sparrow that falls
to the ground," though never by shot of his, and for whatsoever was [p. 15] manly in
men, his worship was comparable to that of the priests and heroes of all time. I should
say he inspired the sentiment of love, if, indeed, the sentiment did not seem to partake
of something purer, were that possible, but nameless from its excellency. Certainly he was
better poised and more nearly self-reliant than other men.
"The happy man who lived content
With his own town, his continent,
Whose chiding streams its banks did curb
As ocean circumscribes its orb,
Round which, when he his walk did take,
Thought he performed far more than Drake;
For other lands he took less thought
Than this his muse and mother brought."
More primitive and Homeric than any
American, his style of thinking was robust, racy, as if Nature herself had built his
sentences and seasoned the sense of his paragraphs with her own vigor and salubrity.
Nothing can be spared from them; there is nothing superfluous; all is compact, concrete,
as nature is.
His politics were of a piece with his
individualism. We must admit that he found little in political or religious establishment
answering to his wants, that his attitude was defiant, if not annihilating, as if he had
said to himself: —
"The state is man’s pantry at
most, and filled at an enormous cost,—a spoliation of the human common-wealth. Let it
go. Heroes can live on nuts, and free-men sun themselves in the clefts of rocks, rather
than sell their liberty for this pottage of slavery. We, the few honest neighbors,
can help one another; and should the state ask any favors of us, we can take the matter
into consideration leisurely, and at our convenience give a respectful answer.
"But why require a state to protect
one’s rights? the man is all. Let him husband himself; needs he other servant or
runner? Self-keeping is the best economy. That is a great age when the state is nothing and
man is all. He founds himself in freedom, and maintains his uprightness therein; founds an
empire and maintains states. Just retire from those concerns, and see how soon they must
needs go to pieces, the sooner for the virtue thus withdrawn from them. All the manliness
of individuals is sunk in that partnership in trade. Not only must I come out of myself,
if I will be free and independent. Shall one be denied the privilege on coming of mature
age of choosing whether he will be a citizen of the country he happens to be born in, or
another? And what better title to a spot of ground than being a man, and having none? Is
not man superior to state or country? I plead exemption from all interference by men or
states with my individual prerogatives. That is mine which none can steal from me, nor is
that yours which I or any man can take away."
"I am too high born to be propertied,
To be a secondary at control,
Or useful serving man and instrument
To any sovereign state throughout the world."
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
Concord Days by A. Bronson Alcott (Boston: Roberts
Brothers, 1872) pp.11-23.
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